Vanderbilt's work. In 1853 certain millionaires and politicians
had linked together the several separate lines extending from
Albany to Buffalo, but they had managed the new road so
wretchedly that the largest stockholders in 1867 begged
Vanderbilt to take over the control. By 1873 the Commodore had
acquired the Hudson River, extending from New York to Albany, the
New York Central extending from Albany to Buffalo, and the Lake
Shore which ran from Buffalo to Chicago. In a few years these
roads had been consolidated into a smoothly operating system. If,
in transforming these discordant railroads into one, Vanderbilt
bribed legislatures and corrupted courts, if he engaged in the
largest stock-watering operations on record up to that time, and
took advantage of inside information to make huge winnings on the
stock exchange, he also ripped up the old iron rails and relaid
them with steel, put down four tracks where formerly there had
been two, replaced wooden bridges with steel, discarded the old
locomotives for new and more powerful ones, built splendid new
terminals, introduced economies in a hundred directions, cut down
the hours required in a New York-Chicago trip from fifty to
twenty-four, made his highway an expeditious line for
transporting freight, and transformed railroads that had formerly
been the playthings of Wall Street and that frequently could not
meet their pay-rolls into exceedingly profitable, high dividend
paying properties. In this operation Vanderbilt typified the era
that was dawning--an era of ruthlessness, of personal
selfishness, of corruption, of disregard of private rights, of
contempt for law and legislatures, and yet of vast and beneficial
achievement. The men of this time may have traveled roughshod to
their goal, but after all, they opened up, in an amazingly short
time, a mighty continent to the uses of mankind. The triumph of