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My face must have reflected my mind, for Woodruff merely replied, "Oh, very well. Of course that alters the case." "We must get Croffut without him," I went on. Woodruff shook his head. "Can't get him," he said. "Dominick controls the two southern ranges of counties. He finances his own machine from what he collects from vice and crime in those cities.
A woman of almost rustic simplicity of mind and of habits, she became obediently meek under the iron discipline he administered. Croffut says of her that she was "acquiescent and patient under the sway of his dominant will, and in the presence of his trying moods."
The only relaxations he allowed himself were fast driving and playing whist. This, in short is a picture of the man who in the next few years used his stolen millions to sweep into his ownership great railroad systems. Croffut asserts that in 1861 he was worth $20,000,000; other writers say that his wealth did not exceed $10,000,000.
As my plans for ousting Dunkirk took shape, I saw clearly that, if he were to be overthrown at once, I must use part of the existing control of the machine of the party, it would take several years, at least three, to build up an entirely new control. To work quickly, I must use Croffut, Dunkirk's colleague in the Senate. And Croffut was the creature of Dominick.
"But Dominick isn't the nominal leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my colleague, Croffut, perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab that fools the people." "I know him," said I, in a tone which did not deny the accuracy of Dunkirk's description.
His close-fistedness was such a passion that for many years he refused to substitute new carpets for the scandalous ones covering the floors of his house No. 10 Washington place. He never read anything except the newspapers, which he skimmed at breakfast. To his children he was unsympathetic and inflexibly harsh; Croffut admits that they feared him.
By the most favorable account that of Croffut his own allotment of the plunder amounted to $26,000,000. This sum, immense, and in fact of almost inconceivable power in that day, was enough of itself, independent of Vanderbilt's other wealth, to force through almost any plan involving a seizing of competing property. Vanderbilt did not wait long.
"It was strong men," says Croffut, "whom he liked and sympathized with, not weak ones; the self-reliant, not the helpless. He felt that the solicitor of charity was always a lazy or drunken person, trying to live by plundering the sober and industrious."
Precisely in the same way as Croffut makes no mention of Vanderbilt's share in the mail subsidy frauds, but, on the contrary, ascribes to Vanderbilt the most splendid patriotism in his mail carrying operations, so do Croffut and other writers unctuously dilate upon the old magnate's patriotic services during the Civil War.
The public, which welcomed him as a benefactor in declaring cheaper rates and which flocked to patronize his line, had to pay dearly for their premature and short-sighted joy. For the first five years his profits, according to Croffut, reached $30,000 a year, doubling in successive years.
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