The First Tycoon

According to T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the most influential nineteenth-century businessman in American history: "Vanderbilt epitomized the commercial, individualistic society that emerged in the early nineteenth century, and contributed to the creation of a culture in which competition was a personal, economic, and political virtue." He was filthy rich: if he had liquidated his estimated $100 million dollar fortune, he would have had one out of every twenty dollars in circulation. He also, it turns out, led a fascinating, two-fisted life, which Stiles, in his National Book Award-winning book, captures with robust flair.

Stiles' other book, which I also read and enjoyed, was about Jesse James, and some may see a parallel with Vanderbilt, who was ruling the business roost when the term "robber baron" was applied to titans of finance. Certainly he is not a hero to the left-wing labor-union contingent (Stiles recently had an unpleasant exchange of letters with a critic in The Nation), and during his lifetime Mark Twain wrote a stinging open letter to him, but Stiles viewed him affectionately, if objectively. He was one of the prime examples of the American stereotype--the self-made man, but he was also something of a son of a bitch, hard on his children, and without much of sense of social justice. He put up the money to found Vanderbilt University, but it seems to have been out of a pursuit of legacy more than anything else.

Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island during the Washington administration, and lived until the peak of the industrial revolution. He started as a young man by operating ferry boats from Staten Island to Manhattan, and he ended up controlling much of the steamboat transportation throughout the United States (earning the sobriquet Commodore), including sending prospective gold miners to California via Nicaragua. Well into his old age, he made the audacious decision to sell off his shipping interests and plunged into the nascent railroad industry, and ended up being the Railroad King. He built the Grand Central Depot (on the site where Grand Central Terminal exists today) and basically pioneered the concept of consolidating--what we call today mergers and acquisitions.

Stiles presents Vanderbilt's life as a narrative. He frames the story with a trial over his will--he left ninety-five-percent of his fortune to one son--and endeavors to add novelistic touches where he can. He describes the sideburns of one man as looking like terrified monkeys, or consider this passage: "The tablespoon glittered in the craftman's shop. As new silver, it would have been heavy and untarnished in Vanderbilt's hand. Looking into it on March 31, 1824, two months short of his thirtieth birthday, he would have seen himself in his prime: full lips, a long nose and a high forehead, growing higher by the day as his hairline ebbed. It was the reflection of a man who had just won the biggest victory of his life." Stiles is also fond of ending chapters with cliffhangers, such as "Vanderbilt was wrong. Things were going to get much worse," or "As the Civil War continued to rage in 1863, he went into battle to protect his private interests with a cunning and ferocity that would astonish the world--and seal his place in history."

Such purple prose can be forgiven, for Vanderbilt's life does seem to have been dreamt up by a writer of pulp novels. In addition to his business exploits, he was also something of a man's man. He personally piloted boats down rapids in Nicaragua, survived a train wreck and several wagon accidents, and an anecdote, probably untrue, had him thrashing a New York boxing champion named Yankee Sullivan. He built the largest steamboat up until that time, the Vanderbilt, which he loaned the Union Navy during the Civil War, and it was his interference that ended the career of William Walker, the American filibuster who briefly was president of Nicaragua. The goal of building a canal through that country proved elusive, but little else did to the Commodore.

He also had a colorful personal life. He fathered ten children. One of them was a degenerate gambler who vexed him. Several of his sons-in-laws proved useful to him in business, but betrayed him toward the end. After his wife's death he married a much younger woman, and was also involved in the spiritualism craze of the time, associating himself with free-love advocates such as Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Caflin.

I found these aspects of Vanderbilt's life far more interesting than the details of his business. This is the fault of the reader, and not the writer, as my eyes glaze over whenever reading about stocks and bonds and other nuts and bolts of commerce (this is probably why I'm not, nor never will be, rich). Prospective M.B.A.s will probably chew over this stuff, but it leaves me cold, and I was eager to read more about Vanderbilt's complicated family.

Incidentally, one thing that Stiles leaves out is the etymology of the word "tycoon." I was interested, so looked it up--it comes from a Japanese word, taikun, which was an honorific meaning "great lord." It came back to the U.S. after Matthew Perry opened up trade to Japan in the mid-nineteenth-century, and the first person to actually be called tycoon was Abraham Lincoln, an affectionate tribute by his staff. It was later that the word came to be used for business leaders.