Great Fortunes from Railroads

r philanthropic purpose, but his general undeviating course was a consistent meanness. In him was united the petty bargaining traits of the trading element and the lavish capacities for plunde

demands were for no paltry prize, but for the largest and richest booty. Yet so ingrained by long devel

T'S CHARA

as such were of that thrifty, congealed disposition swayed largely by calculation. But if they expected to gain overmuch by their intimacy, they were generally vastly mistaken; nearly always, on the contrary, they found themselves caught in some unexpected snare, and riper in experience, but poore

n being told of his debt, Vanderbilt declined to pay it, closing the matter abruptly with this laconic pronunciamento, "When I give anything, I give it myself." At another time Vanderbilt assured a friend that he would "carry" one thousand shares of New York Central stock for him. The market price rose to $115 a share and then dropped to $90. A little later, before setting out to bribe an important bill through the Legislature-a bill that Vanderbilt knew would greatly increase the value of the stock-the old magnate went to the friend and rep

le bill with a hypercritical eye. Even the sheer necessities of his physical condition could not induce him to pay out money for costly prescriptions. A few days before his death his physici

of fury if his moods, designs and will were contested. His wife bore him thirteen children, twelve of whom she had brought up to maturity. A woman of almost rustic simplicity of mind and of habits, she became obediently meek under the iron discipline he administered. Croffut say

engage in a business career. If Cornelius had gambled on the stock exchange his father would have set him down as an exceedingly enterprising, respectable and promising man. But he preferred to gamble at cards. This rebellious lack of interest in business, joined with dissipation, so enraged the old man that he drove Cornelius from the house and only allowed him acce

MAGNATE'

. When this was seen the group about his bed emotionally sang: "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy," "Nearer, My God, To Thee," and "Show Ye Pity, Lord." He died with a conventional religious end of which the world made much; all of the property sanctities and ceremonials were duly observed; nothing was lacking in the piety of that affecting deathbed scene. It furnished the text for many a sermon, but

of the remaining $15,000,000 was bequeathed to the chief heir's four sons. [Footnote: To Cornelius J. Vanderbilt, the Commodore's "wayward" son, only the income derived from $200,000 was bequeathed, upon the condition that he should forfeit even this legacy if he contested the will

them liking the legatee, and one of them not having been for years on speaking terms with him; but now, in addit

each sister in turn. The donation was accompanied by two interesting incidents. In one case the husband said, 'William, I've made a quick calculation here, and I find t

at we fare as well as any of them, won't you?' The donor jumped into his carriage and drove off without replying, only saying, with a laugh, to his companions, 'Well, what do you think o' that'"- "The Vanderbilts

* *

Y OF THE C

s father, truckling to his every caprice and demand, and proving that he could make an independent living. He is described as a phlegmatic man of dull and slow mental processes, domestic tastes and of kindly disposition to his children. His father (so the chronicles tell) did not think that he "would ever amount to anything," but by infinite plodding, exacting the severest labor from his farm laborers, driving close bargains and turning devious tricks in his dealings, he gradually won the confidence and respect of the old

H. VANDERBILT, He Inh

ortune and

which William H. Vanderbilt daily struggled to get some perceptions of the details of railroad management. He did succeed in absorbing considerable knowledge. But his training at the hands of his father was not so much in the direction of learning the system of management. Men of ability could always be hired to manage the roads. What his father principally taught him was the more essentia

fine qualities would have been sadly out of place; his father's teachings were precisely what were needed to sustain and augment his possessions. On every hand he was confronted either by competitors who, if they could get the chance, would

s joined in huge lines under the ownership of a few controlling men, while in the West, extensive systems, thousands of miles long, had recently been built. Having stamped out most of the small owners, the railroad barons now proceeded to wrangle and

OF THE FI

lized. The wars between the railroad magnates assumed many forms, not the least of which was the cutting of freight rates. Each railroad desperately sought to wrench away traffic fro

largest share of the traffic of transporting oil. Rockefeller, ruminating in his small refinery at Cleveland, Ohio, had conceived the revolutionary i

ble to compete. The railroad magnates-William H. Vanderbilt, for instance-were taken in the fold of the Standard Oil Company by being made stockholders. With these secret rates the Standard Oil Company was enabled to crush out absolutely a myriad of competitors and middlemen, and control the petroleum trade not only of the United States but of almost the entire world. Such fabulous profits acc

EALTH AND L

his thing keeps up the oil people will own the roads." But other noted industrial changes were concurrently going on. With the up- springing and growth of gigantic combinations or concentrations of

to weld themselves into one powerful body, covering much of the United States. Each craft union still retained its organization and autonomy, but it now became part of a national organization embracing every form of trades, and ce

etween them was that capital was in absolute control of the political governing power of the nation, and this power, strange to say, it secured by the votes of the very working class constantly fighting it in the industrial arena. Many years were to elapse before the workers were to realize that they must organize and vote with the same poli

y into one another's profits. The permanent gainers were such incipient, or fairly well developed, trusts or combinations as the Standard Oil Co

Despite, however, the prevailing cutthroat competition, and the slump in general business following the panic of 1873, the railroads were making large sums on their actual investment, so-called. Most of this investment, it will be recalled, was not private money but was

haulage. But these are simply two phases of the postal plunder. In addition to the regular mail payments, the Government has long paid to the railroad companies an extra allowance of $6,250 a year for the rent of each postal car used, although official investigation has proved that the whole cost of constructing such a car averages but from $2,500 to $5,000. In rent alone, five millions a year have been paid for cars worth, all told, about four millions. From official estimates it would clearly seem that the railroads have long cheated the people out of at least $20,000,000 a year in excess rates-a total of perhaps half a billion d

T STRIKE

of the merest subsistence; and now they decreed that wages must again be curtailed ten cents on every dollar. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, then in the hands of the Garrett family, with a career behind it of consecutiv

sympathy of the general public and to have a pretext for suppressing the strike with armed force, the railroads, it is quite certain, instigated riots at Marti

her tells of the Pennsylvania Railroad subsequently extorting millions of dollars from the public treasury on the ground that the destruction of these cars resulted from riot. Wright says that from all that he has been able to gather, he believes the reports of the railroads manufacturing riots to have been true. [Footnote: "The Battles of Labor": 122. In all, the railroad companies secured

various sections of the middle class against the corporate wealth which had possessed its

ltitude of complaining traders were haled up to give testimony; the stock-jobbing transactions of Vanderbilt and Gould were fully and tediously gone

any result calculated to break the power of the railroad o

res had an inflaming effect upon a population as yet ill-used to great one-man power of wealth. But if the middle class insisted upon action against the railroad magnates, there was no policy more suitable to these magnates than that of being investigated by legislative committees. They were not averse to their opponents amusing themselves, and finding a vent for their wrath,

MES RESPEC

r and wealth of such men as Vanderbilt and Gould. Every new development revealed that the hard-dying middle class

e. He decided that it would be wise to sell a large part of this stock; by this stroke he could advantageously exchange the forms of some of his wealth, and be able to put forward the plausible claim that the New York Central Railro

brought him $35,000,000. What did he do with this sum? He at once reinvested it in United States Government bonds. Thus, the proceeds of a part of the stock obtained by outright fraud, either by his father or himsel

000 of them to make good the losses incurred by his sons on the Stock Exchange, but he later bought $10,000,000 more. Also he owned $4,000,000 in Government three and one-half per cent. bonds, many millions of State and city bonds, several millions of dollars in manufacturing stocks and mortgages, and $22,000,000 of railroad bonds. The sa

no difficulty in adding more extended railroad lines to his properties,

LROADS A

th destructive effect against almost every competitor standing in his way. If he could not coerce the owners of a railroad, the possession o

ness; through a series of years he methodically caused it to be harrassed and burdened by the exercise of his great political power; he thwarted its plans and secretly hindered it in its application for money loans or other relief. Othe

ith the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, an intense competitor of the Pennsylvania; and, as a precedent to building his line, he obtained a large interest in the Reading Railroad. Out of this arrang

anizing a bogus construction company, and charging three and four times more than the building of the railroad actually cost. Vanderbilt got together a dummy construction company composed of some of his clerks and brokers, and advanced the sum, about $6,500,000, to build the road. In return, he ordered this company to

he most powerful and astute organizers and corruptionists. Their methods in Pennsylvania and other States were exactly the same as Vanderbilt's in New York State; their political power was as great in their chosen province as his in New York. His incursion into the territory th

A "GENTLEMEN

s agreement" with the Reading Railroad, the bitterest competitor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for a close alliance of interests. Vanderbilt owned eighty-two thousand shares of Reading stock, much of which he had obtained on t

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 Pennsylvani

e to the Pennsylvania Railroad system for $5,600,000 in three per cent. railroad debenture bonds. It is interesting to inquire who Vanderbilt's associates were in this transaction. They were John D. Rockefeller, William Ro

and Nebraska ran the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a line 4,000 miles long which had been built mostly by public funds and land grants. I

IGINAL VANDERBILT HOM

Island,

WILLIAM H. VANDERBILT, And Resid

n this railroad, so that he had a complete line from New York to Chicago, and thence far

NDS IN

st and Fifty-second streets, he built a spacious brown-stone mansion. In reality it was a union of two mansions; the southern part he planned for himself, the northern part for his two daughters. For a year and a half more than six hu

s must ever live imperiously and impressively; it is not fitting that those who command the resources, labor and Government of a nation should issue their mandates from pinched and meager surroundings. Mere pseudo political rulers, such as governors and presidents, are expected to be satisfied with the plain, unornamental official residences pro

e appropriately built and fitted, and are more truly and specifically historic as the abode of Government than official mansions; for it is the magnates who have in these modern times been the real rulers of nations; it is they who have usually been able to decide who the political rulers should be; political parties h

TRANSFO

Italian Renaissance, with a wainscot of golden-hued, delicately-carved English oak around all four sides, and a ceiling with richly-painted hunting-scene panels. When he entertained it was i

etentions cared less, for he was a complete utilitarian; but it had become fashionable to have an elabor

the celebrity that came from the high prices he was decoyed into paying for them. For one of Meissionier's paintings, "The Arrival at the Chateau," he paid $40,000, and on one of his visits to Paris he enriched Meissionier to the extent of $188,000 for seven paintings. Not until his corps of art advisers were satisfied that a painter became fashionably talked about, could Vanderbilt be prevailed upon to buy examples of his work. There was something intensely

BLIC BE

ublic some ostentatious gift or donation. This would furnish a new ground to the sycophantic chorus for extolling his fine qualities. But he happened to inherit his father's irascibility and extreme contempt for the public whom

nd succinct utterance to the actuating principle of the whole capitalist class. The moral of this incident impressed itself sharply upon the minds of the masterly rich, and to this day has greatly contributed to the politic manner of their exterior conduct. They learned that however in private they might safely

00,000 IN S

e Vanderbilt more than thirty years to establish the fortune of $105,000,000 he left. With a greater population and greater resources to prey upon, William H. Vanderbilt almost doubled the amount in seven years. In January, 1883, he confided to a friend that he was worth $194,000,000. "I am the richest man in the world," he went on. "In En

d. He had a delusion that "everybody in the world was ready to take advantage of him," and he regarded "men and women, as a rule, as a pretty bad lot." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts": 127.] This incident-one of many similar incidents narrated by

tinized the items with proper care. "Was I here last

ilt; you stayed

ll. Another time he would exclaim, sotto voce, "I didn't

Garrett in his mansion, on December 8, 1885, that he suddenly shot forward from his chair and fell apoplectically to the floor, and in a twink

sued page after page of description, not without sufficient reason. For he, although untitled and vested with no official power, was in actuality an autocrat; dictatorship by

say, the greatest men in America," which term, "greatest," was a ludicrously reverent way of describing their qualities. "They have power," he goes on in the same work, "more power-that is, more opportunity to make their will prevail, than perhaps any one in political life except the President or the Speaker, who, after all, hold theirs only for four years and two years, while the railroad monarch holds his for life." [Footnote: "The American Commonwealth." First Ed.: 515.] Bryce was not well enough acquainted with the windings and depths of American political workings to know that the money kings had more power than President or Speaker, not nominally, but essentially. He further relates how when a railroad magnate traveled, his journey was like a ro

H A NOTA

still disseminated by those shallow or mercenary writers whose trade is to spread orthodox belief in existing conditions. The underlying facts of his career and methods were purposely suppressed, and a nauseating sort of panegyric substituted. Who did not know that he had bribed Legislature after Legislature, and had constantly resorted to conspiracy and fraud

as representing the unemployed at any one time in the United States, is fairly representative."] while the millions at work received the scantiest wages. Nearly three millions of people had been completely pauperized, and, in one way or another, had to be supported at public

pers, the magazines, the pulpit and the politicians to ignore, suppress or twist every particle of information that might enlighten or arouse the mass of people; if these agencies were so obtuse or recalcitrant as not to know their expected place and duty at critical times, they were quickly reminded of them by the propertied classes. To any newspaper owner, clergyman or politician showing a tendency to radicalism, the punishment came quickly. The newspaper owner was deprived of advertisements and accomm

S IN EVAD

death the newspapers laved in gorgeous descriptions of his mansion. Yet apart from the proceeds of his great frauds, the amounts out of which he had cheated the city and State in taxation were

s of his estate, the New York City Commissioners of Assessments and Taxes made an apparent effort to collect some of the millions of dollars out of which he had cheated the city. It was now that the obsequious and time-serving Depew, grown gray and wrinkled in the retainership of the Vanderbilt generations, came forward with this threat: "He informed us," testified Michael Coleman, president of the commission, "that if we attempted to press too hard

st part of its possessions immune from taxation, in doing which it but did what the whole of the large propertied cl

RANSMITS $

elf inherited. The remaining $100,000,000 was thus disposed of in William H. Vanderbilt's will: $40,000,000, in railroad and other securities, was set apart as a trust fund, the income of which was to be apportioned equally among each of his eight children. This provided them each with an annual income of $500,000. In turn, the principal was to descend to their chil

p, Staten Island; and there to-day his ashes lie, splendidly interred, while millions of the livin