|
Central Park
The Civil War period also forced into prominence a few men whose methods and
whose achievements indicated, even though roughly and indistinctly, a new type
of industrial leadership. Every period has its outstanding figure and, when the
Civil War was approaching its end, one personality had emerged from the humdrum
characters of the time--one man who, in energy, imagination, and genius,
displayed the forces that were to create a new American world. Although this man
employed his great talents in a field, that of railroad transportation, which
lies outside the scope of the present volume, yet in this comprehensive view I
may take Cornelius Vanderbilt as the symbol that links the old industrial era
with the new. He is worthy of more detailed study than he has ever received, for
in personality and accomplishments Vanderbilt is the most romantic figure in the
history of American finance. We must remember that Vanderbilt was born in 1794
and that at the time we are considering he was seventy-one years old. In the
matter of years, therefore, his career apparently belongs to the ante-bellum
days, yet the most remarkable fact about this remarkable man is that his real
life work did not begin until he had passed his seventieth year. In 1865
Vanderbilt's fortune, consisting chiefly of a fleet of steamboats, amounted to
about $10,000,000; he died twelve years later, in 1877, leaving $104,000,000,
the first of those colossal American fortunes that were destined to astound the
world. The mere fact that this fortune was the accumulated profit of only ten
years shows perhaps more eloquently than any other circumstance that the United
States had entered a new economic age. That new factor in the life of America
and the world, the railroad, explains his achievement. Vanderbilt was one of the
most astonishing characters in our history. His physical exterior made him
perhaps the most imposing figure in New York. In his old age, at seventy-three,
Vanderbilt married his second wife, a beautiful Southern widow who had just
turned her thirtieth year, and the appearance of the two, sitting side by side
in one of the Commodore's smartest turnouts, driving recklessly behind a pair of
the fastest trotters of the day, was a common sight in Central Park. Nor did
Vanderbilt look incongruous in this brilliant setting. His tall and powerful
frame was still erect, and his large, defiant head, ruddy cheeks, sparkling,
deep-set black eyes, and snowy white hair and whiskers, made him look every inch
the Commodore. These public appearances lent a pleasanter and more sentimental
aspect to Vanderbilt's life than his intimates always perceived. For his manners
were harsh and uncouth; he was totally without education and could write hardly
half a dozen lines without outraging the spelling-book. Though he loved his
race-horses, had a fondness for music, and could sit through long winter
evenings while his young wife sang old Southern ballads, Vanderbilt's
ungovernable temper had placed him on bad terms with nearly all his children--he
had had thirteen, of whom eleven survived him--who contested his will and
exposed all his eccentricities to public view on the ground that the man who
created the New York Central system was actually insane. Vanderbilt's methods
and his temperament presented such a contrast to the commonplace minds which had
previously dominated American business that this explanation of his career is
perhaps not surprising. He saw things in their largest aspects and in his big
transactions he seemed to act almost on impulse and intuition. He could never
explain the mental processes by which he arrived at important decisions, though
these decisions themselves were invariably sound. He seems to have had, as he
himself frequently said, almost a seer-like faculty. He saw visions, and he
believed in dreams and in signs. The greatest practical genius of his time was a
frequent attendant at spiritualistic seances; he cultivated personally the
society of mediums, and in sickness he usually resorted to mental healers,
mesmerists, and clairvoyants. Before making investments or embarking in his
great railroad ventures, Vanderbilt visited spiritualists; we have one
circumstantial account of his summoning the wraith of Jim Fiske to advise him in
stock operations. His excessive vanity led him to print his picture on all the
Lake Shore bonds; he proposed to New York City the construction in Central Park
of a large monument that would commemorate, side by side, the names of
Vanderbilt and Washington; and he actually erected a large statue to himself in
his new Hudson River station in St. John's Park. His attitude towards the public
was shown in his remark when one of his associates told him that "each and every
one" of certain transactions which he had just forced through "is absolutely
forbidden by the statutes of the State of New York." "My God, John!" said the
Commodore, "you don't suppose you can run a railroad in accordance with the
statutes of the State of New York, do you?" "Law!" he once roared on a similar
occasion, "What do I care about law? Hain't I got the power?"
These things of course were the excrescences of an extremely vital, overflowing,
imaginative, energetic human being; they are traits that not infrequently
accompany genius. And the work which Vanderbilt did remains an essential part of
our economic organization today. Before his time a trip to Chicago meant that
the passenger changed trains seventeen times, and that all freight had to be
unloaded at a similar number of places, carted across towns, and reloaded into
other trains. The magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the
Hudson, through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie--a
water line route nearly the entire distance--was all but useless. It is true
that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's work. In 1853
certain millionaires and politicians had linked together the several separate
lines extending from Albany to Buffalo, but they had managed the new road so
wretchedly that the largest stockholders in 1867 begged Vanderbilt to take over
the control. By 1873 the Commodore had acquired the Hudson River, extending from
New York to Albany, the New York Central extending from Albany to Buffalo, and
the Lake Shore which ran from Buffalo to Chicago. In a few years these roads had
been consolidated into a smoothly operating system. If, in transforming these
discordant railroads into one, Vanderbilt bribed legislatures and corrupted
courts, if he engaged in the largest stock-watering operations on record up to
that time, and took advantage of inside information to make huge winnings on the
stock exchange, he also ripped up the old iron rails and relaid them with steel,
put down four tracks where formerly there had been two, replaced wooden bridges
with steel, discarded the old locomotives for new and more powerful ones, built
splendid new terminals, introduced economies in a hundred directions, cut down
the hours required in a New York-Chicago trip from fifty to twenty-four, made
his highway an expeditious line for transporting freight, and transformed
railroads that had formerly been the playthings of Wall Street and that
frequently could not meet their pay-rolls into exceedingly profitable, high
dividend paying properties. In this operation Vanderbilt typified the era that
was dawning--an era of ruthlessness, of personal selfishness, of corruption, of
disregard of private rights, of contempt for law and legislatures, and yet of
vast and beneficial achievement. The men of this time may have traveled
roughshod to their goal, but after all, they opened up, in an amazingly short
time, a mighty continent to the uses of mankind. The triumph of the New York
Central and Hudson River Railroad under Vanderbilt, a triumph which dazzled
European investors as well as our own, and which represented an entirely
different business organization from anything the nation had hitherto seen,
appropriately ushered in the new business era whose outlines will be sketched in
the succeeding pages. |
