Word: johnstons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...once, Railroader Johnston didn't care. The Illinois Central was celebrating its 100th anniversary. All along its 6,543 miles of track between Chicago and New Orleans, the same tumult of bells and whistles broke loose on the "Main Line of Mid-America." The Illinois Central had plenty to toot about. It dominated the length & breadth of the Mississippi Valley-which Alexis de Tocqueville had called "the most magnificent dwelling place prepared by God for man's abode." The Central had opened up the dwelling place...
...road through, though it was touch & go. One time, the papers were even drawn up to put it into bankruptcy. World War II sent the road highballing again, and Beven began using earnings to trim the $368 million debt and buy new equipment. When Beven died in 1945, Wayne Johnston, who had started with the railroad at 22 as an accountant, stepped in, the first Illinois Central president born in Illinois (at Urbana...
...Johnston trimmed the debt to $238 million, spent $134 million on equipment and improvements in five years. By 1949 Johnston had the Illinois Central in such healthy shape that he resumed payments on the preferred stock. Last year, when the road earned a net of $29,123,632, the fattest in its history, he plunked out the first common dividend ($3) since 1931. As a result, the common stock has soared from its 1941 low of $4.25 to $72.75 last week. This week, 53-year-old President Johnston was just as confident about the Main Line as Investor Cobden...
...residential street in the Midwestern town of Cedarsville, workmen were razing the fine old Johnston residence. At an upper window of his own house next door, Ralph Kempner watched the daily progress of destruction from a wheelchair, and backtracked in memory over the 70-odd years of his life. Cedarsville folk naturally wondered what old Kempner was thinking about, because he had always been such a cold, silent fish...
...Into Thin Air is a novel whose story might have come from any U.S. small town. Why did Kempner, a wealthy, attractive manufacturer, never marry? What about all those out-of-town trips he used to take, presumably on business? And what was he always jawing about with Mrs. Johnston, a woman old enough to be his mother? Working with such commonplace matters, and playing them for no more than they are worth, Warren Beck has written a minor novel with the grace and dignity appropriate to a major one. In its quiet way, it keeps claiming kinship to Willa...