September 16, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, few figures embody the rise of America’s economy in the nineteenth century more than Cornelius Vanderbilt. He began with nothing, working the waters of New York Harbor, and built a fortune that placed him among the wealthiest people in history. Known to some as a railroad baron and to others as the very model of a captain of industry, Vanderbilt created vast networks of steamships and railroads that fueled the Gold Rush, connected a growing nation, and forever changed the shape of New York City. Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon, shares how one man’s relentless drive to win laid the foundations for the modern corporation and the American economy itself.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a bit of economic history and a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Of business history.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In his Pool of Surprise winning biography The First Tycoon,
The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Author TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Styles 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, repel the Gold Rush,
reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation. This combative American icon,
(00:45):
through his genius and force of will, did more than
perhaps any other single individual to.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Create the modern American economy. Here's TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Styles with the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 3 (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 a lot of his rivals.
For example, in the famous Eerie War of eighteen sixty eight,
the most famous of the Gilded Age Wall Street battles,
(01:21):
in which he fought with Daniel Drew and Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk over the control of the Erie Railway.
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,
(01:44):
and I thought that was kind of interesting. Because he
was ruthless. He took extraordinary steps to defeat his enemies,
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 campaign against his enemies as
he did machinery and enterprise and businesses, which makes his
(02:05):
life a lot of fun to read about, but raises
questions about whether he did have a code, And surprisingly,
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,
(02:26):
let's have 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 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
(02:48):
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
great hero, no, looking at him on his own terms.
But the evidence 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
(03:10):
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
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 look for then.
(03:30):
So he took no salary and the only remuneration he
took was dividends in his stock. A lot of corporate
officials engaged in side dealing, and Andrew Karnegi's mentors at
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
(03:53):
the company. Very smart men Thomas A. Scott, Jagger, Thompson.
They ran the Pennsylvania Railroad, they ran very well. But
they also pioneered show 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.
(04:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
He lived by it.
Speaker 3 (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 2 (04:38):
No.
Speaker 3 (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 you remember about Vanderbilt. One is that
(05:47):
he hated people who were boastful and talked about themselves.
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,
(06:07):
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
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.
(06:28):
But he, for example, during the Civil War, donated his largesteamship,
worth almost a million dollars of the Union 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.
(06:51):
George Washington William Henry Harrison and Connellius Vanderbilt. 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 out of prison. He specifically wanted to help
(07:13):
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 be seen as his
(07:34):
personal vision of trying to reconcile the two sides of
the country. Rather than being you know, I'm going to
found libraries. He 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 York. During
(07:55):
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 a large
(08:16):
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 I
(08:37):
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, most 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 2 (09:22):
And you're listening to TJ.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
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 come back more of the
(09:45):
story of Cornelius Vanderbilt here on our American Stories. And
(10:17):
we continue with our American stories and with author TJ. Styles,
author of the book The First Tycoon, The Epic Wife
of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 paddle wheel era, and the
steamboats he started to put on Long Island Sound were
written up in technical journals as masterpieces of naval engineering.
His first great long Island sound steamboat used half the
(10:53):
fuel of its rival steamboats, and fuel was by far
the largest expense. So these sorts of things his ability
to cut costs were phenomenal. And one thing that I
touched on in 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
(11:14):
a big political conflict in the nineteenth century in which
an economy in which there weren't large businesses, the economy
is relatively flat. Lesse faire 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
(11:36):
thirties and forties were 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,
(11:57):
you know, power to the people, or the equivalent. And
in his early career he 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
(12:20):
the eighteen seventies, And meanwhile, the first government regulation advocates
are out there, and the 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
(12:40):
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 back very far, and
these things come up in Vanderbilt's life again and again.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
He actually.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Was notoriously unreligious, and he was raised in the Moravi
in church. Some Vanderbilt ancestors 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
(13:17):
a 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 sciences contacting the dead, had gotten its start before
the Civil War, but in the decade after the Civil
(13:38):
War 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
(13:59):
being an sants with 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
(14:19):
Jim Fisk gives a nonsense answer, and so Vanderbilt doesn't say, Oh,
that's interesting. He says, what are you talking about? Are
you crazy? And he starts to argue with the ghost,
and then Vanderbilt says, yeah, well we'll see who's right,
you or me, And then he says, sorts a joke
with Fisky. 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
(14:42):
a ghost of Jim Fisk. But it shows that I
don't think he made need decisions based on these I
think he found them comforting. I don't think that it
was his guide. But late in life, his wife, his
second wife, was very religious. She was a Methodist, and
he did give money to found Vanderbilt Universe, which was
specifically religious university, and he did give money to buy
(15:06):
church for the Church of the Strangers, which was a
church for Southerners in New York City. But interestingly, when
he made those gifts, 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 their religious beliefs. He couldn't care less about theology.
(15:27):
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 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
(15:48):
from a life in business, then from his wife's diary,
second wife's diary. When he's on his deathbed and had
horrible several months of his body beginning to fail, suffering
terrible internal infections, he finally asked, toward 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
(16:08):
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 see himself? There was an interesting incident
in eighteen sixty seven when in a battle between his
(16:29):
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 all trains from the West into New York City,
essentially personally levied a blockade on the nation's largest city.
(16:49):
This created a bit of a fure. It won him
his battle with the New York Central, but it created
a fere and the New York State legislature started to
talk about laws that could pass to control this. 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
(17:12):
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, 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
(17:35):
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
everybody pursues their own interests. So that's how he saw
his legacy. He didn't see himself as you know, he
didn't think about the public interest. He thought the public interests.
(17:55):
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. So he saw himself as a
man who if he served the public, fine, but it's
because I'm pursuing my own private interests.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And you're listening to author TJ.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Stiles, who's written a terrific biography, a Poolitzer 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, what he was really
doing in the end, who was extracting value out of
that and through that design by making it more affordable
(18:34):
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
and though notoriously unreligious, in the end, well, towards the
(18:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Styles.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Let's continue with his final part of this remarkable American story.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Now with his family. You know, he had a total
of thirteen children, eleven of whom lived through adulthood, and
he had a 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
(20:12):
an honest way to do it. But I do look
at the Controller of the Currency's report on how much
money was in circulation. And if you look at the
amount of money in circulation, if he had been able
to sell all his assets of that estimated one hundred
million dollars to American buyers, he would have taken, including
cash and demand deposits, one out of every twenty dollars
(20:33):
in circulation. Now, if Bill Gates, when Forbes calculated his
fortunate at fifty eight billion, I think could have done
the same thing. And you take the federal reserves M
two figure, which I will go into, he would have
taken one out of every one hundred and thirty eight dollars.
So the difference between the disparity and wealth is pretty obvious,
and that probably understates the disparity for various reasons. And
(20:57):
plus you've got the power that control of railroad 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. And the money he 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,
(21:20):
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 of all, he
thought his oldest son was capable. He'd brought William H.
Vanderbilt in as his operational manager, and he did a
very good job. But because he deliberately wanted to perpetuate
(21:41):
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 it honesty,
(22:01):
and it bitterly divided his family. 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.
He was a hard man. He was very judgmental. He
(22:21):
reminds me of a friend of mine who said that
his father once told him when he was young, you know,
I'm never gonna 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 famous incidents in which he was
(22:43):
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 a son in law who generally
(23:04):
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 on his second son, Carneil, the
(23:26):
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 the emotional complexity in Vanderbilt. The
(23:49):
stern judge, the overbearing father is 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 a more sympathetic character than I think
(24:10):
we've realized. And that's not to take away in 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 2 (24:26):
And so.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
William H. 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 Willim H. Vanderbilt
(24:51):
is that 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
(25:14):
he was 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
(25:35):
as his 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 father never would have tolerated. As
soon as the old man's dad, boom, up go the
huge mansions, and the gilded age excess begins, you know,
(25:58):
once the sort of typefisted 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
York Central Railroad, you know, was taken over by what
are now publicly owned systems. Though the infrastructure Vanderbilt built
(26:22):
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
New York today. You know. I remember when I turned
in the first few chapters to my editor and he
just sent them back with another like this is just
(26:43):
not you can do way better than this. It was
just crushed. 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
(27:05):
Thomas Gibbons. And 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
(27:26):
Court decided and 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
(27:48):
he was a young 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 eighteen s century culture
of deference, in which you had old landed aristocratic families,
especially in New York, which they had mercantilist ideas. They
(28:08):
expected to be granted special privileges, 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. And 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
(28:29):
to vote for the state Assembly. So it was this
hierarchical society. And I realized that this era of Vanderbilt's
life is not just about him getting ahead, meeting the
right guy. It's not just about this legal battle. It
was about the end of this older hierarchical society and
the birth of an individualistic, competitive society much more like
(28:51):
the one we know today.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And a great job is 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.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
And so often these men, these titans.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Are caricatured when we go to school, and their contributions
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
(29:32):
left almost all the estate to one and all because
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
(29:54):
the railroads were the Internet of their day. That's how
transformative railroads were. And there was vanders Vanderbilt in his
seventies when most people his age were dead. A remarkable
story about a remarkable human being, The life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a bit of economic history and a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Of business history.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In his Pool of Surprise winning biography The First Tycoon,
The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Author TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Styles 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, repel the Gold Rush,
reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation. This combative American icon,
(00:45):
through his genius and force of will, did more than
perhaps any other single individual to.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Create the modern American economy. Here's TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Styles with the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 3 (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 a lot of his rivals.
For example, in the famous Eerie War of eighteen sixty eight,
the most famous of the Gilded Age Wall Street battles,
(01:21):
in which he fought with Daniel Drew and Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk over the control of the Erie Railway.
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,
(01:44):
and I thought that was kind of interesting. Because he
was ruthless. He took extraordinary steps to defeat his enemies,
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 campaign against his enemies as
he did machinery and enterprise and businesses, which makes his
(02:05):
life a lot of fun to read about, but raises
questions about whether he did have a code, And surprisingly,
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,
(02:26):
let's have 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 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
(02:48):
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
great hero, no, looking at him on his own terms.
But the evidence 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
(03:10):
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
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 look for then.
(03:30):
So he took no salary and the only remuneration he
took was dividends in his stock. A lot of corporate
officials engaged in side dealing, and Andrew Karnegi's mentors at
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
(03:53):
the company. Very smart men Thomas A. Scott, Jagger, Thompson.
They ran the Pennsylvania Railroad, they ran very well. But
they also pioneered show 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.
(04:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
He lived by it.
Speaker 3 (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 2 (04:38):
No.
Speaker 3 (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 you remember about Vanderbilt. One is that
(05:47):
he hated people who were boastful and talked about themselves.
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,
(06:07):
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
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.
(06:28):
But he, for example, during the Civil War, donated his largesteamship,
worth almost a million dollars of the Union 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.
(06:51):
George Washington William Henry Harrison and Connellius Vanderbilt. 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 out of prison. He specifically wanted to help
(07:13):
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 be seen as his
(07:34):
personal vision of trying to reconcile the two sides of
the country. Rather than being you know, I'm going to
found libraries. He 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 York. During
(07:55):
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 a large
(08:16):
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 I
(08:37):
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, most 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 2 (09:22):
And you're listening to TJ.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
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 come back more of the
(09:45):
story of Cornelius Vanderbilt here on our American Stories. And
(10:17):
we continue with our American stories and with author TJ. Styles,
author of the book The First Tycoon, The Epic Wife
of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 paddle wheel era, and the
steamboats he started to put on Long Island Sound were
written up in technical journals as masterpieces of naval engineering.
His first great long Island sound steamboat used half the
(10:53):
fuel of its rival steamboats, and fuel was by far
the largest expense. So these sorts of things his ability
to cut costs were phenomenal. And one thing that I
touched on in 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
(11:14):
a big political conflict in the nineteenth century in which
an economy in which there weren't large businesses, the economy
is relatively flat. Lesse faire 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
(11:36):
thirties and forties were 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,
(11:57):
you know, power to the people, or the equivalent. And
in his early career he 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
(12:20):
the eighteen seventies, And meanwhile, the first government regulation advocates
are out there, and the 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
(12:40):
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 back very far, and
these things come up in Vanderbilt's life again and again.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
He actually.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Was notoriously unreligious, and he was raised in the Moravi
in church. Some Vanderbilt ancestors 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
(13:17):
a 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 sciences contacting the dead, had gotten its start before
the Civil War, but in the decade after the Civil
(13:38):
War 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
(13:59):
being an sants with 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
(14:19):
Jim Fisk gives a nonsense answer, and so Vanderbilt doesn't say, Oh,
that's interesting. He says, what are you talking about? Are
you crazy? And he starts to argue with the ghost,
and then Vanderbilt says, yeah, well we'll see who's right,
you or me, And then he says, sorts a joke
with Fisky. 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
(14:42):
a ghost of Jim Fisk. But it shows that I
don't think he made need decisions based on these I
think he found them comforting. I don't think that it
was his guide. But late in life, his wife, his
second wife, was very religious. She was a Methodist, and
he did give money to found Vanderbilt Universe, which was
specifically religious university, and he did give money to buy
(15:06):
church for the Church of the Strangers, which was a
church for Southerners in New York City. But interestingly, when
he made those gifts, 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 their religious beliefs. He couldn't care less about theology.
(15:27):
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 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
(15:48):
from a life in business, then from his wife's diary,
second wife's diary. When he's on his deathbed and had
horrible several months of his body beginning to fail, suffering
terrible internal infections, he finally asked, toward 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
(16:08):
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 see himself? There was an interesting incident
in eighteen sixty seven when in a battle between his
(16:29):
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 all trains from the West into New York City,
essentially personally levied a blockade on the nation's largest city.
(16:49):
This created a bit of a fure. It won him
his battle with the New York Central, but it created
a fere and the New York State legislature started to
talk about laws that could pass to control this. 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
(17:12):
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, 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
(17:35):
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
everybody pursues their own interests. So that's how he saw
his legacy. He didn't see himself as you know, he
didn't think about the public interest. He thought the public interests.
(17:55):
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. So he saw himself as a
man who if he served the public, fine, but it's
because I'm pursuing my own private interests.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And you're listening to author TJ.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Stiles, who's written a terrific biography, a Poolitzer 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, what he was really
doing in the end, who was extracting value out of
that and through that design by making it more affordable
(18:34):
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
and though notoriously unreligious, in the end, well, towards the
(18:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Styles.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Let's continue with his final part of this remarkable American story.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Now with his family. You know, he had a total
of thirteen children, eleven of whom lived through adulthood, and
he had a 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
(20:12):
an honest way to do it. But I do look
at the Controller of the Currency's report on how much
money was in circulation. And if you look at the
amount of money in circulation, if he had been able
to sell all his assets of that estimated one hundred
million dollars to American buyers, he would have taken, including
cash and demand deposits, one out of every twenty dollars
(20:33):
in circulation. Now, if Bill Gates, when Forbes calculated his
fortunate at fifty eight billion, I think could have done
the same thing. And you take the federal reserves M
two figure, which I will go into, he would have
taken one out of every one hundred and thirty eight dollars.
So the difference between the disparity and wealth is pretty obvious,
and that probably understates the disparity for various reasons. And
(20:57):
plus you've got the power that control of railroad 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. And the money he 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,
(21:20):
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 of all, he
thought his oldest son was capable. He'd brought William H.
Vanderbilt in as his operational manager, and he did a
very good job. But because he deliberately wanted to perpetuate
(21:41):
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 it honesty,
(22:01):
and it bitterly divided his family. 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.
He was a hard man. He was very judgmental. He
(22:21):
reminds me of a friend of mine who said that
his father once told him when he was young, you know,
I'm never gonna 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 famous incidents in which he was
(22:43):
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 a son in law who generally
(23:04):
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 on his second son, Carneil, the
(23:26):
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 the emotional complexity in Vanderbilt. The
(23:49):
stern judge, the overbearing father is 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 a more sympathetic character than I think
(24:10):
we've realized. And that's not to take away in 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 2 (24:26):
And so.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
William H. 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 Willim H. Vanderbilt
(24:51):
is that 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
(25:14):
he was 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
(25:35):
as his 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 father never would have tolerated. As
soon as the old man's dad, boom, up go the
huge mansions, and the gilded age excess begins, you know,
(25:58):
once the sort of typefisted 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
York Central Railroad, you know, was taken over by what
are now publicly owned systems. Though the infrastructure Vanderbilt built
(26:22):
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
New York today. You know. I remember when I turned
in the first few chapters to my editor and he
just sent them back with another like this is just
(26:43):
not you can do way better than this. It was
just crushed. 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
(27:05):
Thomas Gibbons. And 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
(27:26):
Court decided and 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
(27:48):
he was a young 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 eighteen s century culture
of deference, in which you had old landed aristocratic families,
especially in New York, which they had mercantilist ideas. They
(28:08):
expected to be granted special privileges, 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. And 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
(28:29):
to vote for the state Assembly. So it was this
hierarchical society. And I realized that this era of Vanderbilt's
life is not just about him getting ahead, meeting the
right guy. It's not just about this legal battle. It
was about the end of this older hierarchical society and
the birth of an individualistic, competitive society much more like
(28:51):
the one we know today.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And a great job is 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.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
And so often these men, these titans.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Are caricatured when we go to school, and their contributions
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
(29:32):
left almost all the estate to one and all because
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
(29:54):
the railroads were the Internet of their day. That's how
transformative railroads were. And there was vanders Vanderbilt in his
seventies when most people his age were dead. A remarkable
story about a remarkable human being, The life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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