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ADDRESS 
 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Hon. Chaimcey M. Depew, LLD., 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Unveiling of tlie 5tatue 
 
 of 
 
 COMMODORE VANDERBILT, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Vanderbilt University, Nasliville, Te»iiessee; 
 
 OCTOBER 11th, 1897. 
 
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 Address of the Hon, Chauncey M, Depew, LL.D., at 
 
 the Unveiling of the Statue of Commodore 
 
 Vanderbilt at the Vanderbilt University, 
 
 "Nashville, Tennessee, October i ith, 
 
 1897. 
 
 The American Commonwealth is built upon the individual. 
 It recognizes neither classes nor masses, " That all men are 
 created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
 tain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness," are the words of the immortal Declaration 
 of Independence. These truths are not only the language oi 
 American liberty. They are interwoven into the character of 
 American citizens, who are taught from childhood and receive 
 by inheritance the lesson " That to secure these rights governments 
 are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed." We have thus become a nation of self- 
 made men. We live under just and equal laws and all avenues 
 for a career are open. It has become a proverb that there are 
 but " three generations from shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve," from the 
 necessity to work to work from necessity. Neither the system 
 of all the past by which the few were born to privilege and prop- 
 erty and the many to struggle and privation, nor the advanced 
 views of the present by which the capacity of the weakest shall 
 be tite measure of success permitted to the strong find any recog- 
 nition in the workings of our institutions. 
 
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If the result of our system is the survival of the fittest, experi- 
 ence has demonstrated that it is possible to so temper the doc- 
 trine that the efforts of the born leaders of industry shall uplift 
 whole communities to greater happiness and to better standards 
 of living by originating enterprises and developments which give 
 to thousands new occupations and larger returns for their labor. 
 Every youth sees about him inspiring examples. They are not 
 few nor isolated. They are found in every settlement, however 
 small it may be, and in most families. All men who have risen 
 above the conditions of birth and surroundings and maintained 
 th-^ir advance are illustrations. Freedom of opportunity and 
 preservation of the results of forecast, industry, thrift and honesty 
 have made the United States the most prosperous and wealthy 
 country in the world. 
 
 Commodore Vanderbilt is a conspicuous example of the 
 product and possibilities of our free and elastic conditions. His 
 father was a small farmer with a large family and it became 
 necessary for the son to look out for himself when very young. 
 Ordinarily his career would have been to work on until he could 
 take a little farm for himself, run in debt for it, and labor half his 
 life in the effort to pay off the mortgage. But he knew of some 
 and read of many who from the same beginnings had become suc- 
 cessful in business. He was healthy and strong. His mother had 
 confirmed him in good habits and principles. He had little 
 education, but a marvelously clear head and sound judgment. 
 At sixteen, borrowing a hundred dollars from his mother, he 
 began the battle of life and he died the richest man in the world, 
 with the reputation of having made more money than was ever 
 before accumulated in a single life. He had an exhaustless 
 capital of courage and common sense. His motto was simple 
 and straightforward, like every act in the wonderful drama of 
 which he was the chief actor. " What other men have done I 
 can do," was the mainspring of his exertions. 
 
 The qualities which make a great writer, or orator, or states- 
 man are easily recognized. The world knows the elements of 
 mmd and character which made Hannibal the ablest of generals. 
 
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Csesar the greatest of conquerors and rulers, Cromwell chief of 
 reformers and Washington first among patriots. Authors reveal 
 themselves in their works. The contemporaries of a successful 
 man of affairs never tire of discussing the question whether his 
 rise is due to good luck or good judgment. The destructive 
 words in our language are "if" and "but." There are not 
 books enough in the world to hold the explanations of tired and 
 tiring millions telling of the brilliant things they would have done 
 " if" something had not happened, and " but " for the unexpected. 
 These words are hurled at every strong man to account for his 
 career. Fortunes made by the discovery of a mine or the pos- 
 session of a patent for a useful invention are common accidents. 
 
 For sixty-six years Commodore Vanderbilt was in perpetual 
 warfare. He neither asked nor gave quarter. The same country, 
 the same laws, the same open avenues, the same opportunities 
 which he had before him were equally before every other man. 
 The keenest competition and the earnest rivalry of able and 
 ambitious opponents met him at every step in his career. Wary 
 adversaries were watching for weakness in his schemes, or a 
 failure of his plans. Each day renewed an old fight or began a 
 new one. He was often checked, sometimes forced to retreat 
 and take another position, but he was never defeated. He 
 ultimately remained master of the field and pushed straight- 
 forward to the accomplishment of his purposes. He was not the 
 creation of luck nor chance nor circumstances. 
 
 It is not just to judge men by arbitrary standards. A few 
 broad rules are applicable to all, and after that there must be 
 great liberality. The preacher, the teacher, the politician, the 
 professional man, the soldier, the man of business may each 
 think the other to have lived a narrow or useless life. We must 
 estimate the career and work of Cornelius Vanderbilt upon 
 principles which are common to very few. He was much more 
 than a mere money maker. He delighted in money making, 
 but, like all masterful men, he loved power. He said to me : 
 " I sometimes do a foolish thing, knowing it is foolish, just to 
 prove that I can make even a foolish movement successful." 
 
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He invested his hundred dollars in a little sailboat or periagua 
 to carry passengers between Staten Island and New York on a 
 far-sighted judgment that there was a public demand for better 
 service between these points. It was this instinct or insight 
 which made him resistless in competitive business. Old and 
 experienced masters of transportation had controlled the steam- 
 boat traffic of the Hudson River and Long Island Sound for 
 years, but in a short time, though he had less capital, he drove 
 them off these waters. He saw far in advance of his time the 
 results which could be obtained from ocean steamers. There 
 were prosperous lines plying between New York and the Isthmus 
 of Panama and the Isthmus and the Pacific ports. Their man- 
 agers were conservative, old-fashioned, old fogy and rich. They 
 looked with amusement and amazement at this adventurer 
 in their domain who singly and alone boldly challenged 
 their supremacy. Thirty years afterwards I heard an old mer- 
 chant lamenting that the Commodore forced his company 
 to sell out to him their Atlantic line and pay him two-thirds 
 the profits on the Pacific to keep off that ocean. His entry into 
 the railway world was the result of the same foresight and 
 wisdom. His mind was like a rifle barrel. It carried thought 
 straight to the mark. It was difficult to induce him to take up 
 a subject, but when he did, nothing could divert him from it until 
 a decision was reached. He never doubted that verdict, or 
 revealed it, but acted upon it with lightning-Hke rapidity. He 
 thus found millions where others had lost them. 
 
 The development of American railway systems has produced 
 many strong men, but their operations had been generally dis- 
 astrous to their stockholders and bondholders. They were, at 
 that time, honeycombed with parasites, while freight and passenger 
 agents exercised an arbitrary power and petty tyranny toward 
 individuals and localities to which most of the subsequent public 
 animosity against railroads and railroad men is due. They broke 
 connections on the whim of an offended officer, and cut each 
 other's throats to gratify the spite of a traffic manager. The 
 Commodore made up his mind that railway transportation was to 
 
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be the leading business of the future ; that there was no hmit to 
 its expansion, and that under business management, and with 
 business methods, railroad stocks were the best investment in the 
 country. He knew that railway chaos was his opportunity. The 
 stock of the Harlem Railroad was a football in Wall Street at 
 from three to five dollars a share, its bonds discredited, its equip- 
 ment unfit for the service, and its roadbed unsafe. Capitalists had 
 dismissed it from their calculations as a worthless and hopeless 
 property. It found in the man of steamboats and steamships its 
 regenerator. He knew the people and believed that the same 
 feelings moved them on land as on water. Speed is the first de- 
 mand of the American ; with safety, if possible, though he will 
 risk much to go on the fastest line. Wall Street believed the 
 three millions of dollars the Commodore spent on the road thrown 
 away. It gave the company new cars and locomotives, a safe and 
 stable way, and regular and rapid train service. It illustrated Mr. 
 Vanderbilt's genius in his chosen field ot competition. The 
 Hudson River and Harlem roads both ran from New York to 
 Albany. The first, which had not known of the existence of the 
 latter, now felt the effects of its keen and dangerous rivalry. In 
 less than two years the stockholders of the Hudson Line were 
 begging him to take their road. This he did at about thirty 
 dollars a share. Railway traffic had found a new and original 
 master. Quicker time and better facilities attracted passengers 
 and freight from the West to the Atlantic seaboard, from the 
 Southern routes and ports to New York. They drew from the 
 water lines. With lower fares and rates to the public the volume 
 of new business soon brought these bankrupt properties into the 
 best paying investments in the country. The Commodore made 
 millions and the other stockholders shared according to their hold- 
 ings. The public received better service at lower prices and New 
 York a new impetus in its trade. 
 
 The development of railway management has been one of 
 the most rapid, revolutionary and remarkable in the marvelous 
 story of commerce. Its progress has been a succession of para- 
 doxes. The predicted dangers have proved benefits, and the 
 
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dreaded evils blessings to the public. It is natural that people 
 should be sensitive to any change in existing conditions among 
 the great carriers of the country. Upon them depend our vast 
 internal traffic, the equality and stability of rates, and the pros- 
 perity of communities and individuals. 
 
 The Commodore had given little attention to inland trans- 
 portation. The roads acquired reached Chicago over many con- 
 necting lines. Each had its policy, the interests of its managers, 
 its fight for arbitraries, and its methods of business, and the 
 overcharged and buffeted public were enduring endless expenses 
 and inconvenience. 
 
 It is easy to see the logical processes by which most men 
 arrive at conclusions. They consult trusted advisors, they seek 
 light from every source and the mosaic of their judgment can be 
 accurately traced. This reticent, self-reliant and bold operator 
 seemed to jump at conclusions by intuition as women are alleged 
 to do. Intimate friends rarely knew his intentions and no one 
 ever heard him give any reasons for his plans. Sententious 
 aphorisms condensed his opinions. He refused larger salary from 
 Gibbons, the steamboat magnate of his early career, saying, " If 
 I am worth that to another man I must be worth a good deal 
 more to myself" His son-in-law, Horace F. Clark, was a very 
 brilliant and able lawyer, but speculative and erratic in business. 
 I heard friends plead for hours with the Commodore that Clark 
 might be restored to full confidence and share in the vast enter- 
 prises then projected. " Smartest fellow I ever knew, but a cog 
 loose in his machinery," was the only reply of this inexorable 
 relative. " Fools can make money, but only wise men can keep 
 it," was one of his maxims, and eight out of every ten of his 
 millionaire contemporaries and intimates became bankrupt. 
 
 In the old days of leadership in finance and speculation 
 Wall Street always had a recognized king. He had a large 
 following, and his sway was daily disputed. After innumer- 
 able victories, and the ruin of thousands of individuals and 
 combinations, he was dethroned and bankrupted in some wild 
 panic. His successor would take the perilous place, to pursue 
 
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the same career and meet a like fate. But in Mr. Vander- 
 bilt this center of the risks and values of the continent 
 found a master whose resources were great and whose judg- 
 ment was unerring. It was equally dangerous to follow or 
 fight him on account of the rapidity with which he changed 
 his policy as he saw before others did the gathering storm or 
 the rainbow of prosperity. " Wall Street owes me a million 
 a year," I heard him say, and until the last he collected that 
 and in some years many millions. 
 
 As he wished to make the railway stronger and more popular 
 by putting the representatives of more varied and independent 
 interests in the directory, I saw, at his request, a gentleman 
 belonging to one of the oldest and most eminent of our colonial 
 families. He was a man of broad culture, the highest social 
 position and moderate fortune. It was a glittering offer and 
 carried with it the prospect of rare opportunities for making 
 money. This gentleman declined on the ground that he had 
 sufficient for his needs and tastes and that riches did not tempt 
 him from his farm, his cattle, his horses, his books and his life of 
 restful work and unvexed liberty. When I reported the answer 
 to the Commodore and his amazed associates he said, " The only 
 man of sense in the country." Long after all these men of vast 
 cares and acute worries were dead, my friend, then vigorous in the 
 nineties, gleefully recalled his investment in life rather than wealth. 
 
 I had known the Commodore well for several years, and one 
 day he suddenly asked if he could retain me as attorney and 
 counsel. I had retired from the office of Secretary of State for 
 New York and been appointed, and confirmed by the Senate, 
 United States Minister to Japan, a position of power and promi- 
 nence because of the opening of that country to civilization. 
 " No future in politics," he said ; " railroad's the career for a 
 young man now. Don't be a fool." He was seventy-two and I 
 was a young man, and thus began a confidential and personal 
 relationship which, during the intervening thirty-one years, has 
 continued unbroken and unclouded through four generations of 
 his family. 
 
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It was evident that the great and growing product of the 
 agricultural West could neither find a profitable market at the 
 seaboard nor be properly developed so long as it was subject to 
 the tolls and the whims of many connecting lines. The Commo- 
 dore quickly decided and as suddenly executed a vast scheme ot 
 consolidation. The echoes of that controversy still resound. 
 The people were wild, first with panic, then rage, and then a 
 determination to check or destroy the power from which such 
 dire results were feared. The agitation threatened to ruin the 
 Commodore's fortune, but his movements were too rapid for 
 legislatures or courts. For many years the fiction of concentrated 
 wealth controlling Congresses and courts and grinding the people 
 under the wheels of a remorseless juggernaut eased the labors 
 of the makers of political platforms, formed ready copy for emer- 
 gent space in the newspapers, and fired the imagination and 
 frenzied the speech ol professional agitators. The fact that the 
 great reduction in expenses enabled the consolidated companies 
 to furnish greater facilities at large reductions in the rates pre- 
 vented hostile legislation culminating in the restoration of the old 
 methods. The ablest and most eloquent of those who denounced 
 this alleged monopoly preferred, when traveling and not talking, 
 the continuous ride and lower fares to the changes of cars, the 
 checking and rechecking of baggage, the delays, annoyances and 
 expenses of an antique mode of transportation which he tried to 
 make himself and others believe was one of the safeguards of 
 liberty. The advantages to the country from this combination 
 of similar interests were incalculable. The settlement and crea- 
 tion of the States in the western and northwestern territories were 
 dependent upon cheap transportation, and the problem of cheap 
 transportation was solved by the consolidation of continuing and 
 connecting roads. The fear, the outcry, and the happy results 
 of this controversy demonstrated a truth which I have often 
 discovered both by observation and experience that most of our 
 troubles, both as states and as individuals, are about things which 
 never happen. 
 
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The natural highway for the West to the Atlantic was by the 
 great lakes, the valley of the Mohawk, and the Hudson River. 
 With the completion of the Erie Canal an unbroken waterway 
 existed between the East and the West, giving to New York City 
 the advantage of being the port and depot of the internal traffic 
 of the country. Pennsylvania and Maryland struggled to share 
 in this growing commerce by building railway lines over the 
 Alleghany Mountains. The difficulties of the routes, and the dis- 
 advantages of the ports of Baltimore and Philadelphia compared 
 with New York, compelled these roads to carry traffic to those 
 cities at rates sufficiently below the tariff to New York to secure 
 a constantly increasing amount of the business. This differential 
 had been recognized and permitted at thirteen per cent, less to 
 Baltimore, and ten per cent, less to Philadelphia than to New 
 York. Commodore Vanderbilt saw in this condition a larger 
 question than the traffic of his roads. The supremacy of the 
 Empire State and its metropolitan city was threatened. In the 
 near future the natural advantages of New York would have been 
 overcome and its trade diverted. The public authorities and the 
 people of Baltimore and Philadelphia vigorously and loyally made 
 common cause with their railroads. New York, as always, con- 
 fident and serene, was indifferent. The subject was of sufficient 
 importance for the National Government to act. Its settlement 
 should not have been in the hands of individuals or corporations, 
 but railway development had outstripped popular apprehension 
 of its power or perils. There was no conception of any form ot 
 governmental supervision or control. 
 
 The course of the great East and West lines was in the 
 hands of three men — Commodore Vanderbilt, Thomas A. Scott, 
 President of the Pennsylvania, and John W. Garrett, President of 
 the Baltimore and Ohio. The Commodore demanded equal rates 
 to all cities on the Atlantic seaboard, and put the decision into 
 effect. The result was one of the most destructive of railway 
 wars. There is no greater fallacy than the popular idea that rail- 
 road wars benefit the public. It is true that rates and fares go to 
 very low figures, but they are wildly fluctuating figures, while 
 
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stability and publicity of charges are the life of legitimate busi- 
 ness. This war made fortunes for those who could take advan- 
 tage of these daily changing prices for the carriage of their prod- 
 ucts, and bankrupted those who could not. It stimulated into 
 feverish and unhealthy activity a few towns at competitive points, 
 and dried up the industries and resources of numberless cities and 
 villages on side lines or locally isolated. It was felt in every 
 farm-house and factory between Chicago and St. Louis and the 
 Atlantic Ocean. It demoralized Wall Street and impoverished 
 investors. The Commodore's losses were immense, but he saw 
 that unless the percentages were reduced New York was doomed 
 as the commercial and financial centre of the country, and New 
 York's chief railway, in which he had invested fortune and repu- 
 tation, would lose its principal revenues. The victory was sub- 
 stantial and permanent, and twenty years have justified the 
 statesmanship and wisdom of the policy. 
 
 The changing views of people towards the concentration of 
 great wealth in the individual or corporation or trust are the most 
 interesting of the evolutions caused by the increasing complexity 
 of our civilization and the ever-weakening touch, acquaintance, 
 and sympathy in crowded communities. The disappearance ot 
 the neighborliness of the old village and rural life of the colonial 
 period and the early days of the Republic are our present danger 
 and future peril. 
 
 While building our State we were hero-worshippers. At first 
 our idols were Washington and his compatriots, then the giants 
 in the Senate and party leaders — Webster, Clay and Calhoun — 
 and finally the captains of industry. Communities praised and 
 petted and pitted their capitalists against each other as we now 
 do the champions of the ball field or the oar. The racing of the 
 steamboats of these rival millionaires drew whole populations 
 to the river banks, who divided into eager and bitter partisans ot 
 their favorites. Commodore Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew, Thomas 
 A. Scott and John W. Garrett had the cordial support and en- 
 thusiastic admiration of their several communities. This feeling 
 was rapidly reversed as the corporation was substituted for the 
 
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individual. After years of controversy, of hostile legislation, ot 
 corporate abuses and their correction, both by law and by in- 
 vestors, the necessity for the combination of the capital of the 
 many into the corporation to carry on enterprises involving vast 
 sums to build and operate was recognized, and the temperate 
 judgment of the time has accepted the situation by placing cor- 
 porations under proper governmental supervision and control. 
 Admiration for self-made men of great riches has turned to deep 
 distrust of accumulated wealth, and yet the number of such people 
 is now so large that it would be impossible for any one to wield 
 the power for good or evil which was common a generation ago. 
 The agitator ignores the resistless strength of universal suffrage 
 and forgets or denies the experience of the past. The same sense 
 of justice and capacity for government which has impelled the 
 people to minimize the dangers and increase the benefits of cor- 
 porations will seize and solve in the best interests of the country 
 the problem of combinations and trusts. 
 
 The life-long battle with the world makes most successful 
 men harsh, unsympathetic, cruel and narrow. Attack and de- 
 fense have become a habit, and such men are as wary, as isolated 
 and suspicious as a North American Indian on the warpath. 
 Their associates and followers complain that points are not given 
 nor opportunities shared for making money. Experience teaches 
 great operators the dangers of revealing their plans to any one. 
 A sovereign will not share his prerogatives with a subject and 
 a man of great wealth intensely dislikes to have his friends grow 
 rich. It may lose him their services or his importance may be 
 diminished by dividing his prestige. If Irom a suggestion another 
 reaps a rich harvest it is very difficult for him not to feel that 
 the money made was a loan from him to be repaid with interest. 
 One of the most powerful men of his time once said to me, " I 
 have done my best to keep those about me from getting much 
 money, but if they had not got rich in spite of me they could 
 not have staid with me." These common qualities of the rich 
 had many modifications with a self-reliant and original genius like 
 Commodore Vanderbilt. As the railway system under his control 
 
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expanded he sought the assistance and association of strong men 
 from many departments of activity. He drew into his various 
 companies a remarkable body of able and successful directors 
 and managers. He was a keen judge of human nature and his 
 cold, brilliant black eyes looked over and through men as they did 
 horses. He was merciless to incompetence or inefficiency and 
 tested to the utmost the powers of those who showed capacity. 
 But larger trusts, compensation and position followed demonstrated 
 ability. He never complimented or apparently saw the officer who 
 was more than doing his duty, but suddenly lifted him over the 
 heads of the plain plodders. He gave the largest liberty to 
 the President or Manager, and paid little attention to details, 
 or the inner working of the organization. If the results were 
 satisfactory the gossip and anonymous attacks which are 
 always seeking to undermine and destroy an executive officer 
 had no other influence with Mr. Vanderbilt than to 
 strengthen that official. It cannot be said of any one that 
 his services are indispensable. If such were the case the 
 mechanism of business might stop. But in the management of 
 great corporations whose income, gross and net, is dependent 
 upon popularity, harmonious relations with public officials and 
 bodies, the friendship of connecting lines, the avoidance of hostili- 
 ties with competitive companies and the adjustment of expenses 
 to the most rigid economy compatible with the highest efficiency, 
 there is easily a difference of millions of dollars in the yearly re- 
 sults as between an ordinary official and one of first-class execu- 
 tive mind. Though previous experience had accustomed him to 
 low-salaried officials, he was the first to grasp the fact that com- 
 pensation, however great, was comparatively small if it drew into 
 the service the men capable of wisely handling his railroads. 
 
 Only an iron constitution could have survived the ceaseless 
 activity and sleepless work of the Commodore until he had won 
 his fortune. Only an equipoised and self-mastered philosopher 
 could have afterwards adjusted to such rigid rules, labor and 
 refreshment, business and recreation. Almost all who have been 
 spared to the psalmist's limit of three score and ten retire and 
 
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13 
 
 vegetate, or, if they embark in new ventures, find their judgments 
 impaired, and soon lose the accumulations of a lifetime. The 
 Commodore discovered that only those who have resources in 
 many fields of easy and congenial occupation can safely change 
 the habits of a lifetime. The most extraordinary thing con- 
 nected with the career of this remarkable man is that his best 
 work and greatest achievements were accomplished after he had 
 passed seventy. He was worth about twenty millions when he 
 had rounded the life-line of the Scripture and he added over 
 eighty millions to it in the next twelve years. His day began at 
 nine o'clock among the horses he loved, and then until two that 
 active brain and unerring judgment were formulating plans 
 covering the continent. He left business behind in the ofifice at 
 two, and neither profit or loss could tempt him to talk about it, 
 until the next morning. At three he was spinning along behind 
 his trotters, seeking the excitement of a spurt of speed with a 
 rival team. The rhythmic movements of these intelligent and 
 highly trained thoroughbreds as they seemed to tread on ether 
 and fly through the air gave him exquisite pleasure. As they 
 passed and distanced horses famed for triumphs on many courses 
 and brought on to beat him, this strikingly handsome and 
 apparently stolid old man was keenly enjoying that victory in 
 competition which had been the mainspring of his career. The 
 lightning-like evolutions of his mind working in harmony with 
 and excited to action by both the speed and dangers of the race 
 brought to perfection, before he dropped the reins upon these 
 panting partners of his thoughts, many a scheme which routed 
 his enemies or revolutionized Wall Street. 
 
 He received daily a bushel of begging letters. The man 
 whose invention could be bought and millions made with a few 
 thousands, the farmer whose mortgage was past due and who, 
 if the mortgage were lifted, could pay the principal to his rescuer, 
 though he could not meet the interest on it to the mortgagee, 
 the woman whose husband was straying away, but who could 
 hold him to a happy home it she could buy the vine clad cottage 
 around the corner, the old man whose sands of life had nearly 
 
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14 
 
 run out, and the young one who needed only a little capital to 
 become a capitalist, the church or college hopelessly in debt, the 
 girl whose future happiness would be wrecked unless she could 
 have a trousseau for marriage and furniture for housekeeping, 
 honest men and women, frauds, fools and cranks — all needy and 
 unable to breast the waves of adversity or make their way in the 
 world — appealed to him. He never answered them. " If I should 
 give them my whole fortune," he said, " one- half would go to 
 thieves and the other hall to people whose folly and improvidence 
 would squander it in a week, leaving them worse off than before." 
 He possessed neither sympathy nor sentiment, but had formu- 
 lated a theory of justice and compensation, summed up in the 
 phrase, " give a man a chance." It might be a very humble 
 and a very hard chance, but if the man would stick and dig and 
 climb he was worth assisting. As proof of the value of this 
 principle in true philanthrophy, he would point to the presi- 
 dent of one of his railroads who had started as a gateman at one 
 of his ferries. 
 
 Cathedrals and grand churches did not impress him. His 
 mind always reverted to the little Moravian Meeting House where 
 his mother worshipped. She was the one ever fresh and ten- 
 der memory, never touched by time nor lost in his years of bitter 
 strife. Everyone I have ever met who had made and sustained 
 a great success ascribed it all to the impelling influence and 
 restraining hand of a sainted mother. He went one Sunday to 
 the Church of the Strangers and saw a congregation made up 
 of the clerks, salesmen, bookkeepers and porters in the big whole- 
 sale stores of the neighborhood. " Fellows who are helping them- 
 selves," he said, and sent the pastor. Dr. Deems, fifty thousand 
 dollars. Unlike most self-made men, he placed the highest value 
 upon a liberal education and emphatically lamented his own lack 
 of it. 
 
 While an uncompromising friend of the Union during the 
 Civil War, he was deeply interested in harmonizing the sections 
 and developing the South when it was over. To Bishop 
 McTyeire's plain presentation of the enormous benefit of a 
 
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15 
 
 university in the South he gave a hospitable hearing. A sound 
 education equips young men for broader work and greater 
 usefulness. Such an institution of learning was in the line of 
 his motto of helping people to take care of themselves, and 
 he endowed Vanderbilt University with a million dollars. If the 
 good bishop and his associates, foreseeing the future, had demon- 
 strated the necessity for a larger sum they would have received it. 
 The peril to parties and good government and the dangers 
 threatening property and vested rights are greatly augmented 
 by the neglect of their duties as citizens by men of affairs and of 
 wealth. I have no sympathy for the men who avoid the caucus 
 and stay away from the polls and then complain of politicians and 
 taxes. In politics, as in everything else, the Commodore was 
 intensely practical and efficient. He revered Washington and 
 believed in Henry Clay. 
 
 The Merrimac and the Monitor revolutionized naval architec- 
 ture. When this first ironclad, sailing into Hampton Roads, 
 crushed and sunk the Federal frigates one after another there was 
 a panic in New York. A company of merchants, bankers and 
 capitalists from New York appeared the next morning at the 
 White House and were at once given audience by the President. 
 "Within a week," said their spokesman, "the Confederate ram 
 will be in our harbor and burn or levy tribute upon our city. We 
 have taken the bonds of the Government and done everything in 
 our power to aid in its defence. We represent in the men here 
 present three hundred millions of dollars and demand, as we think 
 we have the right to, the fullest protection against this peril." 
 Mr. Lincoln hesitated a moment and then said, with a shrug of 
 his awkward shoulders, " We have no funds in the Treasury, not 
 much credit and no war ship that I know of now which can stand 
 against the Merrimac, but if I had as much money as you say 
 you possess and was as skeered as you seem to be, I would go 
 back home and find means of taking care of my property." 
 There was one rich man whose fortune was peculiarly in danger 
 who did not go to Washington nor appeal for help. He owned 
 the largest and fastest ship on the ocean. He braced her bows 
 
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with great timbers and then gave her to the Government on 
 condition that she should he hurled at full speed against the 
 Merrimac. It was a novel application of the ram in naval battle 
 in modern warfare and the result would have been the destruction 
 of both vessels. The arrival of the Monitor and her signal 
 victory prevented this drastic experiment. The Commodore 
 confirmed his gift of the Vanderbilt to the nation which greatly 
 needed her and a grateful Congress voted him the thanks of the 
 country and a commemorative medal for his patriotism. 
 
 The period of the active life of Cornelius Vanderbilt was the 
 era of revolution and evolution in our national history. The 
 Civil War, and rapidly succeeding inventions and discoveries, 
 called for men of great original genius and courage and gave 
 them unexampled opportunities. It produced in war, Grant and 
 Lee ; in statesmanship, Lincoln ; in the pulpit, Henry Ward 
 Beecher ; in journalism, Horace Greeley ; in oratory, Charlel 
 Sumner and Wendell Phillips, Alexander H. Stephens, Henry 
 Winter Davis and Henry W. Grady ; and in the industrial and 
 business world men who have left their marks upon every State 
 and city in the Union. Opportunities for large enterprises and 
 vast fortunes were frequent in the mighty upheaval occasioned by 
 the destruction of old methods and machinery, and_^the reduplica- 
 tion of force in the application of steam and invention of power, 
 the rapid settlement of States and creation of cities. Such con- 
 ditions can never occur again. Few of the men who ruled like 
 sovereigns in their respective spheres were worthy types of 
 American manhood. But the Commodore, chief of them all, in 
 the success of his undertakings and in the continuing victories of 
 his campaigns, was, in his public spirit, his sterling integrity, his 
 fidelity to his associates in the great enterprises he built up and 
 his rugged patriotism, the best representative of the self-made 
 man. 
 
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Cornell University Library 
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 Address of the Hon. Chauncev M. Depew, L 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 030 124 998 
 
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