August 21, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T.J. Stiles tells the dramatic story of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt’s humble birth during the presidency of George Washington to his death as one of the richest men in American history. The Commodore helped to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, invent the modern corporation, and create the modern American economy.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a bit of economic history and a bit of business history.
In his Pool of Surprise winning biography The First Tycoon,
The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, author TJ. Styles tells
the dramatic story of Cornelius Commodore Vanderbilt's humble birth during
the presidency of George Washington to his death. As one
(00:33):
of the richest men in American history, the Commodore helped
to launch the transportation Revolution, repel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan,
and invent the modern corporation. This combative American icon, through
his genius and force of will, did more than perhaps
any other single individual to create the modern American economy.
(00:54):
Here's TJ. Styles with the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Vanderbilt has often been depicted as this purely amoral creature
who was willing to do anything basically, and he's often
been conflated and confused with.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
A lot of his rivals.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
For example, in the famous Eerie War of eighteen sixty eight,
the most famous of the Gilded Age Wall Street battles,
in which he fought with Daniel Drew and Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk over the control of.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
The Erie Railway.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
There was a lot of corruption of government officials, and
when I started writing the book, I assumed that Vanderbilt
was bribing away with the best of them, and it
turns out I could not find any evidence or even
any accusations at the time that Vanderbilt was bribing people,
and I thought that was kind of interesting. Because he
was ruthless. He took extraordinary steps to defeat his enemies,
(01:51):
and I think for much of his career, at least
until he got into the railway years, he saw his
enterprises as much as military campaig against his enemies as
he did machinery and enterprise and businesses, which makes his
life a lot of fun to read about, but raises
questions about whether he did have a code, and surprisingly,
(02:12):
he really did have a code of conduct. Now, his
opponents didn't always agree, but he really polished his reputation
as a man of his word, and I found letters
from people he dealt with in which they would say, well,
let's have a written agreement. He said, no, you know
that my word is as good as my bond. And
often when he had disputes, he almost always suggested that
(02:35):
they go to arbitration. You know, each side picks an arbitrator,
and then those two arbitrators pick a third. And when
his opponents agreed, he almost always won, which tells you something.
He would push his opponents as hard as possible, but
once he made a deal, he stuck to it. Another
thing that's interesting about Vanderbilt, and again I'm saying this
not you know, trying to raise him up as a
(02:55):
great hero, no, looking at him on his own terms.
What the evidence shows is that he was not only honest,
but he also believed in his duty to his stockholders.
And as he became a corporate official, he really believed
that he had a duty, as he put it, to
run a corporation as if it was his own personal
private property. So what he did was invest heavily in
(03:20):
the stock. And in the nineteenth century, stock was expected
to pay dividends. They didn't look for growth in share value,
they looked for steady dividends. That's what investors looked for then.
So he took no salary and the only remuneration he
took was dividends in a stock. A lot of corporate
officials engaged in side dealing and Andrew Karnegi's mentors at
(03:41):
the Pennsylvania Railroad are much more like the executives we
have now corporations. They were not major shareholders. They were
professional managers hired by these largely anonymous shareholders who run
the company. Very smart men Thomas A. Scott Jager Thompson.
They ran the Pennsylvania Railroad very well, but they also
(04:01):
pioneered shell corporations and dummy companies through which they funneled
the company's business, and they controlled those companies and skim
money as that came in and out of the Pennsylvania.
Vanderbilt never engaged in that sort of business. He thought
it was abhorrent, so surprisingly for a man who was
utterly ruthless, and yet within the context of business, he
had a strict code of ethics and he lived by it.
(04:23):
Another thing about him is that he was driven by pride,
and I think what drove him into railroads. When he
was seventy years old, well pass life expectancy passed, when
he expected to live, he turned to railroads. He didn't think,
I'm going to become the great railroad tycoon.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
He started off with the Near Can Harlem Railroad, which
at the time was considered the most necrotic company in America.
It was a railroad that was considered barely worth the
iron and the rails. And he said, you know what,
I can take this railroad and I can make it profitable.
And he said repeatedly, it was a point of pride
for me to take a company where the stock wasn't
worth ten dollars a share and to raise it up
(05:02):
and make it into a healthy, profitable company. And that
pride drove him. It's why he was such a competitor
personally with his racing horses, and he was a card player,
fierce competitor at everything he did. And that personal pride
was really something that drove him all the way through.
And that, of course also made him such a ferocious
(05:22):
competitor with his enemies too. During much of his life
he was considered notably unbenevolent, and I don't completely dismiss
that idea. Certainly, he was no Andrew Carnegie. He didn't
engage in some of the truly great philanthropy that later
tycoons did, There's no doubt about that. On the other hand,
there's two things to remember about Vanderbilt. One is that
(05:47):
he hated people who were boastful and.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Talked about themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And there are a lot of reports that are impossible
to verify. They claim that he engaged in a lot
of charity, but he just refused to put his name
out there, and he would certainly, I do know that
for example, young relatives, nephews and grandsons, you know, their
letters to presidents and whatnot, where he'd say, you know,
I normally don't do this, but I really hope that
you can help him out, and I would like you
to find a position for this guy. You know, he
(06:13):
engaged in helping people out much more than the public
record would indicate. I think the other thing is that
he was a man who was deeply patriotic, and a
lot of the benevolence that he did take part in.
But he, for example, during the Civil War, donated his
largest steamship worth almost a million dollars of the Union
(06:34):
Navy and personally outfitted it and then reoutfitted it for
the Union. He took part in helping to prepare major
expeditions without any pay. He engaged in these activities because
he was deeply patriotic. He named his three sons after
his heroes. George Washington, William Henry Harrison, and Connellius Vanderbilt.
(06:56):
Like I said, he was a proud man. But then
after the Civil War he really took on the idea
of helping to reconcile North and South, and so he
put up his name as one of the bondsmen for
Jefferson Davis to get him.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Out of prison.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He specifically wanted to help a founder university in the South,
deliberately to counterbalance his gift of the Union Navy, and
those two gifts largely balance each other. He actually gave
slightly more money to found Vanderbilt University. So it's true
he will not go down in history as one of
the great charitable givers. But the record I think needs
to be balanced a little bit, and also specifically to
(07:32):
be seen as his personal vision of trying to reconcile
the two sides of the country, rather than being you know,
I'm going to fund libraries, thought, let's try to bring
the divided country together again and again. He had a
real knack. One of the secrets of his success was
an unerring sense for where the main channel of commerce
was in the country. Late in life, Chicago and New
(07:54):
York during this period the eighteen thirties and forties between
New York and Boston, and he ran his steamboats on
Long Island Sound and ran in connection with the railroads,
which there wasn't enough capital to build a railroad all
the way to New York, so they ran short lines
down to the seaport towns on Long Island Sound. Well,
one of the interesting things is that Vanderbilt always had
(08:16):
a large cash reserve. When these panics hit, he always
managed to see trouble coming soon enough so that he
wasn't overexposed in terms of being overly leveraged. Another thing
is that by constantly engaging in fair wars with his opponents,
he kept prices on his steamboats very low, and that
(08:37):
I think had a surprising effect. In the nineteenth century,
before the Civil War, paper money was issued by private banks,
and the banks would collect a reserve of gold and silver,
which was you know, gold or silver coin was worth
its weight in that precious metal. He could melt it
down and sell it for the same amount, and they
would issue loans by issuing paper money. Well, these paper
(09:00):
banknotes were only issued for larger denominations a dollar or larger,
usually five dollars or larger. Vanderbilt's fairs are usually a
dollar or less. Often so he had gold and silver
coin which would never lost its value. So ironically, on
a lot of his routes, the low fares actually ended
up giving him a large cash reserve.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you're listening to TJ. Styles tell the story of
Cornelius Vanderbilt and my goodness to live the years he
lived to get into the railroad industry at that late
and age. I had no idea that he was that
old when he started, and well what turned out to
be one of the most important investments of his entire
life and when he would come to dominate when we
(09:44):
come back more of the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt here
on our American Stories. And we continue with our American
(10:19):
stories and with author TJ. Styles, author of the book
The First Tycoon, The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Vanderbilt is incredibly effective at doing things like getting cheaper fuel.
He designed his steamships himself. He was one of the
great maritime architects of the paddlewheel era, and the steamboats
he started to put on Long Island Sound were written
up in technical journals as masterpieces of naval engineering. His
(10:50):
first great Long Island sound steamboat used half the fuel
of its rival steamboats, and fuel was by far the
largest expense. So these sorts of things his ability to
cut cought were phenomenal. And one thing that I touched
on the book, and I won't go into great detail,
his attacks on especially early corporations and on companies that
had monopolies, legal or otherwise, played right into a big
(11:14):
political conflict in the nineteenth century in which an economy
in which there weren't large businesses, the economy is relatively flat.
Lesse fair was a radical philosophy, and corporations were seen
as grants of special favors to men who are already rich,
giving them limited liability and other special privileges. And so
Vanderbilt's business enterprises during the eighteen thirties and forties were
(11:39):
actually raised him up as a kind of Jacksonian populist hero.
Here's this guy who's an individual going after these rich
corporations that have special privileges granted by the government. And
he made public pronouncement saying, you know, I'm the anti
monopoly guy. He called his lines the People's line you know,
his headline said no monopoly, you know, power to the
people or the equivalent. And in his early career he
(12:02):
was a radical, he was a populist. Now is leisz
fair philosophy stayed the same as he became the great
railroad tycoon and he's the master of these giant corporations,
And the political landscape rotated one hundred and eighty degrees.
So he's saying the same things he'd said in eighteen
thirties when he got into the eighteen seventies, And meanwhile,
the first government regulation advocates are out there, and the
(12:26):
populace all of a sudden are favoring government intervention. So
it's very interesting when we look at today's political landscape,
and I think a lot of liberals don't understand how
people earning thirty thousand dollars a year or the family
of five can be pro free market an anti government regulation.
But when you look at the currents of American history,
a lot of these currents are very deep, they go
(12:48):
back very far, and these things come up in Vanderbilt's
life again and again.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
He actually.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Was notoriously unreligious, and he was raised in the Mrai Church.
Some Vanderbilt ancestor has switched from Dutch Reform to Moravian
and he was capable of, you know, personal charity, and
he would occasionally express things in religious terms, but I
don't know if he ever went to a church except
for a wedding or a funeral. And this is a
(13:17):
period in American history when spiritualism was huge and it
was a mainstream belief. You have to remember, the Civil
War killed the better part of a million Americans. Every
family had lost loved ones. And spiritualism, you know, having
sciances contacting the dead, had gotten its start before the
Civil War, but in the decade after the Civil War
(13:39):
became a huge phenomenon. And Vanderbilt, who outlived so many contemporaries, friends, family, rivals,
he started going to sciences during the Civil War. And
I don't believe that he made any business decisions based
on sciences. And one of I think a telling story
of a witness testified to being a to sants with
(14:00):
him in which he asked to speak to the ghost
of Jim Fisk, one of his rivals. So the medium,
you know context, I don't believe in spiritualism. I don't
think they actually contacted Jim Fisk. Jim Fisk comes up. Oh,
Jim Fisk is here, and so Vanderbilt asked him a
question about a stock in the stock market, and Jim Fisk,
of course, medium doesn't know anything. So Jim Fisk gives
a nonsense answer, and so Vanderbilt doesn't say, Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
He says, what are you talking about? Are you crazy?
And he starts to argue with the ghost.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And then Vanderbil says, yeah, well we'll see who's right,
you or me, And then he says starts a joke
with Fiske. He says, so, how do you like it?
On the other side, he said, well, you'll find out
soon enough. You're near the end of your line. And
they have this hilarious exchange, Vanderbilt arguing and joking with
a ghost of Jim Fisk. But it shows that I
don't think he maye need decisions based on these. I
think he fund them comforting. I don't think that it.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Was his guide.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
But late in life, his wife, his second wife, was
very religious. She was a Methodist, and he did give
money to found Vanderbilt know which was specifically religious university,
and he did give money to buy church for the
Church of the Strangers, which was a church for Southerners
in New York City. But interestingly, when he made those gifts,
(15:15):
he didn't ask the bishop who was the first head
of Vanderbilt University or the minister who ran the church
that he endowed. He didn't ask them about the religious beliefs.
He couldn't care less about theology. As he said to
one of them after he'd been preaching to Vanderbilt for
a while in the hot summer heat, waving a fan,
he said, doctor, everything you've said to me weighs about
(15:36):
as much with me as that fan you're waving right now.
But he did care about people, and he wanted to
make sure that those men were honest and capable. So
he questioned them extensively, but about what they were like
as men. That's what he knew from a life in business,
then from his wife's diary, second wife's diary. When he
was on his deathbed and had horrible several months of
his body beginning to fail, suffering terrible internal infections, he
(16:01):
finally asked, towards the end of his very end of
his life, you know, he asked her to take part
in a prayer with him. And said he wanted to
give his life to Jesus. And she said, well, is
it because you love Jesus or you're afraid of going
to hell? It's well, you know, to be honest both.
He was a man of few words, but he was
honest up to the very end. And how did he
(16:21):
see himself? There was an interesting incident in eighteen sixty
seven when in a battle between his railroads and before
he took control of the New York Central, he famously,
in the depth of winter, when boats couldn't get through
the frozen harbor to Manhattan, he to settle a dispute
the New York Central Railroad, he cut off access of
(16:43):
all trains from the West into New York City, essentially
personally levied a blockade on the nation's largest city. This
created a bit of a fuer. It won him his
battle with the New York Central, but it created a
fur and the New York State legislature started to talk
about laws that could pass.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
To control this.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And the way he responded when he gave testimony is
very interesting. He didn't say that, you know the law
is no good, etc. He didn't talk about the public interest.
He said, if you can pass a law that will
compel men to pursue their interests more intelligently than their
interests themselves will compel them. Then it's all well and good,
(17:22):
but I don't think you can do that. In other words,
he deeply believed that, basically in the Invisible Hand, without
ever having read Adam Smith, I'm sure he didn't. He
believed that the world is run by everybody pursuing their
private interests to the best of their ability. Now he
had a business code, you thought you should do it honestly, fiercely,
but honestly. But he really believed we things function when
(17:44):
everybody pursues their own interests.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So that's how he saw his legacy.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
He didn't see himself as you know, he didn't think
about the public interest. He thought the public interests. He said,
I've served the public to the best of my ability.
Why because it's in my interest to do so, That's
what he said.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
So he saw.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Himself as a man who if he served the public, fine,
but it's because I'm pursuing my own private interests.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And you're listening to author TJ. Stiles, who's written a
terrific biography A Pool, a ser Prize winning biography, the
first Tycoon, the epic life or Cornelius Vanderbilt, And there's
so much there to unpack, with the idea that he
designed his own steamships and what he was really doing
in the end, it was extracting value out of that
(18:30):
and through that design by making it more affordable to
ride on his steamships as opposed to his competitors. And
my goodness, what we heard there at the end, well,
what's storytelling talking to negotiating with and arguing with a
former rival at a seance. I'd love to see that
scene in that movie. Is that could be really funny
(18:50):
and though notoriously unreligious, in the end, well, towards the
end of his life, hedged his bets. And this happens
so often in families across the country. When we come
back the Remarkable Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt as told by TJ. Styles,
the storytelling continues here on our American stories, and we
(19:38):
continue with our American stories and with the story of
Cornelius Vanderbilt as told by author TJ. Styles. Let's continue
with his final part of this remarkable American story.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now with his family. You know, he had a total
of thirteen children, eleven of whom lived through adulthood.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
He had a.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Vast fortune when he died eighteen seventy seven. It was estimated,
and it's hard to know for sure, at one hundred
million dollars. Now, I don't give equivalent modern figures in
the book because I don't think that's an honest way
to do it. But I do look at the Controller
of the Currency's report on how much money.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Was in circulation.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And if you look at the amount of money in circulation,
if he had been able.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
To sell all his assets of that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Estimated one hundred million dollars to American buyers, he would
have taken, including cash and demand deposits, one out of
every twenty dollars in circulation. Now, if Bill Gates, when
Forbes calculated his fortunate fifty eight billion, I think could
have done the same thing, and you take the federal
reserves M two figure till go into he would have
(20:45):
taken one out of every one hundred.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And thirty eight dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So the difference between the disparity and wealth is pretty obvious,
and that probably understates the disparity for various reasons. And
plus you've got the power that control of railway roads
gave Vanderbilt. You know, there's no industry that overshadows the
entire economy the way that railroads did at that time.
So it was a vast fortune.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
And the money he.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Left to his widow and to his various daughters were
large amounts at the time. Half a million dollars he
left to his wife and to some of his daughters,
not all, And that was enough for you to be
very wealthy, extremely wealthy in the nineteenth century, even the
late nineteenth century. But he left ninety five percent of
his estate to his oldest son. And why well, first
(21:32):
of all, he thought his oldest son was capable.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
He'd brought William H.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Vanderbilt in as his operational manager, and he did a.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Very good job.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
But because he deliberately wanted to perpetuate his name, the
name that he had given to his steamboats into his steamships,
the name that he had given to his son, his
second son, who unfortunately was a gambling addict and epileptic.
And so he left all this money to one son,
deliberately trying to found dynasty, and it bitterly divided his family.
(22:04):
Now Vanderbilt is more complicated as a family man than Again,
the myth is that he was this brutal tyrant who
just abused his wife and his children hated him, and
that's not true.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
He was a hard man.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
He was very judgmental. He reminds me of a friend
of mine who said that his father once told him
when he was young, you know, I'm never going to
let you beat me at anything. You're gonna if we
ever play a game, you're gonna have to beat me
on your own. You respect a father like that, but
when you're growing up, it's not a lot of fun either,
and that's the way it was for Vanderbilt. Sometimes. Some
(22:41):
famous incidents in which he was hard and his family
I think are overblown, but that doesn't make them nice.
For example, his first wife in eighteen forty six, he
put her in an insane asylum for a while. Now,
when you look at the testimony about that, it turns
out that you know she was having serious problems and
(23:02):
a son in law who generally had unfavorable feelings by
the time he spoke about this about Vanderbilt thought, actually
it was justified. She needed medical help and an asylum
was the way to do it. So it was a
tough thing to do, but it wasn't a brutal tyrant.
It was sort of like, what do we do, She's
just not herself, she's acting weird. He again was art
(23:24):
on his second son, Carneil, the one who was a
gambling addict. But then again, Corneil would have tried any
father's patience. He was someone who's always in trouble with
the law, skipping out on his bills, involved in bad debts,
addicted to gambling, boastful, all the things his father wasn't.
And I sort of use him as the anti hero
in the book because this troubled son brings out all
(23:47):
the emotional complexity in Vanderbilt, the stern judge, the overbearing
father who sometimes is harsh on his son and had
him arrested and sent to an insane asylum, also at
a time when they had not have language for addiction.
So again, a hard thing to do, but understandable in
the context, and sometimes you know, encouraging and loving. He's
(24:08):
a more sympathetic character than I think we've realized. And
that's not to take away any of the complications and
ambivalence personally or historically, but you know, again that's the
American experience. Questions like addiction and mental illness are things
that you know, most families deal with at some point.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And so William H.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Vanderbilt was given credit for doubling the family fortune in
a few years. I think that actually, if Vanderbilt himself
had done nothing but kind of let his estate compound,
and he'd lived as long as his son, it probably
would have been similar. As he put it, the New
York Central Railroad could run itself after a certain point.
But the interesting thing about William H. Vanderbilt is that
(24:52):
it was surprisingly undiplomatic as a businessman. You know, JP
Morgan bought a large block of stock in the New
York Central Railroad an attempt to control the destructive competition
among railroads. And he complained continually about how he's always quibbling.
He engages in disputes that would embarrass a Bowery lawyer,
and you know, a skid Row lawyer. And he was
(25:15):
a quarrelsome figure, was kind of testy, and I've read
a lot of other letters complaining about how the son
was testy, but he was a nice father. So Vanderbilt,
the tough father, was a diplomatic businessman. William his son
was a terrible business diplomat, but you know, kind of
a nice father. And William really as soon as his
(25:35):
father died, and once he settled this big fight over
the will and secured his control of the estate, he
sold the controlling block of shares to JP Morgan Syndicate
and began to build these lavish mansions, as did his
children that his.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Father never would have tolerated.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
As soon as the old man's dead, boom, up go
the huge mansions, and the gilded age excess begins, you know,
once the sort of tightfisted old man is gone, then
they started building the famous Vanderbilt mansions. And by now
the Vanderbilt fortune has been dissipated because it was founded
on the first grade industry in America. The railroads, the
first industry to mature and fade also, and the New
(26:14):
York Central Railroad, you know, was taken over by what
are now publicly owned systems. Though the infrastructure Vanderbilt built
is still vital to the city of New York. His
statue was still out in front of the modern version
of Grand Central, the terminal he built, and they still
use infrastructure that he constructed. You know, back in the
nineteenth century. It's still very much a vital part of
(26:35):
New York today. You know. I remember when I turned
in the first few chapters to my editor and he
just sent him back with another like this is just
not you can do way.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Better than this. It was just crushed.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And I realized that I was just writing about his business.
I wasn't writing about how it fit into the world
in which he existed. And the turning point in his
early life. For example, he took on his only employee
he ever had in his life, a man who was
really his mentor, was a man named Thomas Gibbons. And
(27:07):
he's the man who hired Vanderbilt to work on his
first steamboat, and he became a steamboat captain and brought
him into this great legal as well as business battle
against a monopoly, a legal monopoly that New York State
had given to the Livingston family for steamboats in New
York waters. And it led to Gibbons v Ogden, the
first commerce clause case that the Supreme Court decided and
(27:28):
a legal landmark to this day, in which the Supreme
Court said states cannot erect boundaries of trade. We have
a free market. Basically in the United states. Only Congress
can control interstate trade, and it really is one of
the keys to America's economic growth. And Vanderbilt, by the way,
was keenly interested in this, went himself to hear the arguments,
hired Webster, Daniel Webster himself when he was a young
(27:49):
man with very little education. And as I started to
look into this, I realized, it's not even about law,
It's not just about business. It is about the end
of an eighteenth century culture of deference, in which you
had old landed aristocratic families, especially in New York, which
they had mercantilist ideas. They expected to be granted special privileges,
(28:12):
and they sort of would take custody of the American
economy in the way in which they had custody of
politics and of other areas of life. A New York
state at the time, for example, had not only property requirements,
they had two separate levels of property requirements. You had
to have a high level to vote for governor and
a lower level to vote for the state Assembly. So
it was this hierarchical society. And I realized that this
(28:35):
era of Vanderbilt's life is not just about him getting
ahead meeting the right, guy.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
It's not just about this legal battle.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It was about the end of this older, hierarchical society
and the birth of an individualistic, competitive society much more
like the one we know today.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And a great job as always by Greg Hengler on
the piece, and a special thanks to author TJ. Styles book,
a Pulitzer Prize winner is the first Tycoon the epic
life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. And so often these men, these titans,
are caricatured when we go to school, and their contributions
(29:13):
to society are downplayed, their villainy well up played, and
in the end the real story well, so different, and
we heard it straight from a great writer who spent
a lot of time thinking about and researching this remarkable
American life. Thirteen children, eleven went to adulthood, but he
left almost all the estate to one and all because
(29:35):
he wanted to see the name and the family business continue.
And by the way, the idea that he grew up
during the Washington presidency and was born during the George
Washington presidency, saw the Civil War and got into the
railroad business in his seventies thinking about the future, and
the railroads were the Internet of their day. That's how
(29:57):
transformative railroads were. And there was Vanda Vanderbilt in his
seventies when most people his age were dead. A remarkable
story about a remarkable human being, The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a bit of economic history and a bit of business history.
In his Pool of Surprise winning biography The First Tycoon,
The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, author TJ. Styles tells
the dramatic story of Cornelius Commodore Vanderbilt's humble birth during
the presidency of George Washington to his death. As one
(00:33):
of the richest men in American history, the Commodore helped
to launch the transportation Revolution, repel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan,
and invent the modern corporation. This combative American icon, through
his genius and force of will, did more than perhaps
any other single individual to create the modern American economy.
(00:54):
Here's TJ. Styles with the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Vanderbilt has often been depicted as this purely amoral creature
who was willing to do anything basically, and he's often
been conflated and confused with.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
A lot of his rivals.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
For example, in the famous Eerie War of eighteen sixty eight,
the most famous of the Gilded Age Wall Street battles,
in which he fought with Daniel Drew and Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk over the control of.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
The Erie Railway.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
There was a lot of corruption of government officials, and
when I started writing the book, I assumed that Vanderbilt
was bribing away with the best of them, and it
turns out I could not find any evidence or even
any accusations at the time that Vanderbilt was bribing people,
and I thought that was kind of interesting. Because he
was ruthless. He took extraordinary steps to defeat his enemies,
(01:51):
and I think for much of his career, at least
until he got into the railway years, he saw his
enterprises as much as military campaig against his enemies as
he did machinery and enterprise and businesses, which makes his
life a lot of fun to read about, but raises
questions about whether he did have a code, and surprisingly,
(02:12):
he really did have a code of conduct. Now, his
opponents didn't always agree, but he really polished his reputation
as a man of his word, and I found letters
from people he dealt with in which they would say, well,
let's have a written agreement. He said, no, you know
that my word is as good as my bond. And
often when he had disputes, he almost always suggested that
(02:35):
they go to arbitration. You know, each side picks an arbitrator,
and then those two arbitrators pick a third. And when
his opponents agreed, he almost always won, which tells you something.
He would push his opponents as hard as possible, but
once he made a deal, he stuck to it. Another
thing that's interesting about Vanderbilt, and again I'm saying this
not you know, trying to raise him up as a
(02:55):
great hero, no, looking at him on his own terms.
What the evidence shows is that he was not only honest,
but he also believed in his duty to his stockholders.
And as he became a corporate official, he really believed
that he had a duty, as he put it, to
run a corporation as if it was his own personal
private property. So what he did was invest heavily in
(03:20):
the stock. And in the nineteenth century, stock was expected
to pay dividends. They didn't look for growth in share value,
they looked for steady dividends. That's what investors looked for then.
So he took no salary and the only remuneration he
took was dividends in a stock. A lot of corporate
officials engaged in side dealing and Andrew Karnegi's mentors at
(03:41):
the Pennsylvania Railroad are much more like the executives we
have now corporations. They were not major shareholders. They were
professional managers hired by these largely anonymous shareholders who run
the company. Very smart men Thomas A. Scott Jager Thompson.
They ran the Pennsylvania Railroad very well, but they also
(04:01):
pioneered shell corporations and dummy companies through which they funneled
the company's business, and they controlled those companies and skim
money as that came in and out of the Pennsylvania.
Vanderbilt never engaged in that sort of business. He thought
it was abhorrent, so surprisingly for a man who was
utterly ruthless, and yet within the context of business, he
had a strict code of ethics and he lived by it.
(04:23):
Another thing about him is that he was driven by pride,
and I think what drove him into railroads. When he
was seventy years old, well pass life expectancy passed, when
he expected to live, he turned to railroads. He didn't think,
I'm going to become the great railroad tycoon.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
He started off with the Near Can Harlem Railroad, which
at the time was considered the most necrotic company in America.
It was a railroad that was considered barely worth the
iron and the rails. And he said, you know what,
I can take this railroad and I can make it profitable.
And he said repeatedly, it was a point of pride
for me to take a company where the stock wasn't
worth ten dollars a share and to raise it up
(05:02):
and make it into a healthy, profitable company. And that
pride drove him. It's why he was such a competitor
personally with his racing horses, and he was a card player,
fierce competitor at everything he did. And that personal pride
was really something that drove him all the way through.
And that, of course also made him such a ferocious
(05:22):
competitor with his enemies too. During much of his life
he was considered notably unbenevolent, and I don't completely dismiss
that idea. Certainly, he was no Andrew Carnegie. He didn't
engage in some of the truly great philanthropy that later
tycoons did, There's no doubt about that. On the other hand,
there's two things to remember about Vanderbilt. One is that
(05:47):
he hated people who were boastful and.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Talked about themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And there are a lot of reports that are impossible
to verify. They claim that he engaged in a lot
of charity, but he just refused to put his name
out there, and he would certainly, I do know that
for example, young relatives, nephews and grandsons, you know, their
letters to presidents and whatnot, where he'd say, you know,
I normally don't do this, but I really hope that
you can help him out, and I would like you
to find a position for this guy. You know, he
(06:13):
engaged in helping people out much more than the public
record would indicate. I think the other thing is that
he was a man who was deeply patriotic, and a
lot of the benevolence that he did take part in.
But he, for example, during the Civil War, donated his
largest steamship worth almost a million dollars of the Union
(06:34):
Navy and personally outfitted it and then reoutfitted it for
the Union. He took part in helping to prepare major
expeditions without any pay. He engaged in these activities because
he was deeply patriotic. He named his three sons after
his heroes. George Washington, William Henry Harrison, and Connellius Vanderbilt.
(06:56):
Like I said, he was a proud man. But then
after the Civil War he really took on the idea
of helping to reconcile North and South, and so he
put up his name as one of the bondsmen for
Jefferson Davis to get him.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Out of prison.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He specifically wanted to help a founder university in the South,
deliberately to counterbalance his gift of the Union Navy, and
those two gifts largely balance each other. He actually gave
slightly more money to found Vanderbilt University. So it's true
he will not go down in history as one of
the great charitable givers. But the record I think needs
to be balanced a little bit, and also specifically to
(07:32):
be seen as his personal vision of trying to reconcile
the two sides of the country, rather than being you know,
I'm going to fund libraries, thought, let's try to bring
the divided country together again and again. He had a
real knack. One of the secrets of his success was
an unerring sense for where the main channel of commerce
was in the country. Late in life, Chicago and New
(07:54):
York during this period the eighteen thirties and forties between
New York and Boston, and he ran his steamboats on
Long Island Sound and ran in connection with the railroads,
which there wasn't enough capital to build a railroad all
the way to New York, so they ran short lines
down to the seaport towns on Long Island Sound. Well,
one of the interesting things is that Vanderbilt always had
(08:16):
a large cash reserve. When these panics hit, he always
managed to see trouble coming soon enough so that he
wasn't overexposed in terms of being overly leveraged. Another thing
is that by constantly engaging in fair wars with his opponents,
he kept prices on his steamboats very low, and that
(08:37):
I think had a surprising effect. In the nineteenth century,
before the Civil War, paper money was issued by private banks,
and the banks would collect a reserve of gold and silver,
which was you know, gold or silver coin was worth
its weight in that precious metal. He could melt it
down and sell it for the same amount, and they
would issue loans by issuing paper money. Well, these paper
(09:00):
banknotes were only issued for larger denominations a dollar or larger,
usually five dollars or larger. Vanderbilt's fairs are usually a
dollar or less. Often so he had gold and silver
coin which would never lost its value. So ironically, on
a lot of his routes, the low fares actually ended
up giving him a large cash reserve.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you're listening to TJ. Styles tell the story of
Cornelius Vanderbilt and my goodness to live the years he
lived to get into the railroad industry at that late
and age. I had no idea that he was that
old when he started, and well what turned out to
be one of the most important investments of his entire
life and when he would come to dominate when we
(09:44):
come back more of the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt here
on our American Stories. And we continue with our American
(10:19):
stories and with author TJ. Styles, author of the book
The First Tycoon, The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Vanderbilt is incredibly effective at doing things like getting cheaper fuel.
He designed his steamships himself. He was one of the
great maritime architects of the paddlewheel era, and the steamboats
he started to put on Long Island Sound were written
up in technical journals as masterpieces of naval engineering. His
(10:50):
first great Long Island sound steamboat used half the fuel
of its rival steamboats, and fuel was by far the
largest expense. So these sorts of things his ability to
cut cought were phenomenal. And one thing that I touched
on the book, and I won't go into great detail,
his attacks on especially early corporations and on companies that
had monopolies, legal or otherwise, played right into a big
(11:14):
political conflict in the nineteenth century in which an economy
in which there weren't large businesses, the economy is relatively flat.
Lesse fair was a radical philosophy, and corporations were seen
as grants of special favors to men who are already rich,
giving them limited liability and other special privileges. And so
Vanderbilt's business enterprises during the eighteen thirties and forties were
(11:39):
actually raised him up as a kind of Jacksonian populist hero.
Here's this guy who's an individual going after these rich
corporations that have special privileges granted by the government. And
he made public pronouncement saying, you know, I'm the anti
monopoly guy. He called his lines the People's line you know,
his headline said no monopoly, you know, power to the
people or the equivalent. And in his early career he
(12:02):
was a radical, he was a populist. Now is leisz
fair philosophy stayed the same as he became the great
railroad tycoon and he's the master of these giant corporations,
And the political landscape rotated one hundred and eighty degrees.
So he's saying the same things he'd said in eighteen
thirties when he got into the eighteen seventies, And meanwhile,
the first government regulation advocates are out there, and the
(12:26):
populace all of a sudden are favoring government intervention. So
it's very interesting when we look at today's political landscape,
and I think a lot of liberals don't understand how
people earning thirty thousand dollars a year or the family
of five can be pro free market an anti government regulation.
But when you look at the currents of American history,
a lot of these currents are very deep, they go
(12:48):
back very far, and these things come up in Vanderbilt's
life again and again.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
He actually.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Was notoriously unreligious, and he was raised in the Mrai Church.
Some Vanderbilt ancestor has switched from Dutch Reform to Moravian
and he was capable of, you know, personal charity, and
he would occasionally express things in religious terms, but I
don't know if he ever went to a church except
for a wedding or a funeral. And this is a
(13:17):
period in American history when spiritualism was huge and it
was a mainstream belief. You have to remember, the Civil
War killed the better part of a million Americans. Every
family had lost loved ones. And spiritualism, you know, having
sciances contacting the dead, had gotten its start before the
Civil War, but in the decade after the Civil War
(13:39):
became a huge phenomenon. And Vanderbilt, who outlived so many contemporaries, friends, family, rivals,
he started going to sciences during the Civil War. And
I don't believe that he made any business decisions based
on sciences. And one of I think a telling story
of a witness testified to being a to sants with
(14:00):
him in which he asked to speak to the ghost
of Jim Fisk, one of his rivals. So the medium,
you know context, I don't believe in spiritualism. I don't
think they actually contacted Jim Fisk. Jim Fisk comes up. Oh,
Jim Fisk is here, and so Vanderbilt asked him a
question about a stock in the stock market, and Jim Fisk,
of course, medium doesn't know anything. So Jim Fisk gives
a nonsense answer, and so Vanderbilt doesn't say, Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
He says, what are you talking about? Are you crazy?
And he starts to argue with the ghost.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And then Vanderbil says, yeah, well we'll see who's right,
you or me, And then he says starts a joke
with Fiske. He says, so, how do you like it?
On the other side, he said, well, you'll find out
soon enough. You're near the end of your line. And
they have this hilarious exchange, Vanderbilt arguing and joking with
a ghost of Jim Fisk. But it shows that I
don't think he maye need decisions based on these. I
think he fund them comforting. I don't think that it.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Was his guide.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
But late in life, his wife, his second wife, was
very religious. She was a Methodist, and he did give
money to found Vanderbilt know which was specifically religious university,
and he did give money to buy church for the
Church of the Strangers, which was a church for Southerners
in New York City. But interestingly, when he made those gifts,
(15:15):
he didn't ask the bishop who was the first head
of Vanderbilt University or the minister who ran the church
that he endowed. He didn't ask them about the religious beliefs.
He couldn't care less about theology. As he said to
one of them after he'd been preaching to Vanderbilt for
a while in the hot summer heat, waving a fan,
he said, doctor, everything you've said to me weighs about
(15:36):
as much with me as that fan you're waving right now.
But he did care about people, and he wanted to
make sure that those men were honest and capable. So
he questioned them extensively, but about what they were like
as men. That's what he knew from a life in business,
then from his wife's diary, second wife's diary. When he
was on his deathbed and had horrible several months of
his body beginning to fail, suffering terrible internal infections, he
(16:01):
finally asked, towards the end of his very end of
his life, you know, he asked her to take part
in a prayer with him. And said he wanted to
give his life to Jesus. And she said, well, is
it because you love Jesus or you're afraid of going
to hell? It's well, you know, to be honest both.
He was a man of few words, but he was
honest up to the very end. And how did he
(16:21):
see himself? There was an interesting incident in eighteen sixty
seven when in a battle between his railroads and before
he took control of the New York Central, he famously,
in the depth of winter, when boats couldn't get through
the frozen harbor to Manhattan, he to settle a dispute
the New York Central Railroad, he cut off access of
(16:43):
all trains from the West into New York City, essentially
personally levied a blockade on the nation's largest city. This
created a bit of a fuer. It won him his
battle with the New York Central, but it created a
fur and the New York State legislature started to talk
about laws that could pass.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
To control this.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And the way he responded when he gave testimony is
very interesting. He didn't say that, you know the law
is no good, etc. He didn't talk about the public interest.
He said, if you can pass a law that will
compel men to pursue their interests more intelligently than their
interests themselves will compel them. Then it's all well and good,
(17:22):
but I don't think you can do that. In other words,
he deeply believed that, basically in the Invisible Hand, without
ever having read Adam Smith, I'm sure he didn't. He
believed that the world is run by everybody pursuing their
private interests to the best of their ability. Now he
had a business code, you thought you should do it honestly, fiercely,
but honestly. But he really believed we things function when
(17:44):
everybody pursues their own interests.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So that's how he saw his legacy.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
He didn't see himself as you know, he didn't think
about the public interest. He thought the public interests. He said,
I've served the public to the best of my ability.
Why because it's in my interest to do so, That's
what he said.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
So he saw.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Himself as a man who if he served the public, fine,
but it's because I'm pursuing my own private interests.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And you're listening to author TJ. Stiles, who's written a
terrific biography A Pool, a ser Prize winning biography, the
first Tycoon, the epic life or Cornelius Vanderbilt, And there's
so much there to unpack, with the idea that he
designed his own steamships and what he was really doing
in the end, it was extracting value out of that
(18:30):
and through that design by making it more affordable to
ride on his steamships as opposed to his competitors. And
my goodness, what we heard there at the end, well,
what's storytelling talking to negotiating with and arguing with a
former rival at a seance. I'd love to see that
scene in that movie. Is that could be really funny
(18:50):
and though notoriously unreligious, in the end, well, towards the
end of his life, hedged his bets. And this happens
so often in families across the country. When we come
back the Remarkable Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt as told by TJ. Styles,
the storytelling continues here on our American stories, and we
(19:38):
continue with our American stories and with the story of
Cornelius Vanderbilt as told by author TJ. Styles. Let's continue
with his final part of this remarkable American story.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now with his family. You know, he had a total
of thirteen children, eleven of whom lived through adulthood.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
He had a.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Vast fortune when he died eighteen seventy seven. It was estimated,
and it's hard to know for sure, at one hundred
million dollars. Now, I don't give equivalent modern figures in
the book because I don't think that's an honest way
to do it. But I do look at the Controller
of the Currency's report on how much money.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Was in circulation.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And if you look at the amount of money in circulation,
if he had been able.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
To sell all his assets of that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Estimated one hundred million dollars to American buyers, he would
have taken, including cash and demand deposits, one out of
every twenty dollars in circulation. Now, if Bill Gates, when
Forbes calculated his fortunate fifty eight billion, I think could
have done the same thing, and you take the federal
reserves M two figure till go into he would have
(20:45):
taken one out of every one hundred.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And thirty eight dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So the difference between the disparity and wealth is pretty obvious,
and that probably understates the disparity for various reasons. And
plus you've got the power that control of railway roads
gave Vanderbilt. You know, there's no industry that overshadows the
entire economy the way that railroads did at that time.
So it was a vast fortune.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
And the money he.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Left to his widow and to his various daughters were
large amounts at the time. Half a million dollars he
left to his wife and to some of his daughters,
not all, And that was enough for you to be
very wealthy, extremely wealthy in the nineteenth century, even the
late nineteenth century. But he left ninety five percent of
his estate to his oldest son. And why well, first
(21:32):
of all, he thought his oldest son was capable.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
He'd brought William H.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Vanderbilt in as his operational manager, and he did a.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Very good job.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
But because he deliberately wanted to perpetuate his name, the
name that he had given to his steamboats into his steamships,
the name that he had given to his son, his
second son, who unfortunately was a gambling addict and epileptic.
And so he left all this money to one son,
deliberately trying to found dynasty, and it bitterly divided his family.
(22:04):
Now Vanderbilt is more complicated as a family man than Again,
the myth is that he was this brutal tyrant who
just abused his wife and his children hated him, and
that's not true.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
He was a hard man.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
He was very judgmental. He reminds me of a friend
of mine who said that his father once told him
when he was young, you know, I'm never going to
let you beat me at anything. You're gonna if we
ever play a game, you're gonna have to beat me
on your own. You respect a father like that, but
when you're growing up, it's not a lot of fun either,
and that's the way it was for Vanderbilt. Sometimes. Some
(22:41):
famous incidents in which he was hard and his family
I think are overblown, but that doesn't make them nice.
For example, his first wife in eighteen forty six, he
put her in an insane asylum for a while. Now,
when you look at the testimony about that, it turns
out that you know she was having serious problems and
(23:02):
a son in law who generally had unfavorable feelings by
the time he spoke about this about Vanderbilt thought, actually
it was justified. She needed medical help and an asylum
was the way to do it. So it was a
tough thing to do, but it wasn't a brutal tyrant.
It was sort of like, what do we do, She's
just not herself, she's acting weird. He again was art
(23:24):
on his second son, Carneil, the one who was a
gambling addict. But then again, Corneil would have tried any
father's patience. He was someone who's always in trouble with
the law, skipping out on his bills, involved in bad debts,
addicted to gambling, boastful, all the things his father wasn't.
And I sort of use him as the anti hero
in the book because this troubled son brings out all
(23:47):
the emotional complexity in Vanderbilt, the stern judge, the overbearing
father who sometimes is harsh on his son and had
him arrested and sent to an insane asylum, also at
a time when they had not have language for addiction.
So again, a hard thing to do, but understandable in
the context, and sometimes you know, encouraging and loving. He's
(24:08):
a more sympathetic character than I think we've realized. And
that's not to take away any of the complications and
ambivalence personally or historically, but you know, again that's the
American experience. Questions like addiction and mental illness are things
that you know, most families deal with at some point.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And so William H.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Vanderbilt was given credit for doubling the family fortune in
a few years. I think that actually, if Vanderbilt himself
had done nothing but kind of let his estate compound,
and he'd lived as long as his son, it probably
would have been similar. As he put it, the New
York Central Railroad could run itself after a certain point.
But the interesting thing about William H. Vanderbilt is that
(24:52):
it was surprisingly undiplomatic as a businessman. You know, JP
Morgan bought a large block of stock in the New
York Central Railroad an attempt to control the destructive competition
among railroads. And he complained continually about how he's always quibbling.
He engages in disputes that would embarrass a Bowery lawyer,
and you know, a skid Row lawyer. And he was
(25:15):
a quarrelsome figure, was kind of testy, and I've read
a lot of other letters complaining about how the son
was testy, but he was a nice father. So Vanderbilt,
the tough father, was a diplomatic businessman. William his son
was a terrible business diplomat, but you know, kind of
a nice father. And William really as soon as his
(25:35):
father died, and once he settled this big fight over
the will and secured his control of the estate, he
sold the controlling block of shares to JP Morgan Syndicate
and began to build these lavish mansions, as did his
children that his.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Father never would have tolerated.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
As soon as the old man's dead, boom, up go
the huge mansions, and the gilded age excess begins, you know,
once the sort of tightfisted old man is gone, then
they started building the famous Vanderbilt mansions. And by now
the Vanderbilt fortune has been dissipated because it was founded
on the first grade industry in America. The railroads, the
first industry to mature and fade also, and the New
(26:14):
York Central Railroad, you know, was taken over by what
are now publicly owned systems. Though the infrastructure Vanderbilt built
is still vital to the city of New York. His
statue was still out in front of the modern version
of Grand Central, the terminal he built, and they still
use infrastructure that he constructed. You know, back in the
nineteenth century. It's still very much a vital part of
(26:35):
New York today. You know. I remember when I turned
in the first few chapters to my editor and he
just sent him back with another like this is just
not you can do way.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Better than this. It was just crushed.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And I realized that I was just writing about his business.
I wasn't writing about how it fit into the world
in which he existed. And the turning point in his
early life. For example, he took on his only employee
he ever had in his life, a man who was
really his mentor, was a man named Thomas Gibbons. And
(27:07):
he's the man who hired Vanderbilt to work on his
first steamboat, and he became a steamboat captain and brought
him into this great legal as well as business battle
against a monopoly, a legal monopoly that New York State
had given to the Livingston family for steamboats in New
York waters. And it led to Gibbons v Ogden, the
first commerce clause case that the Supreme Court decided and
(27:28):
a legal landmark to this day, in which the Supreme
Court said states cannot erect boundaries of trade. We have
a free market. Basically in the United states. Only Congress
can control interstate trade, and it really is one of
the keys to America's economic growth. And Vanderbilt, by the way,
was keenly interested in this, went himself to hear the arguments,
hired Webster, Daniel Webster himself when he was a young
(27:49):
man with very little education. And as I started to
look into this, I realized, it's not even about law,
It's not just about business. It is about the end
of an eighteenth century culture of deference, in which you
had old landed aristocratic families, especially in New York, which
they had mercantilist ideas. They expected to be granted special privileges,
(28:12):
and they sort of would take custody of the American
economy in the way in which they had custody of
politics and of other areas of life. A New York
state at the time, for example, had not only property requirements,
they had two separate levels of property requirements. You had
to have a high level to vote for governor and
a lower level to vote for the state Assembly. So
it was this hierarchical society. And I realized that this
(28:35):
era of Vanderbilt's life is not just about him getting
ahead meeting the right, guy.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
It's not just about this legal battle.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It was about the end of this older, hierarchical society
and the birth of an individualistic, competitive society much more
like the one we know today.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And a great job as always by Greg Hengler on
the piece, and a special thanks to author TJ. Styles book,
a Pulitzer Prize winner is the first Tycoon the epic
life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. And so often these men, these titans,
are caricatured when we go to school, and their contributions
(29:13):
to society are downplayed, their villainy well up played, and
in the end the real story well, so different, and
we heard it straight from a great writer who spent
a lot of time thinking about and researching this remarkable
American life. Thirteen children, eleven went to adulthood, but he
left almost all the estate to one and all because
(29:35):
he wanted to see the name and the family business continue.
And by the way, the idea that he grew up
during the Washington presidency and was born during the George
Washington presidency, saw the Civil War and got into the
railroad business in his seventies thinking about the future, and
the railroads were the Internet of their day. That's how
(29:57):
transformative railroads were. And there was Vanda Vanderbilt in his
seventies when most people his age were dead. A remarkable
story about a remarkable human being, The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com