CORNELIUS VANDERBILT’S RESIDENCE AT FIFTY SEVENTH STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE.
Seventy five years ago, as has already been stated, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandfather and namesake was captain of a Staten Island sail boat. In 1817 he took the bold step of putting upon his route one of the new fangled vessels that went by steam. It paid him well, and the enterprising young man—he was then twenty three—branched out rapidly. He appeared on Wall Street with a scheme which took shape as the Nicaragua Transit Company. The capital of the concern was placed at the ambitious figure of $4,000,000, to which the future railroad king apparently contributed little except his persuasive eloquence and his wonderful administrative ability. This latter talent was employed so effectually that the young financier, who acted as president of the company, soon grew to an importance that dwarfed all his colleagues into utter insignificance. The enterprise was finally wound up with little profit to the stockholders; but the Commodore stepped from its ruins to more extensive ventures in the same line. During the rush to California his steamers divided with those of the Pacific Mail Company the traffic of the Isthmus route to the far Western gold fields. Others crossed the Atlantic, and at one time he had more than sixty vessels in commission.
But he was one of the first to foresee the coming subordination of steamboats to railroads, and to realize the immense possibilities of the latter system of transportation, which was then hardly out of its infancy. Gradually abandoning his marine interests, he sought a firm footing upon land by buying up the stock of the Harlem Railroad. Getting a controlling interest, he used his power to inflict merciless punishment upon the Wall Street speculators who ventured to interfere with his plans, and to meddle with the securities of his road. From the comparatively insignificant Harlem, he went on to the New York Central, the nucleus of the far reaching highways of steel that are now known as “the Vanderbilt system of railroads.”
When the Commodore died, in January, 1887, in his eighty third year, he left two sons. The younger, Cornelius Jeremiah, was the nearest approach to a black sheep among his numerous posterity. This statement must not be interpreted too severely, for together with utter lack of financial ability, “young Corneel” possessed many amiable traits of character, and retained to the last the friendship of some of the foremost of his contemporaries, notably Horace Greeley. His father, who regarded his peccadilloes with unrelenting severity, bequeathed him only the interest upon the sum of $200,000. After other legacies amounting in all to about $15,000,000, the remainder of the Commodore’s accumulations were left to his other son, William H. Vanderbilt.
The man who thus, at the age of fifty six, inherited a fortune estimated at seventy five millions of dollars, was perhaps the most remarkable member of a remarkable family. He was born during his father’s early days of comparative poverty, on Staten Island, and brought up there under a household regime of rigid strictness. For years after the Commodore became a power in the financial world, William H. lived the prosaic life of a plain Richmond County farmer, and the multiplication of the father’s millions brought no luxury or ostentation to the homestead of the son. The Commodore had undoubtedly determined his choice of an heir and successor long before he gave his son any encouragement to count upon the prospect of great wealth. He tested the young man’s capacity for railroad management by having him appointed receiver of a little bankrupt line on Staten Island. The experiment was so successful that William was promoted to be Vice President of the Harlem road, a position in which he proved himself invaluable to his father and to the property. Thereafter he kept pace with every forward step of the Commodore and was a very important factor in building up the prosperity of his undertakings. As Vice President of the consolidated New York Central and Hudson River he performed an amount of work which, as some of his friends think, contributed to his death—a comparatively premature one in a family distinguished for longevity.
In many minds millions breed envy, and it is only natural that while William H. Vanderbilt’s wonderful ability has been universally recognized, his personal qualities should have been misrepresented. Four hasty and injudicious words of his seem to have made a deeper impression upon the public mind than his many notable acts of generosity and public spirit. The circumstances under which that famous epigram, “the public be d——d!” was uttered, are thus narrated by Henry Clews, in his interesting volume of reminiscences, which has also been the authority for other facts cited in this article:
The subject [of Mr. Vanderbilt’s interview with a Chicago newspaper reporter] was the fast mail train to Chicago. Mr. Vanderbilt was thinking of taking this train off because it did not pay.
“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.