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Charles Melville Hays

Article by Eric J. Holmgren

Published Online February 21, 2008

Last Edited October 28, 2014

Charles Melville Hays, railway president (b at Rock I, Ill 16 May 1856; d in the N Atlantic 15 Apr 1912).

Charles Melville Hays, railway president (b at Rock I, Ill 16 May 1856; d in the N Atlantic 15 Apr 1912). At 17 Hays entered the passenger department of the Atlantic & Pacific Railway at St Louis, Missouri. His railway career advanced rapidly, and in 1889 he became general manager of the Wabash, St Louis and Pacific Railroad. He came to Canada in 1896 as general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway, becoming president in 1909. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, of which he became president in 1905, was largely his creation. Under his directorship the GTR suffered intense labour strife, and one of Wilfrid Laurier's ministers described Hays as heartless, cruel and tyrannical. He went down in the Titanic.

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