Percival Farquhar

Life

Born to a wealthy Pennsylvanian Quaker family, Farquhar studied engineering at Yale University.

He was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1891, 1892 (both New York Co., 3rd D.) and 1893 (New York Co., 11th D.).

He was vice-president of the Atlantic Coast Electric Railway and the Staten Island Railway, which controlled rail services in New York. He was also partner and director of the "Compañía de Electricidad de Cuba" and partner and vice-president of the Guatemala Railway.

He developed businesses in Cuba and Central America. He owned railways and mines in Russia and dealt personally with Lenin.

Visionary?

Farquhar's dream was to control all the railways of Latin America, in a version of Manifest Destiny.

Visionary, controversial, and audacious, Farquhar became the greatest private investor in Brazil between 1905 and 1918. According to the writer and former minister Ronaldo Costa Couto, his empire was comparable to those of Count Francisco Matarazzo and Irineu Evangelista de Souza, The Viscount of Mauá.

The writing on Farquhar is full of contradictions, making it very difficult to sort through the legend, hagiography, and libel found in his biographies

Professor Francisco Foot Hardman in an interview with the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, stated:

A book which exalts his deeds—with a few passages that border on hagiography—is The Last Titan – An American Entrepreneur in Latin America—a dissertation by Charles A. Gauld for Stanford University, under the supervision of Professor Ronald Hilton.

The Brazilian magazine Exame, in a review of the book, said:

In contrast, the Brazilian historian Edgard Carone, in his book A República Velha (The Old Republic) says that Farquhar's businesses "lived off government favors".

In the book Chatô - O Rei do Brasil (Chatô - The King of Brazil), the journalist Fernando Morais describes Farquhar as:

It is true that he built and directed numerous businesses in Latin America, many of them in Brazil. His activities were frequently related to governmental concessions and privileges—and to guarantees that governments would receive revenues from the capital invested—which he ably obtained from young and inexperienced local governments, frequently through personal bribery.

A bold and fearless financier, with great experience in the European capital markets, Farquhar considered himself "able to finance anything". According to Gauld, Farquhar "was hungrier for land than anyone in Latin American history since the time of the Incas".

The beginning of the First World War in 1914, cut off his main source of resources and financing, and left Farquhar's already precarious empire—which had created the practicing of issuing debt based on debt—extremely indebted, causing it to crumble. His businesses reached bankruptcy by October 1914. His investors lost all of their capital, and Farquhar was ruined. Despite this setback, he would rise again after the war using the same tactics, to fail again after the 1929 stock market crash. After the revolution of 1930, the government of Getúlio Vargas constrained the areas in which he could work, and Farquhar decided to leave Brazil.

Although the dimensions and scope of his economic activity are impressive due to the large sums of money involved and the fervor of his apparently charitable activities, a more detailed examination of Farquhar's businesses in Brazil shows that they frequently led to the deaths of thousands of native people, the ecological destruction of entire states, abandoned railways, bankruptcies, and even civil wars.

Charles A. Gauld writes:

An avid speculator, he bet especially strongly on his own commercial paper. At the beginning of 1913, Farquhar came to realize that he was bankrupt.

Farquhar had a great ability to get himself into trouble with governments and nationalist groups. But the dislike that he provoked was not totally baseless.

Determined and capable in the promotion of his own self-image, he always made an effort to make the press portray his actions as "the example of a highly successful American capitalist, a true icon of American entrepreneurship", a fact which gained him a few admirers.

Among these were Assis Chateaubriand, King of Brasil, who became the owner of the country's largest journalism network. This friendship greatly contributed to favorable reactions to Farquhar's activities. (Chateaubriand later bought O Jornal, in 1924, using funds provided by Farquhar, supposedly as legal fees.)

Progress yes, but with concessions

Percival Farquhar believed that no country in the world could become developed without good hotels and fine cuisine.

To fill these needs in Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century, Farquhar built in São Paulo the elegant Rotisserie Sportsman and imported from the famous Elisée Palace Hotel in Paris the chef Henri Galon, Fernando de Morais tells us in his book Chatô - O Rei do Brasil (Chatô - The King of Brazil).

Grand Hôtel de la Plage

In 1911, Farquhar purchased from the firm Prado, Chaves & Cia control over the Companhia Balneária de Santo Amaro, founded in 1892 which under the direction of Councillor Antonio Prado had been created to organize a tourist beach resort in the place that is today the center of Guarujá. Farquhar's new business was called Companhia Guarujá.