biography
| name: |
Villard, Henry
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originally Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1835–1900)
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| biography:
| Financier and publisher, born in Speyer, Germany. From a prominent Bavarian family, he left for the USA after political disagreements with his father. He changed his name to avoid being forced back to Germany, landed in New York (1853), and travelled to relatives in Illinois, where he read law and learned English. In 1858 he covered the Lincoln–Douglas debates for a German-language newspaper in New York City, the Staats-Zeitung, and soon began to write for several other papers, including the New York Herald and Tribune. In 1868 he became secretary of the American Social Science Association in Boston, enabling him to study public and corporate finance and sparking his interest in railway finance. Going to Oregon (1874) as the representative of German bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad, he soon took over as president. When in 1876 he was also made the receiver of the Kansas Pacific Railway, he decided to form a transportation monopoly in the Pacific Northwest. Although large debts forced him out of control (1884), he is considered one of the most important railway promoters of the 1880s. Meanwhile, he had shifted his interests back to the East, buying the New York Evening Post (1881) and helping found the Edison General Electric Co (1889). He expanded his publishing company to acquire the Nation and generally supported liberal and progressive causes. |
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