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Understanding 9/11tv The First Tycoon CSPAN February 19, 2017 8:01am-9:14am EST
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stiles talks about his book "the first tycoon: the epic life of cornelius vanderbilt" the author recounts the career of the man who was central in in establishing modern capitalism. whose fleet of steamships and railroad holdings allowed them to possess one of the largest fortunes in world history. this was recorded at the new york city public library in 2009. it is but an hour and 10 minutes. t.j.: thanks for everyone coming this evening. it is a pleasure to be your the library. this is once again succeeded in bringing the publication and extending -- an outstanding work of literature. the first tycoon takes its place this year as the biography of record. one of the greatest and most neglected figures in american business else -- history. cornelius vanderbilt's been shipping route roads and finance spanned an incredible epic indie industrial -- in the industrial development of this industry. from the very beginning powers
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of steam to the time together of the north american continent in rail. writes, nos businessman equal vanderbilt in his impact on american history. none proved to be so influential periodfundamental over a so formative for so long. the common or lived to be 82 and played a key role in so many events in his to mulch was life. from the very beginnings of steamboat travel on the hudson river to the seminal supreme court case. gibbons the audition -- v o gden. , theransatlantic travel california gold rush, the growth of the u.s. into a continental nation. the start of travel across the nation and the planting of the seed that was to become the panama canal. the crushing of the notorious
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american filibuster william walker in his attempt to abscond with the country of nicaragua. the destruction of the ironclad merrimack and the safeguarding of the gold shipments was quite a seminal part in winning the civil war. the stock and regulations of the railroad and the birth of the modern corporation. the consolidation of the great new york rail lines. the growth of new york city into the first city in america and a major world hub of finance and trade complete with its first grand central station. vanderbilt played a major part in all of these events. as stiles writes, the comet or possibly left its mark on america's most basic beliefs. he started in business as the very epitome of the jacksonian ideal. the workingmen desired only a level playing field. he ended it as a symbol of
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inequality and monopoly in the gilded age. what made americans question for the first time the dangers. he was interim until in a quaint and americans with the idea of modern corp. nations -- corporations. when vanderbilt was a young man, americans worked on most exclusively as farmers and small businessmen. what money they saw was mostly solid coin. corporations were a rarity. they were mostly done to public project such as roads and canals before and disbanded. by the time vanderbilt died americans had been introduced to , paper money. stocks, bonds and even more abstract representations. even if they were still uneasy about it. in getting more uneasy all the time. vanderbilt's own life served as an ethic. they started out as a teenage farmboy so -- sailing home a ferry across new york harbor.
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by the time of his death he was estimated to be the second richest man in america with a fortune of $100 million. stiles writes that if vanderbilt had somehow been able to liquidate his entire estate, he would've received one out of every nine dollars in circulation. , worth $57 billion the height of his wealth had been able to liquidate all of his estates, he would've been entitled to one out of every $138 in circulation. it not come by this money easily . vanderbilt was a tough, capable and stunningly intelligent man and his life one -- is one of almost constant competition. he fought in every arena available. from fistfights of the docs to filing in defending himself in countless lawsuits.
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he launched endless coups on wall street and corporate boardrooms, whipping his prize in the upper regions. on that on atent least two occasions left him pitched out headfirst on the road. he was a hard man who was hard on those around him, including a wife he seemed to have driven to a sanitarium. sons-in-law sue had to consummate prove their worth. the daughters who snubbed his second wife and bitterly contested his will. the son who suffered a nervous breakdown. and two more sons who lived tragic lives and never taking -- did gain his approval. he was also a man capable of love. of great works of charity in the last years of his life. even of sentiment. as witnessed by his repeated attempts to contact old friends
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and loved ones. it is both a great personal and public story. does a magnificent job of guiding us through a life of crowded events. there was a colorful supporting cast. full of such names as james banker, fernando wood, simon chase, big jim fisk, emily --thorne. , augustus shell. to name just a few. in short, it is a terrific read.
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james pardon once wrote of the young thomas jefferson that he could calculate any clips, , tie andd estate artery. in the same vein, one could say cornelius vanderbilt could design a ship, sale it over the ocean run a shipping line, , consolidate a railroad, brady -- short a stock. build a rail depot, found a university and raise an army. >> and all before lunchtime. >> this juxtaposition of skills is a great deal about what america became in vanderbilt's time. i think also, in view of what has gone on in the country's economy and over wall street over the past few months.
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viewing general motors's amended plan where it revised the miles per gallon that cars were going to get. anyone would seem that in comparing those executives for the bonus and going bankrupt. they would ask a henry ford or alias vanderbilt, what happened. how did we go from that to this? >> thank you for having me here. i was a fellow at the coleman center. it was an incredible experience. without them, my book would not have been possible. thanks to the staff, including the manuscript department. i just want to make that very important thank you. that difference, that transition is visible during vanderbilt's life. one thing i point out that vanderbilt himself was both a pioneer and was part of an older
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business world. he was the merchant prince of the medici mold. by creating the hudson river railroad, it pioneered these giant corporations we were talking about. his primary rivals was the pennsylvania railroad. one of the four primary railroads in the country. the pennsylvania railroad is very interesting because it's managers represent the modern model of management. they managers were andrew carnegie's mentors. vanderbilt was someone who purchased a controlling share in the stock of the corporation, moved into management and then
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what he would do is he would not take a salary. he would only take remunerations through dividends on the stock. we've moved away from this. we expect stocks and shares to grow in value. at that time, it was the primary thing investors look for. a steady return every year. vanderbilt had to make his railroads pay. he had to make it possible year -- profitable year in and year out. by contrast the pennsylvania , railroad paid dividends pretty successfully. up to a point. >> this is mostly a stocks worked at the time and you mostly pay dividends. investors were concerned about the stock going up and down. >> prices tend to fluctuate. you didn't see steady, ever-increasing growth. that would've been fishy to people.
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the pennsylvania railroad had these managers that were not a -- majority shareholders. they did stuff off of the side. thomas a scott was famous in one case for being so politically influential that he got the pennsylvania governor to sign a bill 34 minutes after it was introduced. they would funnel their railroad's business through these corporations. in many ways they would funnel , money out of the company. they ran it fairly well up to a point. when the panic of 1873 hit, the railroad had to stop hang dividends and the shareholders were looking into what they were doing. vanderbilt's corporations were ran like it was private personal property.
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how do we get here? you see the origins. the separation of management from ownership and owners and shareholders were not really paying attention. that creates an incentive for the agents who are running the country to engage in stuff on the side. and not to be looking over towards the long-term health of the company. it is an incentive, it doesn't guarantee malfeasance. you see that origin. >> vanderbilt seems to have always been hand on. >> i think that is true. in the end of his life, during his when he was a railroad chief, he testified before a state legislative committee. they said, are you a practical manager? re: someone setting timetables. he said no, i am not like that. that's not entirely true. people would feel his wrath.
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part, when he got to the railroad deals, he relinquished operational control. always seemed, it to be able to outcompete other lines. whether it was steamships or other railroads. fore was a certain genius the business and how customers could be lured away. t.j.: it is not a very sexy subject. that is a consistent trade you see and successful managers. the most successful robber barons. andrew carnegie is a good example, they cut costs. they were more successful in the rivals. --vanderbilt said he could not run a steamship or railroad 20% or 30% lower. >> in the end of the book, when you have these populist -- the start of the grange and these populist movements out west with a huge complaint from
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with their secret pricing system. fine, we'll be happy to compete on equal basis. >> what they are saying is they here no problem with them in that. >> what they are saying is they are complaining on that special legislation like thomas a scott would pass. the railroads and get special laws passed. vanderbilt's response to that complaint was as long as the laws were the same for everybody, i am on board. as long as the rules are the same, i can beat anyone. kevin: it was a very rough and tumble business time. with few defined ethics. you get the sense he was something of an honorable man in a sense. he had his own sense of honor. t.j.: that is a really interesting trait of his.
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his business peers had this love-hate is the wrong way to put it, this sort of respect-hate relationship with him. one of the reasons that the book is longer than it might have been is because i try to write more than a business story. it was about the culture in the -- the making of american culture. you mentioned the culture of deference that was held over in the 19th century. in vanderbilt's very first years in steamboats, i found these letters from these old families. saying they are undercutting prices, have you heard of anything so scandalous? the idea of an individualistic,
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competitive economy word was no holds barred was a major cultural shift. business was not just business. it was changing american culture. the idea of individualism and competitiveness was a huge shift. vanderbilt was very much on the forefront. meanwhile there was a new code of honor that was emerging. it was sort of like good sportsmanship in a way. rather than we are all gentlemen, let's cut deals, which they did do, the new code of a fair fight code. he very much stuck to that. he would say that he found letters in the library. he said that you know my word is as good as my bond and it was very important to him to develop that reputation.
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fair might of been putting your fairy but across the pier. tearing up or burning down the stationr guy's ferry may been ok. there was an insane race between henry clay and the steamship down the hudson. and amazingly wild race. there is confront people of the boat at stops and barely pumping along. at the end of this, the henry clay's boiler explodes. it kills about hundred 50 people out of yonkers. steamboat explodes. this was basic commuter -- transportation at the time. >> not only that this was like a , spectator sport. it really matter to people that they were on the fastest boat. >> many were cheering it on.
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the ones who aren't panicked. t.j.: there were two sets of passengers, the ones that were very excited about the racing and the ones that insisted on being towed behind a barge -- behind the boat. kevin: all of that was reworked. that was ok. all of these people ended up respecting the commodore for fighting to the death on scene ships and rail lines. then you get down to jay gold and big jim fisk. they stepped over the whole bounds. >> that is interesting, you go from this early era of steamboats, which for a lot of business reasons are very competition oriented because they warned that expensive.
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a small group of people could get together and build one and you could move up between markets. after competing for a while, you could take it somewhere else. one of my favorite examples of that era is in 1838, the staten island ferry boater ordered his captain to ram another ferry. i found these court accounts from people on the ferry. >> he'll must did. >> the passengers on the other ferry, when they got to staten island, they nearly murdered the captain. then you get to the railroad era. what is different about railroads is they are fixed pieces of infrastructure. you can have a price war. what's going to happen at the end?
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you have to come to some sort of terms because the other guy is still there. due to the nature of railroads, because they are so capital intensive, even if you had no business at all, your fixed expenses of maintaining and having a railroad were still high. a railroad that was in bad shape would cut prices. even if they were losing money, it was better than losing more money. railroads were stuck. there is an incentive to undercut prices. vanderbilt takes part in something that is going on before his time, gentlemen's agreements. what you hadn't early america reappears because of business logic where you have these cartels, they had elaborate cartels where they had commissions, they would hire a commissioner who could fire people from individual railroads
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who were undercutting prices. at the same time, vanderbilt himself was rising in social stature. he is taking on a business that is inclined toward gentlemanly agreements. he himself is becoming more gentlemanly. toward the end of his life, his personality and demeanor was much more inclined towards the young steamboat captain. there was a curious parallel in business. jay gould and jim fisk come along and they are doing things like talking about secret deals with the press. they are to liberally trying to insult and demean the commodore. he became obsessed with them. even of the railroad was not in a position to do a lot of harm it became this famous rivalry in , the american press between these businessmen.
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>> they actually start just certificatesk without anything behind them. just pure larceny. timesomehow avoided jail over this. >> there were strict laws that -- comedyhow much shares you could issue of the company. this is a minute or need to go into, but it has to do with the whole kind of cultural ferment around the rise of security. people felt that a share of stock represented $100 of extra -- fixed capital. when you increase the number of shares without building new business -- physical infrastructure, it was seen as -- by the most intellectual figures as fraud.
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vanderbilt was front corner the market in the shares. they started printing shares like crazy. it was a very famous episode where vanderbilt got a judge to issue arrest warrants. here they are, officers of one of the leading and largest corporations in america. racing away from the police with barrels of greenbacks. they set up shop in fort taylor over in new jersey. the garden state welcome them. so to settle the matter, jay gould went to albany with some cash. legislative see both sides of the issue depending on how much -- helping the suitcase was. vanderbilt managed to force them to pay back what he lost.
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it was an incredible episode. >> he ended up -- eat never really for gave them for it but he did try to contact jim fisk. >> about the time of the civil starts to vanderbilt try and contact the dead. people were going to mediums all the time to contact the dead. i don't think vanderbilt based -- drew any business or based any decisions on this. i've personally don't believe in spiritualism. i don't think mediums were contacting the dead. i think you're saying a lot of nonsense. vanderbilt clued into that too. there was a great incident that you were referring to. he called up the ghost of jim fisk.
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vanderbilt asked him about stock. the answers made no sense at all. vanderbilt said what you talking about. ghost.arguing with the the mr. to joke at each other and said how do you like on the other side? he said you find out soon enough. it was a hilarious incident. he found comfort with those but didn't make decisions off them. that rivalry, there is a quote that i never found a good source for. for vanderbilt saying it. it is still one of my favorite because it summarizes his. he supposedly said it never pays to kick a skunk. i wish i could document it. i couldn't document it. it was his attitude towards jay gould.
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in the end, in the most important battles, he either held his own or came out better. jay gould managed to embarrass him. it's one of the reasons why he was so embittered about it. during the great war, jay gould fisk radically undercut prices for cattle cars in the midwest. finally, the new york central railroad went from 150 dollars per cattle. -- for cattle to one dollar a car. jay gould and jim fisk were buying thousands of cattle in chicago and shipping it over to new york central for nothing. once they did commit a loud announcement of the press. it was actually a trivial dispute. it was that kind of getting under his skin. by contrast, some that we
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contact -- talked about before, other businessmen would have vicious fights and would not be personal. that story inadvertently shows the whole span of then to build's life. one of the people he is competing against his daniel drew who is supposedly started watering stock and driving little stock into new york. that's a got beef to market in the early 19th century. he would beat it lots of salt and water at the collect pond. that is where the court houses are now. he would drive the cattle down there. they would pick up water and go on. that became the five points. the whole city grubber on there. by the end of his career, he was fighting these wars over transporting cattle by the thousands across the country.
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mrs. all the change they railroads and brought. to talk about another skunk for a moment. william walker who was called a filibuster. nothing to do with the senate procedure. at the time and referred to a booter, someone who would try to go down and take over a country. there was a rash of these. americans decided to go down with a handful of mercenaries. they would start fighting in a civil war in a latin american country and try to take it over. this is considered a great thing by southern and confederate leaning individuals. they would thought -- think it to have a natural area slavery. >> especially in the case of cuba.
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after the fall of the spanish empire, cuba remained the star of the spanish overseen -- overseas possessions. there was a large human -- large-scale slavery are ready and lots of humans fighting for independence. humanwas also a large population in new york. my classmate is writing about this. , the southerners looking to explant savory were fascinated to expand slavery were fascinated with it. walker ended up landing in san francisco. he made it to mexico unsuccessfully. then he got a contract to fight for one side in the nicaraguan civil war. he sailed off with 56 men to fight for one side in nicaragua's own perpetual civil war. int is a country where
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vanderbilt's life, human radical changes in the california gold rush was the first. he is been involved in steamboat lines through the northeast and the gold rush started, he abruptly got out of that and looked into transatlantic and california bound steamships. andmain route of congress much of migration was by toamship and crossing panama another steamship on the pacific. then it will try to build a canal and couldn't get funding. they would carry people across the waterways in nicaragua by boat. he sold out, went on a grand tour of europe, engage in other affairs. then he started buying control of this company. use doingy moment that, walker sailed off to nicaragua. he was a terrible general.
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generalship mainly included ordering frontal attacks. t.j.: this reflected the filibuster attitude. we are americans. one of us is worth 10 of them. go get them. fortunately, he carries out one maneuver by luck. he manages to win by luck. by luck, he is the leading general and head of state for his side dies and he ends up being the strong man in nicaragua and you can even speak spanish. thousands of americans are excited by this, they want to come down to join him. meanwhile, this is a story that completely overturns the whole conjunctions about how this played out.
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the papers i found here, legal papers that her lawyer has in the manuscript department. most people said vanderbilt's rivals within the company knew he was taking control. they said give us control of the rights to carry passengers and we will bring free reinforcements. in fact, a friend of walker's went to the san francisco , one of the company guys who betrays vanderbilt and said your company will be destroyed. walker's my friend, i will tell them to destroy it. you.l sell the rights to there is a hilarious exchange where garrison said that i can -- couldn't do anything against the company. but i don't want to fall with them. this whole story plays out with these political, corrupt
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political figures. these self-interested characters woven through the 1850's. it was a good part of american culture. walker carried it out in nicaragua. walker gives the right to the company. vanderbilt unsuccessfully tried to get the u.s. government and the british to intervene. they don't want help for various reasons. walker brings back slavery and written to -- nicaragua. inhe had no interest bringing nicaragua to the u.s.. he had his napoleonic divisions that he would conquer latin america. thesebilt carried out private foreign policies, negotiating with neighbors.
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in man was acquitted because no one saw him committing murder. he had worked in nicaragua. fed about sent them off to costa rica with the created -- crate of gold and rivals. he let a commando raid. seized all of the steamboats and cut them off from his reinforcements. it is coming out of a conrad novel. vanderbilt owed a cap and money for something. because of it he is obstructing everything vanderbilt is doing. they are refusing to hand over the ships. until vanderbilt pays him back. t.j.: thousands of people would have lived. granted that sends a guy who says tell scott i own the company.
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take control of the steamboats, the british had a fleet of air. protected steamboats from the walk -- from walker and cut everything off from the beginning. the local guy who vanderbilt at hide -- tired when he was 17 years old. i am a owedy says $17,000. until i'm paid, not cooperating. as a result, this entire international incident plays out. when they win the war and vanderbilt sends out a guy to take control, he chases them off the boat with a rival -- rifle and revolvers you don't pay me. because of his personal debt that hasn't been paid, it and a -- ends up changing history for four or five countries. then to the hires him in the end. >> i don't know the later
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history of what happened, i do know that when consequences of this episode is that what vanderbilt found when he tried to get business going again -- he won the war. nicaraguans would walk up to the line and allowing to carry passengers. we'll must lost our nationality, we can't just do it again. >> in the midst of this whole war, walker ends up burning down most of the capital. he ruined the country. >> he was truly an international criminal. he was the dr. evil of his day. only a real one. >> something we've completely blanked from our past. -- as made into a very bad
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very weird ed harris movie. >> a movie with a message. >> a very strange movie. another part of vanderbilt at in, the whole thing for which he went out to fight with the merrimack or send a ship out. that was the first ironclad. the confederacy had built that which threaten the entire civil war plan of the union which was to blockade the south. all of a sudden, the south is built this ironclad ship that can sink american warships immediately. it looks in vulnerable. shells kind of burst off it. own shipt is, with his to combat it. complexgoes to the nature of vanderbilt because he was somebody who -- i'm sure he never read adam smith, and he
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firmly believed in the invisible hand and he believes that we make progress in society by everybody pursuing their own interest as fiercely as possible. he firmly believed that it was his duty as a citizen, you pursue your interests and to fight for them. he thought that is what everybody should do. one of the exceptions of that is that he was deeply patriotic. he had three sons. he named the matter is heroes, george washington, william henry harrison, and cornelius vanderbilt. around, civil war came he tried to give his largest steamship to the navy and they said no. the secretary of the navy was a little prickly. they never thought the war would last that long. it would be sort of white elephant for the navy. vanderbilt ended up being forced
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against his will to lease it for very large sums to the war department. that we willtory have -- that will have the free market people shaking their heads. it would've been a crazy result. the merrimack comes steaming out of the northern harbor. standstill.to a there was only one ship that could handle the merrimack. it had simple mechanical breakdowns. war telegraphof vanderbilt and said can you help. he rushed to washington met with lincoln and lincoln said what can you do? he said i will outfit my largest ship and bring it down. probably what will happen is they won't risk the merrimack against it. that is actually ended up
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happening. lincoln said how much will you charge. then to build said free, i am giving it to you. itdid very things to protect from the shells and brought it down personally with extraordinary authority from lincoln to personally see -- decide how the -- how it should be deployed. basically bottled up the merrimack. they never rest -- risked it against the vanderbilt. >> it could've been nuven and possibly rammed it. ed as a cruiser to go after the alabama. there is a big duel between the cap in the alabama who wants to get revenge against the vanderbilt. he goes after the gold shipments coming from california and
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there's a great little story that played out. >> a hard man to live with it seems. a hard man on his family. you kind of hint that he took -- possibly tos doubt his anxieties at home. he was particularly hard on his sons. the oldest has a breakdown after working for a short time on wall street. he goes and starts a farm on staten island. that is very successful. he eventually comes back and inherits most of the fortune in the business. the other two, cornelius is an epileptic. he was a near do well.
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george washington vanderbilt was almost mysterious. he signs up and goes through west point. he was in the union army, but goes awol. >> something i found in the national archives, the youngest son was by all accounts -- vanderbilt's pride and joy. of the three sons, he only liked it -- she was the only one like vanderbilt that was athletic. vanderbilt was a man of immense physical capabities. he stood tall. this is a guy who got involved and won fistfights into his 50's. he was not just good business, he was also a good card, and next horse racer, he was somebody who was always out to compete and win under his circumstances.
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one of his sons is an epileptic, william -- >> may have been gay. son william was very good in business, but he was pudgy and unathletic. he was a sad sack in his demeanor. here was george washington, tall, athletic. started in the civil war. he went awol, he was court-martialed and convicted which didn't end his career. he returned to duty. he was never signed to combat duty. in a getting sick and died during the civil war. he didn't die on the battlefield. then will deserve broken up about it. i think that contribute to his interest in spiritualism. cornelius isut that he takes up a lot of space in the book. not only because he was a an
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important part of vanderbilt's life and not only is a lot of material, but because he was everything his father wasn't. he was physically affect did -- afflicted, he was morally weak and he was a real addict. he was boastful, a cheat, he was stealing money. with horace greeley as his friend and mentor. he ended up owing money. it was a source of great shame and anger for vanderbilt. his first wife said that his attitude toward corneel was stubborn in consistency. this relationship is important, but it was one of the ways in which i got access to this moral and emotional complexity. a man because these great personal capabilities comes across as this kind of two-dimensional figure.
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cornelius, it brings up this human side and complicated feelings. >> the whole relationship with the first wife put in the asylum for a while and took out. a lot of ups and downs around vanderbilt's probable propensity for various mistresses. >> very hard to tell. >> the thing about the statue for a moment. the physical city that vanderbilt shaped, he was these -- this land speculator. he loaned money here and there. he built these depots. it is amazing to me, the rise and fall of the time. you have st. john's park. which, gramercy -- which gramercy park is modeled after. it was, in the space of 40 years, it went from being a plot of land owned by trinity church
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to being the most fashionable neighborhood in the city, to being something of a run down, abandoned neighborhood. to being a rail depot that vanderbilt built their, to being the entrance to the tunnel -- the holland tunnel. nobody knows this place existed anymore in new york. it was forgotten out of modern memory. >> imagine someone taking gramercy park and putting it tunnel there. >> nobody would've ever heard of it 50 years later. it is amazing how fast new york was changing. they built this depot and put the original statue of the commodore up. i guess has been lost? >> i haven't been able to track it down.
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it was very much like a gated park like gramercy park. they ripped it down and put up this huge freight depot. at the top was the statue of vanderbilt. bronze -- one either side that depicted his career. that part of the statue was moved right into the terminal. interesting -- i keep saying it's interesting, i think it is because i wrote the book. i know it archivist at wells fargo and so i said i do know if you will like the book because wells fargo was kind of an enemy in the book. around.rgo is still good point.
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in addition to his legacy in creating the corporate world in developing this kind of financial and economic, as i put the unseen architecture of the world. he also built this infrastructure. he built the original grand central. he built the time of it runs up park avenue. constructed a lot of the railroad structure that to this day's a vital part of the city. he has a good reason for revenue statue up there. >> metaphorically, it is almost the last stand. there is the commodore any traffic breaking around him. the cars overwhelmed society. it is amazing the way this will run. there is a depot there because a law -- because of a law in the city against having steam powered rails below 42nd street. it would be a catastrophe for people being run over. on top of this, you're the trains coming down to grand
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central. wouldould -- the trains decouple the engine from rest of the train at a precise moment to keep the -- too much team from coming into the train shed. actually coming to new york, your engine would slide up onto unpoweredand are payload would glide in. think about how you must judge that. >> presumably, they slow down a little bit. >> what an amazing way to do it. >> you have to think about how new york was a lowrise city. as dickens described it in the 1840's, it was a jumbled heard
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buildings with here and there a steeple picking up. grand central was just gigantic. it was his second largest railroad depot in the world. largest in the western hemisphere. a gigantic building with enormous -- with enormous roof. when they constructed grand central, much of it was paid for by vanderbilt personally. he bought stock that was issued for it. this in norms piece of infrastructure. towas a major contribution the whole development of midtown . it was there because of certain it was the financial capacities in the planning of us on the brought into place. a sort of modern industrial powered infrastructure to this huge and crowded city.
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undergroundbuild an railway down to city hall. he decided it wouldn't pay in the end. yet she chartered a corporation to try and build a subway in the end decided it wouldn't pay. >> how was it -- >> we are running short on time. >> in terms of writing the book, how was it, does hereby per se they don't want to spend time with them. >> a good note to go out on. brendan mattox is a great biographer. calledte one that was -- what's love got to do with it? that is a great way to look at it.
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-- it is ok, the secret for me is are there big questions? is there drama that turns their life? are there big questions that interests me intellectually? finally, the donut be nice, but they have to be human. , pullinghe struggle out that emotional complexity so that we may not want to spend an hour in a railroad car with him, but we can understand where he is coming from with his full complexity is a human being coming out. when i start to get into that, it was really fascinating for me. it was ok with me if he was a hard man. because it was a human being. that made it something. >> the complexity comes across in the outstanding book. thank you very much for writing
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it. [applause] >> i guess if we have questions, >> do we have a microphone for questions? >> remember, no thronging. things thehe contrary to vanderbilt that may in fact be apocryphal i think comes from the william walker era. he got a sears of people and said gentlemen, your wrong to me, i would sue you, but the law takes too long. instead, i will ruin you.
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>> that is considered the most famous letter in american business history. gentlemen, you've undertaken to ruin me, you of -- the law takes too long, i will ruin you. however, the first time that wasared that i could find in his obituary in the new york times. o careful writer took something he heard that actually echoes testimony he gave in 1867 in a completely different -- 20 years later, an unrelated issue when he'd shut off all train traffic in new york city. he said the law to my mind is too slow when i have the power my own hand to punish.
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that was a specific incident that was years later in a thicket got translated into this letter which i don't think he wrote. what happened is he had gone off on this grand two were of -- tour of europe in it was on a 1863. private yacht. while he was away, his partners in the accessory transit company betrayed him and kicked him out of the country. -- company. they held back money owed to him. he came back and that set the stage for a big business battle. he wrote a letter to the press saying that i will sue you. what he really did was exactly the opposite. he said if we can settle this -- cannot settle this, and the court will decide. did not decide. he started a rival line and compete until they paid him off. is essentially american, he was going to sue >> this is
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first. something that was very interesting in researching this book. court records were very -- absolutely critical. i stumbled into the new york -- the old records edition of the new york county clerk's office. i had never seen the new york county clerk's office in -- cited in histories of this period. ofre were computerized index all the court records going back to the 1600s. there were looking -- i was looking at old papers of people getting divorce decrees. they would bring out these bundled papers and out have to be careful not to break them when they -- when i will would fold them. it would all have these testimonies about secret deals. they weren't suing because someone was inside trading, it is because they did not divide up the profits properly.
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his lawsuits, he sued again and again. often it was just a matter of leverage in negotiations. he was never afraid of the courts. if he could deal without the courts, he preferred that. and the end of his life, he was in court all the time. it is interesting moment talk about our litigious society today. >> the first lawsuit he filed was in 1816. he was 22 years old. at least for lawsuit which the papers survive. the litigious society goes along -- all the way back to the beginning. another question? two questions. first, do watch gossip girl? there are descendents supposedly
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on the show of the vanderbilt's. last week on them had season tickets the mets game. you got to be a vanderbilt to have them. second question -- >> give me a chance to answer that one. no, go ahead [laughter] >> in your estimation, did any of the later figures that we now know as robber barons, did they approach vanderbilt's achievements. let's say andrew carnegie is probably the greatest in the group, i was wondering what you thought about the ones that followed? t.j.: this is a difficult question, because if you are a biographer, your sort of automatically convinced that your writing the most important person that ever lived. maybe my answer is in fair. maybe my answer is not fair. vanderbilt dealt personally with rockefeller and he overlaps with carnegie, also.
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toted to sell steel rails vanderbilt railway company. one difference about vanderbilt with these other -- there are at least as important as vanderbilt. vanderbilt covered a longer and more informative period. so, the corporate world and financial markets that rockefeller and carnegie and a lot of these later figures don't with, vanderbilt helped create -- figures dealt with, vanderbilt helped create. the united states had a continent spanning country. vanderbilt played a role in something the geographical expansion of the u.s. as i said, the making of, you know, our economic values. vanderbilt was at the heart of that. even as a young man printing advertising, jacksonian rhetoric explicitly. to i don't want in any way diminish the important people like rockefeller and carnegie or
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ford. what they did is incredibly important in developing the economy and also in creating a lot of practices, jpmorgan, of course, and a very different way, jeanne strauss has written brilliantly about his importance. and as a banker he intersected and dealt with so many other areas of industrial america, railroads and other area spirit i do not want to diminish their imports. to a certain extent, it is meaningless to say, who is up and who's down. the the the station i would make is that vanderbilt covered a very formative period. i wouldistinct and make. born in the presidency of george washington. starting his business as a teenager before the war of 1812 for there were a few million americans within along the coastal strip of the atlantic and ending his days after making deals with john d reppo fella. it is hard to match a that length and of that -- with john d rockefeller.
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the case that i make humbly, because he has other guys are so important, is that that is key to his significance. blethe most compara seems to me is ford. somebody who built the first car seat has. came, you know, adapted the assembly line to race cars as an advertisement for them. worked out the plan to pay his workers enough to create a market for his products. and even ford did not switch suddenly like midlife and go into building airplanes or something. which is essentially what -- he built tractors and things, too. that's true, but that was the -senile, andquasi they take a plant away from him and everything. but it is, you know, vanderbilt's amazing, the hands is part of it i think
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almost unique. t.j.: one of the things about the book as it is almost a history of the american economy just because he had such an unerring sense for the primary channel of commerce and he would seize upon it to become the most successful competitor. when philadelphia and new york were the two main financial centers, that is where his transportation line ran. then the theory canal opened and he is operating on the hudson. new the textile mills in england -- in the year canal opened and he is operating on the hudson. then the gold rush. just one step after another, he e for wherering sens the vital center of commerce was and goes directly to that and manages to find a route and a transportation system that had a decisive strategic advantage over his competitors. and then made it pay in a way nobody else could. >microphone is coming.
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>> the personal -- on him in terms of his own life, security. he had so many enemies. t.j.: that is an interest in question because there's a book today, wall street exploded"." we have seen a lot of attention given to the fact that, uh, these titans have been threatened and attacked in the past. in then to both case, not that i know of. as a matter of fact, vanderbilt was famous, late in life, in his 70's and 80's, -- he had a reputation for accepting all callers in his private office on west 4th street in washington square. baker,d race, as kevin he would race his fast trott ers through the role roads of manhattan. into the 1850's and 1840's, the
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man was in his 50's and he occasionally got into fist fights. he had this reputation that i found court records where the guy i s suing and vanderbilt's lawyer saying " vanderbilt gently laid his hands on him to remove him." >> dragracing in upper manhattan. couldhe was a guy who take care of himself. i do not think he came in for personal threats. >> he dies just before the kind of class war and the u.s. heats up. later in the year, he dies, there's a huge nationwide rail strike, 1877. .j.: i guess he would've been in the thick of that if he had lived. that is something that i try to bring out in my book that, one reason why oi'm glad you're doing this event is that your novels bring out the
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multilayered society in new york. >> thanks. t.j.: so well. a wealthy focusing on individual, that is something i can only touch upon. i try to talk about the fact that this is a society that is growing were polarized. in which, with the rise of large enterprise, you have the rise of labor movements and of mass armies of people working for wages, new in america. the social complexity of america develops through his life. and so, vanderbilt, it would've been very interesting to see what it happened if he had remained alive and in control for your two more, because 1877 was a violent nationwide labor conflicts. really interesting and troubling episode. >> he goes my guy that cannot spell from having his daughter, is it his daughter that starts the society 400? t.j.: the grand --
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[talking over each other. ] ] vanderbilt had what was considered a substantial mansion but later in life very much like ethan wharton's novel. vanderbilt was the washington square, old, even though the people in that novel would have shunned him, he had a substantial brownstone but nothing fancier than that. but as soon as he died and as soon as the trial was settled, his son and his grandchildren start putting up the gilded edge palaces. they waited until the old man was gone until they started spending lavishly. i think he would've thought it was a lot of nonsense. he could than $18,000 on a racehorse by building a pal would've beenace -- palace is an extravagance beyond -- >> with all of his accomplishments, did he never think of science, medicine? was that sort of gone?
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t.j.: that is a good question. you know, is a little side note, he, you know, for much of his life, what we would think of as modern science and technical education and development did not exist. he was a self educated engineer, essentially. he was probably one of the , leading architects of the paddlewheel era. often going against conventional wisdom. he was technically himself quite accomplished when it came to naval engineering, but when it comes to charity, um, he was a man who's not known for charity. his friends claimed that he hated boasting, so they claimed he engaged in private charity. who knows right he really did? at the end of his life, he did make a point of endowing vanderbilt university in nashville. however, i think there's good reason to think that yes, he
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wanted to create an institute of learning because he did feel throughout his life the fact that he was uneducated. and every chance he had to speak, and this is the great era of oratory, you cannot have tea without somebody getting up and giving it to our speech, he refused to speak. he would have someone else speak for him. did feel his lack of education. the part of his project with vanderbilt university reflected part of his patriotism. having given $1 million steamship to the navy, he made it a personal project to try to reach out to the south after the civil war. of course, she was -- he was seeing the white south. his second wife was an unrepentant confederate. he thought that was great. he had general braxton bragg, who would denounce the abolition tyrant in wartime orders as a witness at his second wedding. so, when he reached out to the south, we are talking about the white shouth, but it did -- did reflect but it
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the sincere patriotism that he wanted to kind of show that northern men who fought for the union wanted to restore the union afterwards. so, that is why he very much wanted to endow the university in the south. what would vanderbilt saito obama right now about what's -- with ourama right now financial system, with our economy? what would his advice be? t.j.: he would wonder how a black man became president. i think that would astound him. that is a difficult question. and i think we are probably, should we make this the last question? so, this is the sort of question that historians hate, because, frankly, anyone of you could get up and make a pronouncement on this and would be as accurate as anything i could say. it is un provable. what i would say is this -- that there are two size to him. one, he believed in
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laissez-faire. which had been a radical philosophy in his youth but also neatly suited him when he lives a corporate chieftain in the end. he did not believe in the government getting involved in the economy. as he once put it, when they were trying to pass a law in new york state to regulate the railroads, he thought in terms of private interests being the key. he said, well, if you can pass a theirat makes men serve interest more effectively than their interests themselves will compel them, that is fine, but i do not think you can. thought that society works by everyone pursuing her own interest for it on the other hand, he grasped the economy which, after the civil war, the federal government had taken on unprecedented new involvement in the economy. when the panic of 1873 hit, he stepped in. he said the treasury should be increasing liquid in the markets by issuing greenbacks. limited butng for a a clear type of federal intervention in the economy.
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very much limited compared to what we are doing now. so, no, i can't tell you what he would say to president obama. but i can say that at the very least he would've had, have a sophisticated view, and a pragmatic view. so, he did have these clear laissez-faire justin in police -- jacksonian police. on the other hand, he took the world as it was her he saw what he needed them a what needed to be done to make it work under the rules that existed. he probably would have, you know, at the very least, given him a pragmatic view of what is going up. bei thing he would astonished by businessmen who expected the government to bail them out and then still expected to have a major say in how they would run things. he would be amazed at that, the idea that you could rely on somebody else for the money and still inspect to be in charge. it would go against and philosophically. make your bed and
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lit by the results. when he lost, he did everything he could to get back what was his. but, you know, as he said, you your friends and suffer the consequences. thank you very much. negr [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] located in downtown richmond, the white house of the confederacy is where confederate president jefferson davis and his family lived from 1861 until the evacuation of richmond in april, 1855. following the end of the war, it became a headquarters for the u.s. army and in 1870 was given back to the city of richmond. the home has since been restored and is open to the public as museum. continuing our look at richmond, we will visit the american civil war museum and take a look at the largest collection of confederate flags in the country.
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