sey, at a salary of $1,000 per year. His wife proved
to be a helpmeet in the truest sense of the word, she at this time
keeping hotel at New Brunswick and making no small amount herself. Seven
years passed and Vanderbilt was made superintendent of the company of
which he had been an employe. If a man has ability and applies it, his
talent will not remain hid 'under a bushel.' His ability and indomitable
energy brought the "Gibbons Line" up to paying $40,000 a year. Seeing a
chance, for which he was ever on the alert, he leased the ferry between
New York and Elizabeth, New Jersey, for fourteen years, put on new boats
and it became a very profitable venture. In 1829 he left the "Gibbons
Line," and began to operate on the Hudson and between New York and
Boston; also on the Delaware river. He would start an opposition line,
and either drive off the old line or effect a compromise. In 1849 he
obtained from the Nicaraguan Government a charter for a steamship
company. He next went to England and raised the extra funds needed. He
then went personally and inspected the whole route that was used, and by
a system of cables fastened to trees, shortened the same about seven
hundred miles over all existing lines. He placed steamers on each ocean
and cut the fare from New York to San Francisco one-half. Soon he had
destroyed all opposition and then made immense profits. Afterward he
sold out for two millions.

Mr. Vanderbilt, like all successful men, made finance a study; he
foresaw that there were great profits to be realized in the near future
in the undeveloped railway systems in the country. To see a chance was
to at once set about planning to improve it. He at once began to
withdraw his money from the water and invest in railroads, which were
then coming rapidly to the front. The wisdom of Vanderbilt can be seen,
for at the beginning of the war, which he had been long expecting, his
money was all transferred from the water, and thus his interests were
not jeopardised by the war made upon our commerce. He, however, had
owned so many vessels, that he had long since been known as Commodore
Vanderbilt, in fact few people to-day know him by any other name. He, at
the beginning of hostilities, presented the government with a
magnificent steamship, the "Vanderbilt," worth $800,000. When he entered
the railroad business he was estimated at from thirty-five to forty
millions. He had dealt somewhat in New York and New Haven, and now began