Vanderbilts were not alone responsible for the brilliant career
of the system down to recent times. William H. Vanderbilt, though
a man of unusual ability, did not possess the breadth of view or
the sagacity of his father, and in the course of a few years he
found himself exposed to a cyclone of public criticism. He had
let it be widely known that he was personally the owner of over
eighty-seven per cent of the hundred million capital of the
company. In 1879 the New York Legislature, backed by the force of
the popular anger and surprise at the accumulation of a hundred
million dollar fortune by one man in ten years, was investigating
the management of the New York Central with a view to curtailing
its power; the rate wars were on between the seaboard and
Chicago; and Jay Gould was threatening to divert all the traffic
of his Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific lines from the New York
Central and turn it over to other Eastern connections unless
Vanderbilt would give him a vital interest in the Vanderbilt
lines.

Vanderbilt was harassed beyond endurance and, being of softer
material than his father, was fearful of the outcome of public
opinion, notwithstanding the fact that in a moment of
anger--according to the statement of a newspaper reporter whose
veracity Vanderbilt denied to his dying day--he had used the
familiar expression, "The public be damned!" There were
intimations that the Legislature was planning to impose heavy
taxes on the property, solely because Vanderbilt held this
gigantic personal ownership in the property. This prospect
frightened him and he consulted friends whose judgment he
respected. They urged him to sell a considerable part of his
holdings in order to distribute the ownership of the property