The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (151 page)

88
NYH
, June 8, 1870;
CT
, June 7, 8, 11, 1870;
NYT
, June 7, 8, 1870;
RRG
, May 14, June 11, 1870; Klein, 96.

89
NYTr
, June 14, 1870, in
CT
, June 16, 1870;
NYT
, March 16, 1870; Klein, 92.

90
NYTr
, June 29, 1870;
CT
, July 2, 4, 6, 1870;
RRG
, July 2, 1870; see also
HC
, June 13, 1870;
NYH
, June 19, 1870. These newspaper reports make clear that the Erie initiated the cut to $1 per car, often ascribed to the Central by historians.

91
NYT
, July 1, 15, 1870;
New York Commercial
, in
CT
, August 2, 1870.

92
The press reports of this encounter named Richard, not Augustus, Schell, but I think this was a mistake. Richard played no part in the Central's management, but the Schell at this meeting pressed for a compromise.
NYS
in
CT
, August 13, 23, 1870;
Albion
, August 20, 1870;
NYT
, August 23, October 29, 1870;
NYS
, November 28, 1872.

93
RRG
, July 2, November 19, 26, December 3, 17, 24, 1870;
Circular
, July 25, 1870;
The Stockholder
, in
RRG
, September 17, 1870;
HC
, November 26, 1870, July 19, 1871; Directors' Minutes, July 6, 1871, Dunkirk, Warren & Pittsburgh Railroad Company, reel 58, box 242, Directors' Minutes, May 3, 1871, LS&MS, reel 65, box 243, NYCRR; Edward Chase Kirkland,
Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900
, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 372–5.

94
NYT
, October 13, 1870;
The Telegrapher
, in
RRG
, October 29, 1870. CV would imply (though not explicitly state) that he had no stake in Western Union, in
NYT
, January 21, 1873. Norvin Green, then a vice president of Western Union, later testified before Congress, “In 1869 Commodore Vanderbilt and his friends came in. Horace Clark… and Mr. Schell and a number of leading men came into the company and organized an executive committee, suspended dividends, and introduced some new features.” See SR 577, 48th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1, 2238. Historians have generally taken this as proof of CVs leading role. See, for example, Julius Grodinsky,
Jay Gould: His Business Career, 1867–1892
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957), 150. However, Green seems to have been speaking casually; he misdated this event by a year (among other factual errors he made in his testimony), and may have been making the offhand connection between CV and HFC that most observers made at the time. I am not fully convinced that CV did in fact invest in Western Union at this time. See also SR 1262, 48th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 1, 948–9.

95
CT
, May 5, 6, 1870;
RRG
, May 7, June 4, 1870;
NYTr
, in
RRG
, May 21, 1870;
NYT
, May 25, 27, 1870;
RT
, June 18, 1870.

96
NYT
, November 23, 24, 1870.

97
CT
, August 29, 1870. CVs defenders often wrote that he engaged in secret charity disdaining public approbation; see a letter to the editor,
NYS
, September 24, 1870.

98
Edward M. Deems and Francis M. Deems,
Autobiography of Charles Force Deems and Memoir by his Sons
(New York: Fleming H. Reveli, 1897), 194, 196, 205;
NYTr
, October 24, 1878;
NYT
, September 2, 1870, August 3, 1874.

99
NYTr
, January 15, 1877; Deems, 206–7.

100
Deems, 207–8.

101
Deems, 208–14; Charles F. Deems to Mrs. Vanderbilt, August 6, 1870, Mrs. F. A. Vanderbilt Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library;
HC
, August 5, 1870;
NYT
, September 2, 1870.

102
CV was quoted by Edwin D. Worcester,
NYTr
, February 13, 1879.

103
NYS
, December 15, 1877.

104
CT
, September 3, 1871;
NYT
, October 15, November 2, 1871, August 3, 1874;
NYT
, January 5, 1877.

105
NYT
, March 20, 23, 1870;
NYS
, December 20, 1877; Ellen W. Vanderbilt to HG, October 18, 1871 [?], reel 3, HGP.

106
Cornelius J. Vanderbilt to George Terry, May 12, 1871, fold. 24, and Cornelius J. Vanderbilt to George Terry, n.d., fold. 26, box 59, ser. 13, Colt Family Papers, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Rhode Island.

107
NYH
, August 3, 1871;
NYT
, August 3, 18, September 3, 16, 1871.

108
NYW
, June 30, 1871, in
RRG
, July 8, 1871;
RT
, August 12, 1871;
HW
, February 3, 1872; Burrows & Wallace, 944.

109
Directors' Minutes, May 16, 1871, Lease Agreement, November 17, 1872, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR; NYSSD 41, February 28, 1872. The taking of land for the depot, under the state authorization of 1869, resulted in extended, tedious legal complications;
RT
, July 23, 1870.

110
NYT
, November 17, 1871; Burrows & Wallace, 929–31, 943–5.

111
NYH
, July 28, 1871;
Second Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, to the Stockholders for the Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 1871
(Cleveland: Fairbanks, Benedict & Co, 1872), Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

112
NYH
, October 20, 1871; RRG, October 28, 1871;
Second Annual Report of the… Lake Shore
.

113
CT
, May 6, 1871; NYT, April 25, 1871;
BM
, March 1872.

114
NYT
, September 7, 1871; Seymour J. Mandelbaum,
Boss Tweed's New York
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), 76–86; Burrows & Wallace, 1008–11. The Samuel J. Tilden Papers in the New York Public Library collections show frequent correspondence with AS.

115
NYT
, September 7, December 30, 1871;
CT
, August 7, 1872. As a sign of just how close AS and HFC were, HFC served as the equivalent of best man in AS's Quaker wedding in 1873;
CT
, March 27, 1873.

Eighteen
Dynasty

1
NYH
, January 13, 1872;
NYT
, October 17, 19, November 16, 17, 18, 22, 1871, December 12, 1871. For a count of the number of trains that ran on Fourth Avenue, see WHV's testimony, NYSSD 41, February 28, 1872. For earlier complaints about the noise and danger of the trains on Fourth Avenue, see Jonas P. Sevy to Corporation Counsel, July 27, 1868, Jonas P. Sevy to Corporation Counsel, July 27, 1868, box 1216, Mayor John T. Hoffman Correspondence, Mayors' Papers, NYMA.

2
NYH
, January 13, 1872.

3
NYT
, January 27, 1872.

4
Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), book 1, chap. 10, part 1, 148; Alfred D. Chandler Jr.,
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 137.

5
John D. Rockefeller Sr. to Laura S. Rockefeller, December 15, 1871, fold. 270, box 36, Record Group 1.2, Rockefeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.; Ron Chernow,
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr
. (New York: Random House, 1998), 133–8; Edward Harold Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie
(New York: Ticker Publishing, 1908), 467–70; Rolland Harper Maybee,
Railroad Competition and the Oil Trade, 1855–1873
(Mount Pleasant, Mich.: Extension Press, 1940), 244–6, 253, 263–4, 280, 282, 285–305.

6
John D. Rockefeller Sr. to Laura S. Rockefeller, December 15, 1871, fold. 270, box 36, Record Group 1.2, Rockefeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y;
NYT
, August 22, 28, 1879; WHV to J. H. Devereaux, July 2, 1872, and John D. Rockefeller to J. H. Devereux, December 7, 1872, fold. 19, box 1, New York Central Railroad Collection, Albany Institute for History and Art, Albany, N.Y; H. E. Sargent to JFJ, May 16, 1874, JFJP; JMD to EC, June 3, 1868, fold. 8, box 39, ECP; Chernow, 110–7. Rolland Harper Maybee,
Railroad Competition and the Oil Trade, 1855–1873
(Mount Pleasant, Mich.: Extension Press, 1940), is an excellent study of the economics of oil traffic for railroads, and the advantages of the SIC.

7
CT
, April 3, 1872; NYSAD 38, 103rd sess., 1880, 40–1;
H W
, July 12, 1873;
RRG
, June 13, 1874; Maybee, 101–10, 165–72, 182–8, 286; James A. Ward,
J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvania
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 95–6, 140–51; Scott Reynolds Nelson,
Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 71–94; Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 151–6. On Scott's role as mentor to Carnegie, see David Nasaw,
Andrew Carnegie
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 55–85.

8
Nasaw, 59–60, 61–3, 105–112; Nelson, 138–62; Maybee, 101, 114, 133–8, 286. Nasaw writes, 122, that Scott “followed the standard financing practices of the time and established improvement companies,” whereas Scott had pioneered the form. Ward, 150, notes that Scott, for example, organized the Pennsylvania Company, a subsidiary corporation that owned or leased the Pennsylvania's western connections.