Article February 2, 1899 Issue

The Secret of Stilwell's Success

He Has Raised Millions of Dollars for Railway Building Against Almost Overwhelming Opposition.

We take pleasure in republishing from a current number of Success, a weekly publication under the able management of Dr. R. S. Marden, whose headquarters are in New York City, the following article, relating to the successful business career of Mr. Arthur E. Stilwell of Kansas City. It may not be improper for us to remark that Mr. Stilwell is an ardent Christian Scientist. Those who attended the Friday evening meetings in the Mother Church about two years since will remember the impressive testimonial given by Mr. Stilwell, in which he spoke of overcoming apparently insurmountable financial difficulties, through his understanding and practical application of the teachings of Christian Science. Through this understanding, he declared, he had successfully tided over seeming crises in his enterprises, that under ordinary conditions would have been impossible.

Arthur E. Stilwell is another New York boy who, like Governor Fancher of North Dakota, went to Chicago, became a life insurance solicitor, and then went farther west and achieved great success. He was born in Rochester, New York. When twenty-two years of age he went to Chicago and obtained employment with a life insurance company. He was not successful as a solicitor, although his restless mind was always busy devising schemes for improving methods of insurance. He moved to Kansas City, and there formed a trust company. This undertaking flourished, and Stilwell became a man of prominence. His opportunity came when the president of the trust company, of which he was vice-president, brought to his attention an old charter for a belt road around Kansas City. The cost of cutting through the surrounding hills had deterred any attempt at constructing this road. Stilwell immediately responded, "Let's build it." Kansas City financiers sneered at the project, but Stilwell got the money and built the road.

Early in 1892, he secured control of a little railroad running south from Kansas City seventy miles, and almost immediately announced that he proposed to extend it south to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles. The Gould lines, the Santa Fé, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, all had existing roads from Kansas City to Gulf ports. There did not seem any room for another road, even to the most sanguine, and Stilwell's project was ridiculed. He started construction work in earnest, however, in 1893, the year of the panic, sold his bonds, and then, existing lines finding he meant business, employed against him every weapon that wealth, experience, and ingenuity could suggest. They fought him in the courts, they contested his right of way, and opposed him in the legislature of every state he entered, but Stilwell went steadily forward, buying roads, building the links necessary to connect them, and extending his line south.

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