But Roberts and his associate trustees succeeded in making the Government recoup them, to a considerable extent, for the amount out of which Vanderbilt blackmailed them. They did it in this way:
A claim was trumped up by them that the Government owed a large sum, approximating about two million dollars, to the United States Mail Steamship Company for services in carrying mail in addition to those called for under the Sloo contract. In 1859 they began lobbying in Congress to have this claim recognized. The scheme was considered so brazen that Congress refused. Year after year, for eleven years, they tried to get Congress to pass an act for their benefit. Finally, on July 14, 1870, at a time when bribery was rampant in Congress, they succeeded. An act was passed directing the Court of Claims to investigate and determine the merits of the claim.] It is quite useless [Footnote: The Court of Claims threw the case out of court. Judge Drake, in delivering the opinion of the court, said that the act was to be so construed "as to prevent the entrapping of the Government by fixing upon it liability where the intention of the legislature [Congress] was only to authorize an investigation of the question of liability" (Marshall O. Roberts et al., Trustees, vs. the United States, Court of Claims Reports, vi: 84-90). On appeal, however, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the act of Congress in referring the case to the Court of Claims was in effect a ratification of the claim. (Court of Claims Reports, xi: 198-126.) Thus this bold robbery was fully validated.] to ask whether Vanderbilt was criminally prosecuted or civilly sued by the Government. Not only was he unmolested, but two years later, as we shall see, he carried on another huge swindle upon the Government under peculiarly heinous conditions.
This continuous robbery of the public treasury explains how Vanderbilt was able to get hold of millions of dollars at a time when millionaires were scarce. Vanderbilt is said to have boasted in 1853 that he had eleven million dollars invested at twenty-five per cent. A very large portion of this came directly from his bold system of commercial blackmail. [Footnote: Undoubtedly so, but the precise proportion it is impossible to ascertain.] The mail subsidies were the real foundation of his fortune. Many newspaper editorials and articles of the time mention this fact. Only a few of the important underlying facts of the character of his methods when he was in the steamboat and steamship business can be gleaned from the records. But these few give a clear enough insight. With a part of the proceeds of his plan of piracy, he carried on a subtle system of corruption by which he and the other steamer owners were able time after time not only to continue their control of Congress and the postal authorities, but to defeat postal reform measures. For fifteen years Vanderbilt and his associates succeeded in stifling every bill introduced in Congress for the reduction of the postage on mail.
HE QUITS STEAMSHIPS.
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.
He was at this time sixty-nine years old, a tall, robust, vigorous man with a stern face of remarkable vulgar strength. The illiteracy of his youth survived; he could not write the simplest words correctly, and his speech was a brusque medley of slang, jargon, dialect and profanity. It was said of him that he could swear more forcibly, variously and frequently than any other man of his generation. Like the Astors, he was cynical, distrustful, secretive and parsimonious. He kept his plans entirely to himself. In his business dealings he was never known to have shown the slightest mercy; he demanded the last cent due. His close-fistedness was such a passion that for many years he refused to substitute new carpets for the scandalous ones covering the floors of his house No. 10 Washington place. He never read anything except the newspapers, which he skimmed at breakfast. To his children he was unsympathetic and inflexibly harsh; Croffut admits that they feared him. The only relaxations he allowed himself were fast driving and playing whist.
This, in short is a picture of the man who in the next few years used his stolen millions to sweep into his ownership great railroad systems. Croffut asserts that in 1861 he was worth $20,000,000; other writers say that his wealth did not exceed $10,000,000. He knew nothing of railroads, not even the first technical or supervising rudiments. Upon one thing he depended and that alone: the brute force of money with its auxiliaries, cunning, bribery and fraud.
CHAPTER IV
THE ONRUSH OF THE VANDERBILT FORTUNE
With the outbreak of the Civil War, and the scouring of the seas by privateers, American ship owners found themselves with an assortment of superfluous vessels on their hands. Forced to withdraw from marine commerce, they looked about for two openings. One was how to dispose of their vessels, the other the seeking of a new and safe method of making millions.