“The public!” said Mr. Vanderbilt. “How do you know, or how can I know, that they want it? If they want it, why don’t they patronize it and make it pay? That’s the only test I have as to whether a thing is wanted or not. Does it pay? If it doesn’t pay I suppose it isn’t wanted.”
“Are you working,” persisted the reporter, “for the public or for your stockholders?”
“The public be damned!” exclaimed Mr. Vanderbilt. “I am working for my stockholders. If the public want the train why don’t they support it?”
The expression, when placed in its real connection in the interview, does not imply any slur upon the public. It simply intimates that he was urging a thing on the public which it did not want and practically refused. The “cuss” word might have been left out, but the crushing reply to the reporter would not have been so emphatic, and that obtrusive representative of public opinion might have gone away unsquelched.
William H. Vanderbilt never sought notoriety for his acts of munificence, but they were neither few nor small. He voluntarily paid to his brother Cornelius an annuity five times as large as that named by his father’s will. He presented each of his sisters with half a million in United States bonds. He added $300,000 to the million given by the Commodore to the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee. He bore the expense of bringing the obelisk that now stands in Central Park from Alexandria to New York—which cost over $100,000. He gave $500,000 to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. His will distributed another million among various charities.
That will, which disposed of the greatest fortune ever yet bequeathed, was a remarkable document in more ways than one. It followed the Commodore’s policy of maintaining the bulk of the family wealth practically intact and united, and at the same time it satisfied the participants in the distribution, and was commended as politic and equitable by public opinion. Ten million dollars and one of the Vanderbilt houses on Fifth Avenue were given to each of the testator’s eight children. Then, after a long list of smaller legacies to relatives, friends, employees, and charitable and religious institutions, the residuary estate was equally divided between the two elder sons.
William H. Vanderbilt’s family consisted of four sons—Cornelius, William Kissam, Frederick W., and George—and four daughters—Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, Mrs. William Sloane, Mrs. H. McK. Twombly, and Mrs. W. S. Webb. All of them were—no doubt fortunately for themselves—born and brought up while their father was a comparatively poor man, and in their childhood they knew little of the luxury of wealth. Never was there a better ordered household than the severely simple one where these eight children received a training that has been of inestimable value to them. Rarely has so large a family turned out so notably well. The four sons are, mentally and physically, excellent specimens of the American gentleman.
There is a saying that it takes three generations of wealth to make a gentleman. There is about as much truth in this as in some other accepted sayings. It is doubtful whether three generations of wealth do not unmake as many gentlemen as they make. Millionaires’ sons and grandsons do not usually compare favorably, either in brain power or culture, with their fathers and grandfathers. We have all heard of the rich man who declined to let his son travel abroad, not because he objected to letting his boy see the world, but because he was unwilling to allow the world to see his boy. In the admirable manhood of Cornelius Vanderbilt and his brothers we see not the exemplification of a rule so much as an agreeable exception to the customary order of social evolution.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was forty years old when the sudden death of his father, on the 8th of December, 1885, raised him to the head of New York’s greatest moneyed family. That headship is not merely an empty phrase, it may be remarked, for the wealth of the Vanderbilts, though not held in common as that of the Rothschilds is said to be, is yet kept together by strong bonds of family alliance, and is practically controlled as a unit by the elder brothers. Entering the world of business in his teens, as a clerk in the Shoe and Leather Bank, Cornelius was always, like his father, a hard worker. He left the bank to fulfill the duties of a subordinate position in the office of the New York Central, and worked his way up the ladder until, at his father’s death, he was ready to take the vacant place at the head of the management of his great railroad interests. To the duties that this position entails his attention has been unremitting. Not only does he deal with large questions of general policy, but he gives personal attention to details that many would consider trifling—for the reason that no one else can attend to them equally well.