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Updated: May 25, 2025
Vanderbilt now installed his own subservient board of directors, and proceeded to put through a fresh program of plunder beside which all his previous schemes were comparatively insignificant. Vanderbilt's ambition was to become the richest man in America. With three railroads in his possession he now aggressively set out to grasp a fourth the Erie Railroad.
Vanderbilt's methods and his temperament presented such a contrast to the commonplace minds which had previously dominated American business that this explanation of his career is perhaps not surprising. He saw things in their largest aspects and in his big transactions he seemed to act almost on impulse and intuition.
Nor did Vanderbilt look incongruous in this brilliant setting. His tall and powerful frame was still erect, and his large, defiant head, ruddy cheeks, sparkling, deep-set black eyes, and snowy white hair and whiskers, made him look every inch the Commodore. These public appearances lent a pleasanter and more sentimental aspect to Vanderbilt's life than his intimates always perceived.
Senator Grimes added that he did not believe that Vanderbilt's name should be stricken from the resolution. In vain, however, did Senator Grimes plead. Vanderbilt's name was expunged, and Southard was made the chief scapegoat. Although Vanderbilt had been tenderly dealt with in the investigation, his criminality was conclusively established. The affair deeply shocked the nation.
While the bill allowed the Postmaster- General to change Collins' European terminus to Southampton, that official, so it was proved subsequently, was Vanderbilt's plastic tool. But what became of the charges against Vanderbilt? Were they true or calumniatory? For two years Congress made no effort to ascertain this.
"You cannot turn in any direction in American politics," wrote Richard T. Ely a little later, "without discovering the railway power. It is the power behind the throne. Vanderbilt's death, as that of one of the real monarchs of the day, was an event of transcendent importance, and was treated so.
Vanderbilt's eulogists, in depicting him as a masterful constructionist, assert that it was he who first saw the waste and futility of competition, and that he organized the New York Central from the disjointed, disconnected lines of a number of previously separate little railroads. This is a gross error.
The telephone department was put in the hands of Hamilton McK. Twombly, Vanderbilt's ablest son-in-law, who made a success of it. The Bell company, of Boston, also started an exchange, and the fight was on, the Western Union pirating the Bell receiver, and the Boston company pirating the Western Union transmitter. About this time I wanted to be taken care of. I threw out hints of this desire.
For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this deception began to intrude again. Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and got the letter instead.
The magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the Hudson, through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie a water line route nearly the entire distance was all but useless. It is true that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's work.
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