The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (98 page)

His social life, too, took pleasurable turns. On May 25, he and his brother Jacob attended the opening day of the spring races at the Prospect Park Fairground in Brooklyn. They drove together through the gate, between carts piled with oranges, oysters, and other treats for sale, and made their way to the clubhouse, “its verandahs crowded with the beauty and fashion of the city and from one of which the Fourteenth Regiment Band discoursed sweet music,” the
Brooklyn Eagle
reported. Jake remained close to Cornelius; he often brought his trotters across from Staten Island on the ferry to race on Harlem Lane or Bloomingdale Road against his brother, snorting at the brokers who tried to curry favor with the Commodore by letting him win.
²⁹

Vanderbilt had hardly forgotten about Frank Crawford. No evidence speaks to when she came north again from Alabama; most likely it was not until the summer heat made Mobile unbearable. In the meantime, he acquainted himself with two most unusual sisters, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
³⁰
In late 1868, the pair appeared at 17 Great Jones Street, not far from Vanderbilt's home, and began to advertise themselves as “magnetic physicians and clairvoyants,” according to the
New York Times
. “They charged $25 in advance for their services, advertised largely and guaranteed wonderful cures.” They attracted many clients, and for good reason. Emetics, bleeding, blistering, and mercury remained in the conventional doctor's arsenal; when fired at patients, they felt it. The role of unconventional healer, like that of spiritualist medium (or “clairvoyant”), remained one of the few professional roles largely reserved for women. Since femininity was seen as passive, women were thought to better serve as vessels for voices from the beyond, or invisible magnetic rays that passed through their hands into the patient.
³¹

Victoria, at thirty-one, was a few years older than Tennessee (or Tennie C, as she preferred to be called). Both boasted striking features, with large eyes, dark hair, and full lips, though Tennie's face was softer, rounder, less angular. Victoria's marital status remained vague. At fifteen she had married Dr. Calvin Woodhull, whom she divorced, and had remarried a Union army veteran named James Harvey Blood (whom she later may have divorced and married again). Tennie, voluptuous and single, exuded sexuality On one occasion, the
Herald
interrupted an account of a trial to observe “that Tenny C. displayed in the most aggravating way A WONDROUS SHIRT FRONT.” In an age of strict social standards, her sensuality was an explosive weapon that she wielded as she chose, flirting with influential men in letters and conversation.
³²

Vanderbilt liked and trusted his primary doctor, Jared Linsly but he didn't always like his treatments. Though he generally enjoyed abundant good health—he ate sparingly, drank little, and remained fit, alert, and active—he was an old man. He had been severely injured over the years in railroad and driving accidents, and felt the aches and pains that come with one's eighth decade. His daughter Mary La Bau obtained a “prescription” for him from a spiritualist healer named Tafts. Vanderbilt showed it to Linsly. “I think he was a believer in the efficacy of the medicine, and thought that the person [Tafts] could do him good,” Linsly said. “He was relieved in his sufferings by being rubbed; that was as far as I supposed that he believed in magnetism.”
³³

How and when Vanderbilt met Woodhull and Claflin remains unclear. Even less certain is his knowledge of their mysterious past. It does seem, though, that he felt particularly relieved when Tennie rubbed him. Soon the names of Woodhull and Claflin would be very publicly intertwined with that of Vanderbilt.
³⁴

ON FEBRUARY 24, 1869
, the
New York Herald
reported that Vanderbilt had developed a “plan for a consolidation of all the railways connecting the Central with Chicago, thus… making but one corporation between New York City and the metropolis of the West.” This project was to be carried out in the year ahead.
³⁵

The
Herald's
account struck many as obvious. The Commodore's seizure of the Harlem, the Hudson River, and the New York Central—and his announced plans for amalgamating the latter two lines—made it seem as if he would buy up and consolidate every connecting line between St. John's Park and Chicago. And reaching Chicago made all the difference. With a population soaring toward 300,000, this metropolis teemed with stinking stockyards, slaughterhouses, and factories. All this put it on the leading edge of changes in the economy. “Although Chicago lagged far behind Philadelphia and New York, the nation's leading manufacturing centers, in investment and output,” notes historian Eric Foner, “a larger proportion of its labor force worked for firms with fifty or more employees.” It was big in the biggest new thing: bigness.

Chicago had emerged as the commercial hub of the West. The wartime closing of the Mississippi had crimped the trade of its primary rival, St. Louis, which lacked a bridge across the great river. But Chicago captured the commerce of the region through a spider's web of rails that spread out from Cook County Between 1860 and 1873, more than ten thousand miles of track were laid in the upper Mississippi states, putting 98.5 percent of all land in Illinois within fifteen miles of a railroad. Farmers in all but the most remote tracts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas gained access to railheads, integrating them into national and international markets. The agricultural products of this region—the nation's primary export—moved to Chicago first on their way east for consumption or shipment overseas. To the trunk lines, nothing was more important than an untroubled connection to the Windy City.
³⁶

And yet, it is a mistake to assume that Vanderbilt thought it necessary to own the lines that connected the Central to Chicago if he were to capture their traffic. Admittedly there were great advantages to having a continuous line under one management: lower overhead, for example, and greater efficiency in routing trains and handling freight. Still, the inefficiencies could be limited under agreements such as those signed by Vanderbilt and Joy in December 1868. Indeed, throughout Vanderbilt's reign much of the Central's freight would come over Joy's Michigan Central (via the Great Western of Canada), which was largely owned by New England investors and maintained consistently healthy relations with the Commodore.

More important, the New York Central had joined with its connecting railroads to establish cooperative fast-freight lines. In proportion to mileage, member companies contributed cars, which were painted a uniform color. Each fast-freight line had its own management that solicited freight, issued waybills, and fixed rates, but its profits were distributed to the participating railroads. Often overlooked by historians, fast-freight lines reduced the costs of through freight, even across separate railroads, by eliminating the need to break bulk (that is, transfer freight from one car to another) and increasing managerial efficiency. Finally, the Central offered the best access to the nation's most important port (and to Boston). It was at least as necessary to western railroads as they were to it. In a world without enemies, Vanderbilt would have felt no need to buy control of his connections.
³⁷

But then there was Jay Gould. As Alfred D. Chandler Jr. wrote, “No man had a greater impact on the strategy of American railroads.” An ambitious and farsighted chief executive, he embarked on an aggressive effort to break the isolation of the Erie—with its unusual six-foot gauge—by seizing connecting lines. He would fail in the end, but his campaign forced his competitors, including Vanderbilt, to begin the process of constructing interregional railroad systems of mammoth proportions.
³⁸

Gould began by leasing the broad-gauge Atlantic & Great Western, which added hundreds of miles to the Erie's network. Next he purchased stock and proxies to get control of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago (the “Fort Wayne”)—which happened to be the Pennsylvania Railroad's primary connection to Chicago. This move jarred the Pennsylvania's president and vice president, J. Edgar Thomson and Thomas A. Scott, out of their complacency. Scott quickly secured a classification act from the Pennsylvania legislature that rigged elections to the Fort Wayne board. (As an indication of how thoroughly Scott dominated the state government, the bill was signed by the governor thirty-four minutes after it was introduced.) On June 21, the Pennsylvania leased the Fort Wayne to forestall any further trouble.
³⁹

Gould turned to the fragmented South Shore lines, in which no one party exerted dominance. This route had entered a turbulent period of rapid consolidation, offering him the perfect opportunity to align it with the Erie. In March, the Cleveland & Toledo merged with the Lake Shore Railway; in May, that line merged with the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana, forming the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company; in August, that line merged with the Buffalo & Erie (itself the product of an earlier consolidation). That made the Lake Shore (as it will now be called) a continuous line from Chicago to Buffalo, with branches to Detroit, Grand Rapids, and the oil regions of Pennsylvania.
⁴⁰

On May 31, Horace Clark and James Banker boarded a train to Cleveland for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern's first stockholders' meeting. They had in their care the Commodore's interest in the new company—an interest, they soon learned, that faced strong opposition from LeGrand Lockwood. A banker, broker, and onetime treasurer of the New York Stock and Exchange Board, Lockwood wielded immense power in Wall Street. Short and rather fat, he had come to New York from Norwalk, Connecticut, at the age of eighteen, married a New York belle, and rapidly rose to riches—prominently displayed in a mansion he built in Norwalk for a reputed $750,000. With the half a million or more he earned each year, he traveled to Europe to purchase fine art and won acceptance in the most aristocratic parlors. He was also a close ally of Henry Keep and had suffered in Vanderbilt's blockade of the Central in January 1867.
⁴¹

Fighting erupted in the first Lake Shore directors' meeting on June 2. In a series of close votes, Lockwood defeated Clark's attempt to control the election of the president. Finally they compromised on the neutral E. B. Phillips, with Lockwood as treasurer; Clark and Banker went on the executive committee. An uneasy peace settled over the divided board.
⁴²

In late June, Vanderbilt inspected the line for himself, a clear sign of his special concern with the Lake Shore. Accompanied by Phillips, he traveled the route to Chicago in a special train, in his first recorded visit to the city. “We understand the Commodore was well satisfied with the trip,” the
Cleveland Herald
reported on June 22. In early July, he went to Saratoga as usual, staying at the rebuilt Congress Hall along with former president Millard Fillmore, Thurlow Weed, and former New York mayor George Opdyke. On July 12, he unexpectedly returned to Cleveland to consult with major Lake Shore stockholders. These movements left observers mystified. “I hardly know what to say about Central,” one man wrote to Erastus Corning. “It is now my belief that the Commodore will in some way secure the Central of the
main line
to the
Pacific.”

Some of those closest to Vanderbilt had a more pessimistic view. In August, a story circulated that one of his daughters was seen teaching her own daughter to mend stockings; when asked why she would trouble herself with such a menial occupation, she replied, “There was no telling what a woman might be called upon to do in this country, or what fate awaited her, and she believed in instructing them [her daughters] in useful arts as a preparation for any reverse that might overtake them.”
⁴³

Perhaps she knew that Gould and Lockwood were scheming to freeze Vanderbilt out of the Lake Shore. Over the summer, the two negotiated an alliance, with the aid of Fisk's skills as an entertainer. “The Erie clique,” according to the
New York Herald
, “wined and dined the Michigan Southern party at the lower Delmonico's, and brought every argument to bear in favor of a union of the two lines.” Gould and Lockwood settled on a plan, which they finalized on August 16 at a secret meeting in West Point. They agreed to a “running arrangement” to divert Lake Shore traffic to the Erie; even more important, they would lay a third rail on the Erie to open it to the Lake Shore's standard-gauge trains, funded by $5 million in Erie bonds, on which the Lake Shore would pay the interest. In return, Gould agreed to abandon his plans to build a broad-gauge line to Chicago. At a Lake Shore board meeting on August 19, the agreement steamed through with Lockwood's support over Clark's fruitless objection. Vanderbilt's only gain was the election of ally Amasa Stone Jr. to a vacant directorship.

At first, the consolidation of the South Shore lines had looked like the end of Vanderbilt's troubles. Instead, that critical route seemed to slip out of his hands before he could even grasp it. “The absorption of the line by the Erie will be the eventual result,” the
Herald
wrote. “But the Commodore is fertile in resources.”
⁴⁴

ON AUGUST 20, VANDERBILT SUDDENLY
disappeared from Saratoga. He had been a fixture there, as usual, spending almost all of his time with Morrissey until he vanished. He turned up later that day in Canada, when a locomotive pulling his private car chuffed into London, Ontario. The Commodore debarked and hurried into the Tecumseh Hotel, followed by a small party. He did not even stop to sign the register, but left that matter to Augustus Schell. He refused all calls and inquiries from the press. In his rooms, Schell produced a legal document, which Vanderbilt signed. Then a young woman signed as well. Her name was Frank Armstrong Crawford, and the document was a prenuptial agreement. She relinquished all claim on the Commodore's estate; when he died, she would receive $500,000 in first-mortgage bonds of the New York & Harlem Railroad. Except in comparison to Vanderbilt's estate, it was a vast sum for 1869; but comparisons to Vanderbilt's estate would be inevitable.
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