The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1876-07-26
A Railroad King.

American r1ch men are OF au laces'
Girard was French; Hopkins was Eng
lish; Jacob Barker was Yankee; the Liv-
ingstones were Scotch; the Barrons were
Spanish; Astor was German; and
Stewart, Irish; Vanderbilt and Garrison
were Dutch, of Holland stock. Com
modore Vanderbilt, without going far
from home, and merely improving the
century's great opportunities as they be-
gun and consolidated in the waters OF
New York, gained gigantic fortune.
He took to the water in childhood, arose
in the infancy of steam navigation, and
lived the whole period actively between
the eras of Robert Fulton and George
M. Pullman, between the stage coach
and the palace car. The extent of rail-
roads in America in the commodore's
eigtty-second year of age is $4,000
miles; the earliest American locomotive
engine builder, Peter Cooper, is still
alive. a train has just passed in eighty
hours from New York to San Francisco,
or less time than was commonlyrequired
to 20 from New York to Washington
when Vanderbilt begun steamboating.
There are in 1876 $4,000 miles of rail
road in North America, and 184, 600 in
the wofld. The heir of the Ptolemies
has failed as the owner of q railroad and
a realm, and hissultan is deposed. India
is full of British railways, and 80 was
Polynesia.
Length of days and opportunity count
vastly in the returns of merchants
life. The steamboat was invented in the
sight OF Vanderbilt's birthplace, on
Staten Island, and he saw and probably
knew Robert Fulton. Up to that time
he had been a mere waterman and sloop
captain, sailing no further than New
Brunswick, on the Raritan, or Shrews-
bury, or Kingston. His knowledge OF
the waters led him to be employed by
the steamboat rivals of Livingstone and
Stevens as early as 1916. He was more
properly product of Long Island than
OF Staten Island, and of New. Jersey
than of New York. It is fourteen miles
from Staten Island to New Brunswick,
six miles to New York, one mile to Eliz-
abethport, and eight miles to the open
ocean. Within these limits the young
Vanderbilt knew every shoal, current,
and sounding. He was besides iutelli-
gent, bold and athletic; 80 he was i'm
mediasely needed when capital and in.
vention were prepared with the steam
boat. Elizabethport was the end Of the
main road across New Jersey to New
York, rocks and marshes intervening
above that point so that no road was fit
for travel beyond it, when Washington,
proceeding to New York to be inaugur-
ated, took a barge from Elizabeth point
to the first capital. The man who ad.
ministered the oath to Washington on
that occasion introduced Fulton and the
steamboat to America.
Vanderbilt's confidence was seen in
his driving" says one who knows him.
"He was so blind he could hardly see
the hair on his horse, and yet he rode
out every day, being several times
thrown into The road. He had just sense
enough to believe that if he kept the
middle of the road people would get out
of his way. That's the course he took
in all things; he never turned out un-
less compelled to-"
The grandeur of Vanderbilt's fnan-
cial transactions was shown in his Har-
lem corner at the close of the war. The
stock was selling at forty in the market,
par at fifty. If there were 10000 shares
it required only $4,000, 900 to buy the
whole stock. At par Vanderbilt & 90.
bought up the whole stock, while the
"shorts" offered sixty. Having got
the stock, it went up gradually to $3.50,
at or about which figure the brokers and
their principals had to settle or break,
making profit to the Vanderbilt pool
OF say uine millions, or nearly three
times the whole amount of the invest
ment. One of his greatest days was late
in December, 1869. He had purchased
or controlled about 130, 900 shares of
New York Central stock. Getting to-
gether quorum OF directors in night
session, they declared a dividend Of
eighty per cent. and announced it next
morning. The stock almost instantly
jumped from 120 to 165, and the short
interest had to pay over five millions of
dollars to the commodore's coterie. His
great age befriended him; for he made
the bulk of his fortune after he was sew
enty years old.