“Did you not take it for granted,” one of them asked, “that the Central Railroad were legally bound to pay you a $100,000 annually?” “When you talk about ‘legally’ I suppose your next question will be: ‘Why didn’t you prosecute them?’” Vanderbilt replied. “It is not according to my mode of doing things, to bring a suit against a man that I have the power in my own hands to punish.… The law, as I view it, goes too slow for me when I have the remedy in my own hands.” As he elaborated a few minutes later, “Let the other parties go to law if they want, but by God I think I know what the law is; I
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