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Updated: May 25, 2025
For under the Commodore's magic touch the Harlem Railroad for the first time in its long history began to pay dividends at a high rate, and in four years the earnings of the Hudson River property had nearly doubled. One of the first properties to be placed at Vanderbilt's feet was the New York Central, and the control passed into his hands in the winter of 1866-67.
Colonel Scott, of the Pennsylvania, thought otherwise, but the result of his experiment demonstrated the accuracy of Mr. Vanderbilt's judgment. Scott selected as editor of the New York World one of the most brilliant journalistic writers of his time, William H. Hurlburt. When it became known, however, that the World belonged to Colonel Scott, Hurlburt's genius could not save it.
Havre with its great docks, its busy streets, and fast electric tramcars that frighten away foot passengers with noisy motor horns does not compel a very long stay, although one may chance to find much interest among the shipping, when such vessels as Mr Vanderbilt's magnificent steam yacht, without a mark on its spotless paint, is lying in one of the inner basins.
Yet these were the men these traders who vociferously come forth with their homiletic trades against Vanderbilt's criminal transactions, demanding that the power of him and his kind be curbed. It was not at all singular that they put their protests on moral grounds.
In these times of enormous individual accumulations and centralization of wealth, the personal possession of $105,000,000 does not excite a fraction of the astonished comment that it did at Cornelius Vanderbilt's death in 1877. Accustomed as the present generation is to the sight of billionaires or semi- billionaires, it cannot be expected to show any wonderment at fortunes of lesser proportions.
Vanderbilt is in every case portrayed as an eminently high-minded man who never stooped to dissimulation, deceit or treachery, and whose first millions, at any rate, were made in the legitimate ways of trade as they were then understood. The truth is that the bulk of Vanderbilt's original millions were the proceeds of extortion, blackmail and theft.
Morgan was Vanderbilt's financial agent; and it was he, according to his own testimony on October 13, 1885, before the court examiner, who now suggested and made the arrangements between Vanderbilt and the Pennsylvania Railroad magnates, by which the South Pennsylvania Railroad was to become the property of the Pennsylvania system, and the Reading Railroad magnates were to be as thoroughly thrown over by as deft a stroke of treachery as had ever been put through in the business world.
I have said that this admiration on the part of the admirable Count and R. A. for a personage of the Spanish Whoremaster's profession somewhat interested me. The fact is, a change had recently come in our own relations with Vanderbilt's friend. His cordiality toward B. and myself had considerably withered. From the time of our arrivals the good nobleman had showered us with favours and advice.
Since wealth meant power, both economic and political, it is not difficult to estimate Vanderbilt's supreme place in his day. Far below him, in point of possessions, stretched the 50,000,000 individuals who made up the nation's population. Nearly 10,000,000 were wage laborers, and of the 10,000,000 fully 500,000 were child laborers.
If indomitable enterprise assured permanency of wealth then many of Vanderbilt's competitors would have become and remained multimillionaires. Vanderbilt, by no means possessed a monopoly of acquisitive enterprise; on every hand, and in every line, were men fully as active and unprincipled as he.
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