CHAPTER V
THE VANDERBILT FORTUNE INCREASES MANIFOLD
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. This was another of the railroads built largely with public money. The State of New York had contributed $3,000,000, and other valuable donations had been given.
At the very inception of the railroad corruption began [Footnote: Report of the New York State and Erie Railroad Company, New York State Assembly Document No. 50, 1842.] The tradesmen, landowners and bankers who composed the company bribed the Legislature to relinquish the State's claim, and then looted the railroad with such consummate thoroughness that in order to avert its bankruptcy they were obliged to borrow funds from Daniel Drew. This man was an imposing financial personage in his day. Illiterate, unscrupulous, picturesque in his very iniquities, he had once been a drover, and had gone into the steamboat business with Vanderbilt. He had scraped in wealth partly from that line of traffic, and in part from a succession of buccaneering operations. His loan remaining unpaid, Drew indemnified himself by taking over, in 1857, by foreclosure, the control of the Erie Railroad.
For the next nine years Drew manipulated the stock at will, sending the price up or down as suited his gambling schemes. The railroad degenerated until travel upon it became a menace; one disaster followed another. Drew imperturbably continued his manipulation of the stock market, careless of the condition of the road. At no time was he put to the inconvenience of even being questioned by the public authorities. On the contrary, the more millions he made the greater grew his prestige and power, the higher his standing in the community. Ruling society, influenced solely by money standards, saluted him as a successful man who had his millions, and made no fastidious inquiries as to how he got them. He was a potent man; his villainies passed as great astuteness, his devious cunning as marvelous sagacity.