Looking north at statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt at the head of the ramp to en:Grand Central Terminal on a sunny late morning
A review at the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/books/review/Kazin-t.html?_r=1&ref=books
Cornelius Vanderbilt spent little of his long life fretting over his image. If Americans were not grateful for the many steamships he built, the major railroad lines he integrated into a common system, the stock market panics he soothed and the Grand Central Terminal he constructed with his own millions, that was their fault, not his. Vanderbilt was the richest man in 19th-century America; at his death in 1877, he possessed, at least on paper, one-ninth of all the American currency in circulation. But like other corporate giants of his era and ours, he saw no reason to apologize for manufacturing and managing commodities everyone wanted and needed. “Vanderbilt was many things, not all of them admirable,” T. J. Stiles says in this perceptive and fluently written biography, “but he was never a phony. Hated, revered, resented, he always commanded respect, even from his enemies.”
That respect stemmed, in part, from how he earned his fortune. During the early years of the republic, most rich Americans had inherited their wealth from mercantile or planter ancestors. Like their fellow patricians across the Atlantic, they tended to equate good breeding with the right to rule. Vanderbilt left school at the age of 11. But as a self-taught, self-made entrepreneur, he had no equal.
Vanderbilt grew up on Staten Island, the son of ambitious farmers who were determined to profit from the commercial bounty being frantically pursued in the booming city across the bay. Cornelius routinely took his father’s boat to Manhattan and back; sometimes, he spent all night in the small vessel in order to grab the first job the next morning. By his 20th birthday, Vanderbilt had made enough cash to compete for trade up and down the coast. While a tiny number of men his age were leisurely studying the classics in Cambridge and Princeton, Vanderbilt became a prosperous “shopkeeper of the sea.” He was also one of the first Americans to learn to construct and operate steamships — the greatest innovation in transport since the invention of sail.
Vanderbilt erected a continental empire on his love and mastery of the age of steam. It was a perilous industry: captains eager to destroy the competition routinely pushed engines beyond their limits. Boilers exploded. Ships crashed into one another. Deaths were common. Vanderbilt often challenged other owners to races, piloting boats of his own design with ferocious cunning, if not always to victory.
But the Commodore (a name he cherished) accomplished his most impressive feats away from the steering wheel. By slashing fares and buying out rival firms, Vanderbilt achieved a near monopoly on steamship travel between New York and Boston. During the California gold rush, he hacked out a passage through Nicaragua to carry the forty-niners and their mail from ocean to ocean. Midway through the Civil War, he loaned his largest and fastest ship to the Union Navy to chase down Confederate raiders. Once victory was won, he switched his energies to the railroad business and soon controlled a network of lines that ran from New York to Chicago.
Like a great athlete, Vanderbilt lived to compete. As a septuagenarian, he still relished racing a team of fancy horses on the outskirts of Gotham. His “resolution is indomitable,” The New York Herald gushed. But Henry J. Raymond, the editor of The Times, introduced a new metaphor by likening Vanderbilt to a robber baron. Similar to the medieval German nobles who “swooped down upon the commerce” of the Rhine “and wrung tribute from every passenger that floated by,” Vanderbilt gained maximum profits by gaining maximum control of whatever market he entered.
Use the link to read the entire review.
