On the 12th of August, this year, Murphy, the famous jockey, drove Maud S. in single harness, at Tarrytown, a mile in 2.10½, and declared he did not push her. He said he was confident he could make her do the mile in 2.06 or 2.07 if Mr. Bonner would permit him, thus smashing all trotting records.
It has been said by experts in driving that Mr. Vanderbilt was the best double-team driver in America, either amateur or professional.
Mr. Vanderbilt’s bequests were liberal and numerous. He added $300,000 to the million which his father gave, through the wife of the Commodore and Dr. Deems, to the Nashville University. He gave half a million to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and his sister, Mrs. Sloane, added a quarter of a million to this generous donation. It cost him over $100,000 to remove Cleopatra’s Needle from Egypt to Central Park. He offered to cancel the $150,000 check which he gave to General Grant to relieve him from the Ward-Fish embarrassment, and his munificent gift to the waiter students in the White Mountains will long be remembered.
Although Mr. Vanderbilt was very courageous, as was proved by the fact that no matter how many threatening letters he may have received—and their name was legion—from cranks, socialists and others, he never made any change in his programme or his routine of business for the day, and never absented himself from the place where he was expected at any particular hour on account of such letters. Yet he was peculiarly sensitive to public opinion, and sought in various ways to correct its hasty judgment in regard to himself and his enormous wealth.
It was this sensitive feeling, together with his profound respect for popular opinion against monopolies, which induced him to sell a controlling interest, 300,000 shares out of 400,000, at from 120 to 130, ten points below the market price, of New York Central stock in 1879 to a syndicate, the chief members of which were Drexel, Morgan & Co., Morton, Bliss & Co., August Belmont & Co., Winslow, Lanier & Co., L. Von Hoffman & Co, Cyrus W. Field, Edwin D. Morgan, Russell Sage, Jay Gould and J. S. Morgan & Co. of London. The amount paid for the stock was $35,000,000. As the syndicate largely represented the Wabash system, the stock of that property, as well as New York Central, had an important advance.
The reasons assigned for this stupendous and unprecedented stock transaction are briefly condensed by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew as follows: “Mr. Vanderbilt, because of assaults made upon him in the Legislature and in the newspapers, came to the conclusion that it was a mistake for one individual to own a controlling interest in a great corporation like the New York Central, and also a mistake to have so many eggs in one basket, and he thought it would be better for himself and better for the company if the ownership were distributed as widely as possible. The syndicate afterwards sold it, and the stock became one of the most widely-distributed of the dividend-paying American securities. There are now about 14,000 stockholders. At the time he sold there were only 3,000.”
That hasty expression, “The public be damned,” which Mr. Vanderbilt used in an interview with a reporter for a Chicago newspaper, has received wide circulation, various comment and hostile criticism. Although the expression is literally correct, the public at first, and many of them to this day, received a wrong impression in regard to the spirit in which it was applied. It was represented as if Mr. Vanderbilt was a tyrannical monopolist, who defied public opinion. A true and simple relation of the interview is a sufficient answer to this. The subject was the fast mail train to Chicago. Mr. Vanderbilt was thinking of taking this train off, because it did not pay, and did not appear to him therefore to be a necessity, and he did not propose to run trains as a philanthropist. As part of the interview which relates to this point has become so widely historic, I think it will bear reproduction here, literally:
“Why are you going to stop this fast mail train?” asked the reporter.
“Because it doesn’t pay,” replied Mr. Vanderbilt; “I can’t run a train as far as this permanently at a loss.”
“But the public find it very convenient and useful. You ought to accommodate them,” rejoined the reporter.