Plain Jim

When President Whitefoord Russell Cole of Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis R. R. was upped to the presidency of Louisville & Nashville Railroad eight years ago, he was succeeded by a onetime telegrapher named James Brents Hill. Month ago President Cole died suddenly of acute indigestion while riding in his private car over his railroad (TIME, Nov. 26). Last week, to succeed him as L. & N. president & director, the carrier chose the same James Brents Hill, who promptly resigned as head of Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis R. R. which he had served in high capacity and low for 36 years.

Softspoken, friendly, unostentatious, L. & N.'s new president has long been known to railroad's rank & file as "Plain Jim." No kin of famed Empire Builder James Jerome Hill, he was born of poor Tennessee mountainfolk, learned railroad telegraphy at 13, won a $100 scholarship to George Peabody College for Teachers at 15 and graduated three years later as a licensed schoolteacher. He abandoned an academic career to take a $15-a-month job as relief station agent in a tiny town called Bon Air. One day he applied for a better job, was asked if he knew stenography. "No," said he. "but I'll know it in three months if you give me the job." From stenographer "Plain Jim" became private secretary to various N. C. & St. L. executives, eventually company treasurer and assistant to the president. No surprise was his jump last week to the presidency of L. & N., which owns 70% ($18,374,700) of N. C. & St. L.'s stock.

Now a resident of Nashville, President Hill will soon move to Louisville. His first major task will be to air-condition L. & N. trains.* As for streamlining, he plans to "stand on the sidelines and watch others move." Slight and grey-haired, at 56 President Hill looks less like a major railroad executive than the schoolmaster he once set out to be. A banker on the side, he is married, has two children, will get twice as much ($40,500) in his new job as in his old. Negro Cook Humphrey Bowling of "No. 99," the president's private car, rates him thus: "A good man, but a poor eater."

*Equally important, from an operating standpoint, is the L. & N. fight with Federal Coordinator Joseph Bartlett Eastman which President Hill inherited. Fortnight ago three Federal judges in Chicago found against L.& N. in its effort to switch crack Florida-Chicago trains from debt-ridden Chicago & Eastern Illinois to New York Central's "Big Four." To the U. S. Supreme Court L. & N. may appeal the court's decision upholding Mr. Eastman.

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