ity the construction in Central Park of a large monument that would
commemorate, side by side, the names of Vanderbilt and Washington; and
he actually erected a large statue to himself in his new Hudson River
station in St. John's Park. His attitude towards the public was shown in
his remark when one of his associates told him that "each and every one"
of certain transactions which he had just forced through "is absolutely
forbidden by the statutes of the State of New York." "My God, John!"
said the Commodore, "you don't suppose you can run a railroad in
accordance with the statutes of the State of New York, do you?" "Law!"
he once roared on a similar occasion, "What do I care about law? Hain't
I got the power?"

These things of course were the excrescences of an extremely vital,
overflowing, imaginative, energetic human being; they are traits that
not infrequently accompany genius. And the work which Vanderbilt did
remains an essential part of our economic organization today. Before his
time a trip to Chicago meant that the passenger changed trains seventeen
times, and that all freight had to be unloaded at a similar number
of places, carted across towns, and reloaded into other trains. The
magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the Hudson,
through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie--a
water line route nearly the entire distance--was all but useless. It
is true that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's
work. In 1853 certain millionaires and politicians had linked together
the several separate lines extending from Albany to Buffalo, but they
had managed the new road so wretchedly that the largest stockholders in
1867 begged Vanderbilt to take over the control. By 1873 the Commodore
had acquired the Hudson River, extending from New York to Albany, the
New York Central extending from Albany to Buffalo, and the Lake Shore
which ran from Buffalo to Chicago. In a few years these roads had been
consolidated into a smoothly operating system. If, in transforming
these discordant railroads into one, Vanderbilt bribed legislatures and
corrupted courts, if he engaged in the largest stock-watering operations
on record up to that time, and took advantage of inside information to
make huge winnings on the stock exchange, he also ripped up the old iron
rails and relaid them with steel, put down four tracks where formerly
there had been two, replaced wooden bridges with stee