Great Fortunes from Railroads

If the whole might of Government was used in the aggrandizement and perpetuation of a propertied aristocracy, what was its specific attitude toward the working class? Of the pow...

Before setting out to relate in detail the narrative of the amassing of the great individual fortunes from railroads, it is advisable to present a preliminary survey of the conc...

Vanderbilt's ambition was to become the richest man in America. With three railroads in his possession he now aggressively set out to grasp a fourth--the Erie Railroad. This was...

With the demise of William H. Vanderbilt the Vanderbilt fortune ceased being a one-man factor. Although apportioned among the eight children, the two who inherited by far the gr...

The richer Commodore Vanderbilt grew, the more closely he clung to his old habits of intense parsimony. Occasionally he might ostentatiously give a large sum here or there for s...

The first of the overshadowing fortunes to develop from the ownership and manipulation of railroads was that of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Havemeyers and other factory owners, wh...

The "gold conspiracy" as plotted and consummated by Gould was in its day denounced as one of the most disgraceful events in American history. To adjudge it so was a typical exag...

supplied shoddy uniforms and blankets and wretched shoes; food of so deleterious a quality that it was a fertile cause of epidemics of fevers and of numberless deaths; they impr...

The first medium by which Jay Gould transferred many millions of dollars to his ownership was by his looting and wrecking of the Erie Railroad. If physical appearance were to be...

The greater part of this commanding fortune was originally heaped up, as was that of Commodore Vanderbilt, in about fifteen years, and at approximately the same time. One of the...

What Senator Wilson neglected to say was that the capitalists of his own State and other Northern States had effected even greater railroad swindles; the owners of the great mil...

A very illuminating transaction, surely, and well deserving of philosophic comment. This, however, will be eschewed, and attention next turned to the manner in which the Vanderb...

The juggling of railroads and the virtual seizure of coal mines were by no means the only accomplishments of the Vanderbilt family in the years under consideration. Colorless as...

With his score or more of millions of booty, Jay Gould now had much more than sufficient capital to compete with many of the richest magnates; and what he might lack in extent o...

With the outbreak of the Civil War, and the scouring of the seas by privateers, American ship owners found themselves with an assortment of superfluous vessels on their hands. F...