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Updated: May 19, 2025
But I should just like to take him round in this little old metropolis awhile, and show him 'Every Other Week' on the centre tables of the millionaires the Vanderbilts and the Astors and in the homes of culture and refinement everywhere, and let him judge for himself.
The sway of the Vanderbilts, however, extends not only over the anthracite, but over a great extent of the bituminous coal fields in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and other States. By their control of the New York Central Railroad, they own various ostensibly independent bituminous coal mining companies.
Apart from the New York Central's officials, no one to-day knows what the actual cost has been, except as stated by the company. South of the Harlem River this report cost has been $800,000, north of the Harlem River $400,000. At practically no expense to themselves, the Vanderbilts obtained a massive four-track elevated structure, running for miles over the city streets.
Long has it been the custom to attribute to Commodore Vanderbilt and successive generations of Vanderbilts an almost supernatural "constructive genius," and to explain by that glib phrase their success in getting hold of their colossal wealth. This explanation is clumsy fiction that at once falls to pieces under historical scrutiny.
All railroad companies used this form, as well as other forms, of bribery. It was mainly by means of the free pass system that Depew, acting for the Vanderbilts, secured not only a general immunity from newspaper criticism, but continued to have himself and them portrayed in luridly favorable lights.
The Adams family, of Massachusetts, for more than a century, has been even more distinguished for statesmanship and intellect than for great wealth. The Vanderbilts have all been hard workers and able business men. George Gould seems to be quite as great a financier as his remarkable father.
Their jobs are the hostages held by the Vanderbilts. The interests and decisions of one family are supreme. The germination and establishment of this immense power began with the activities of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of this pile of wealth. He was born in 1794.
But it was only in degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability.
The Morgans, Fricks, Goulds, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, servants of the new king, princes of the new faith, merchants all, a new kind of rulers of men, defied the world-old law of class that puts the merchant below the craftsman, and added to the confusion of men by taking on the air of creators.
'Look at th' Willum Haitch Vanderbilts, says he, 'an' th' Gools an' th' Astors, says he, 'an' thin look at us, he says, 'groun' down, he says, 'till we cries f'r bread on th' sthreet, he says; 'an' they give us a stone, he says. 'Dooley, he says, 'fetch in a tub iv beer, an' lave th' collar off, he says. "Doolan 'd wake up with a start, an' applaud at that.
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