The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-25
A DEAD VANDERBILT.

the weary and disappointed gold hunter
is at rest. The deceased is described as
genial and promising young fellow. This
report is probably truo, for the third gen.
Grafton of the Vanderbilts is a great adj
vance on the founder of the family. the
brutal old commodore, whose corpse
swung from the gboet of the surrogate's
court for many months after his death
while his own sons and daughters testified
that the great railroad king was a domes-
tic brute and tyrant at home and as ras-
caliy as petty horse jockey abroad. His
children, in their fight for his millions,
tore away the grave clothes from his moral
nakedness until the public cry of
"shame" persuaded his favorite son and
chief heir, William III. Vanderbilt. to
settle with his brothers and sisters.
The great merchant. A. I. Stewart. was
another very rich man whom the minis
ters undertook to run into heaven in face
of the scriptural allusion to the camel's
failure to thread the needles eye Just as a
number of them recently whitewashed
Jay Gould, who robbed the Erie railroad
of 81, 900 900, robbed the public by fraudu-
lent over-issue of stock in order to ''break"
Erie in the market, and has finally offered
to give the church $4,000 Gould is in
failing health; the devil is sick; he feels
like monk; and like every sick, super
stitous bandit, he is willing to pay liber-
ally for masses said for his soul.
Jay Gould, in 1870, stood at the head of
n scheme of knavery and fraud that cor
rupted both the New York courts and leg
islature, until the Tammany ring fell and
carried the Erie ring with it. Gould stole
a whole railroad, robbed it of its revenues,
which he used to corrupt the courts and
legislature. When the fail of the Tam
many ring, its courts and its legislature
drove him to disgorge, ne surrendered
100000 and retired with $4,000, 900.
Since that date he has been a wrecker of
railroads, and for twenty-five years has
been the most corrupting example OF sue
cessful and unwhipped rascality in BUSH
ness ever known in modern state. as ev-
erybody knows who ever read his own con-
fession of his methods before legislative
committee, or read Charles Francis Adj
ans Chapter On Erie" in the North
American Reriew. Ard this is
the man that New York city clergymen
tatter and beg money of for "church exc
tension" and whitewash his blackness by
describing him las one Of the loveliest
men in the world in his homo life," say
ing that they "know nothing of his
career" when his career is coincident and
confederate with that of Bill Tweed who
belonged to the Erie" as we'll as the
Tammany ring. 1t was Macaulay who
wrote of Charles the First:
We cannot, in estimating the character of an
individual, leave out of our consideration his
conduct in the most important of all human re-
lations; aud IL in that relation we find him to
have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, We shall
take the liberty to call him a bad man, IN spite
of all his temperance at table and all bis regu-
larity at chapel.
Let rs hope that the third generation of
the Goulds will improve rs much as have
the Vanderbilts: there is vast room for
Improvement. for Jay Gould was a pirate
and n bandit among business men, while
Commodore Vanderbilt was a line of battle
ship that helped to dispense and sink such
piratical craft as ''the Erie ring" A. I.
Stewart was a tyrannical employer, a re-
morseiess prosecutor of smaller tradesmen
than himself; ignoring the Christian
maxim, Live and Let Live" he was a
grsb-all; an absorber: miser.
The Stewart-Nanderbil: type of million
aires were merely the bald eagles Of busi-
ness, feared and hated at home, despised
Nd J;St TOD oh
they ignored and trampled on during
life continues to spurn them in contemp t
after death. But the third generation
of the house of Vanderbilt holds a
| nobler and wiser philosophy of life than
tho able, but INSCRIPTIONS and arbitrary
founder of the family; they believe in mix
ing benevolence with the administration
of a great business as sound industrial pol
icy and in the common sense charity of
giving with your own hand.
The Nauderbilts have as a rule married
women Of superior sense and force OF char
acter. and TO this may be attributed the
fact that the commodore's posserity of
the present generation aYe persons worthy
of respect. The Astors. on the other hand.
have dcteriorated. The original John
Jacob Astor was not only far ADLER, but
far more generous and public spirited
man than any of his descendants. His
gift of the Aston library 10 New York city.
fer his day ana his fortune, was IA, more
| munincent than anything wrought by his
descendants. William b. As;or, the chief
heir u the original John Jacob Aston was
decidedly inferior TO his father. but he was
| a man Of superior intellect and lavish be-
nevo.euce compared with the present gem
| GRAFTON Of the family. William Aston. who
| oIed the other day. went 20 the grave
/ probably without the love OF any human
being; he never made any sunshine tor
/ anybody but himself. so that the world
was absolutely brighter and brea5hed
ireer when his gloomy, mocose
/ presence carried its darkness To
the outer darkness OF indnity. for
ii IS safe 10 assume that man worth $50
/ oro,c4 Who leaves bur $4,000 to public
| charities, including the Astor library, was
not invited - seat a,ucuc the seraphs.
| The Nanderbills have greatly improved;
the AstoEs have greatly degenera.ed, AMI