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Updated: May 23, 2025
The truth was too simple to be believed, "Aw, git out!" laughed the one-eyed man, with a comical lift of the mustache. "And I s'pose y' live with the Vanderbilt fambly, eh?" Johnnie's eyes sparkled. There was in the question a certain something an ignoring of bare facts which made him believe that this man and he were kindred souls. "No, I don't live with 'em," he hastened to say.
Colorless as was the third generation, undistinguished by any marked characteristic, extremely commonplace in its conventions, it yet proved itself a worthy successor of Commodore Vanderbilt. The lessons he had taught of how to appropriate wealth were duly followed by his descendants, and all of the ancestral methods were closely adhered to by the third generation.
The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-bearded traveler for some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and the landlord fell into a conversation upon what Socrates calls the disadvantage of the pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all noble objects, and they let their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who was agreed to be the richest man in the world, or that ever lived.
The man who wrecked himself in the Vanderbilt Cup races rather than take a chance on throwing his machine into the crowd at a turn?" "The same what's left of him," Carver admitted. "Then," said Jimmy, "I wish I could have given you a whole Pullman instead of just one berth! By gosh! You deserve it. The firm you drove for ought to have seen to that."
VANDERBILT, CORNELIUS. Born near Stapleton, Staten Island, New York, May 27, 1794; became chief owner Harlem railroad, 1863, and of Hudson River and New York Central roads soon afterwards; died at New York City, January 4, 1877.
They met their match in all cases, however, for Vanderbilt inaugurated so sharp a business opposition that the best of them were forced to compromise with him. These troubles were very annoying to him, and cost him nearly every dollar he was worth, but he persevered, and at length "carried his point."
Assuredly this is a business age wherein profits must take precedence over every other consideration, which principle has been most elaborately enunciated and established by a long list of exalted court decisions. The juggling of railroads and the virtual seizure of coal mines were by no means the only accomplishments of the Vanderbilt family in the years under consideration.
For fifteen years Vanderbilt and his associates succeeded in stifling every bill introduced in Congress for the reduction of the postage on mail. The Civil War with its commerce-preying privateers was an unpropitious time for American mercantile vessels. Vanderbilt now began his career as a railroad owner.
Although this man employed his great talents in a field, that of railroad transportation, which lies outside the scope of the present volume, yet in this comprehensive view I may take Cornelius Vanderbilt as the symbol that links the old industrial era with the new.
This service Vanderbilt performed with his usual vigor, "laying hands," as he said, "upon every thing that could float or steam," including, it must be added, more than one vessel to which it would have been rash to ascribe either of these qualities.
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