The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by T.J. Stiles

Over the course of his career, Vanderbilt lived out the history of this abstraction, the invention of this imagined world. More than that, he took it to a new level by pioneering the giant corporation. By consolidating his New York lines into the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, he constructed something larger than himself, not to mention virtually every other enterprise that had ever existed.

American geography enabled this to happen, in part. Vanderbuilt established original routes wih Steamships and railroads where there was unmet demand.

He was essentially the creator, not the creature, of the circumstances which he moulded to his purposes.

If he had been able to liquidate his $100 million estate to American purchasers at full market value (an impossible task, of course), he would have received about $1out of every $9 in existence. If demand deposits at banks are included in the calculation, he

September 2008 that William Henry Gates III—better known as Bill Gates—was the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $57 billion. If Gates had liquidated his entire estate (to American buyers) at full market value at

that time, he would have taken $1 out of every $138 circulating in the American economy*