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Cornelius Vanderbilt

lines on the record: 11
first: 2019-01-08
most recent: 2019-01-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“1833 The world would not have known that I had lived, but I think I have been spared to accomplish a great work that will last and remain. I just want to read this other paragraph too because it gives you more context at this point in history and how it was looked at. He says the two great waves now crashed into one another. The individualistic, anti-aristocratic, competitive impulses fostered by the revolution, meaning the American Revolution, and the instinct to organize, develop, and bring order to the chaos of the marketplace. So these are two competing forces. The first impulse was both radical and traditional, combining a suspicion of the wealthy elite with an outlook shaped by the world of small farms, stores, and workshops where factories were few and self-employment was the standard. So how crazy is that? Because I always bemoaned the fact on this podcast where to me the internet should be doing the exact opposite of what it's doing now, where the amount of entrepreneurs and the rate of starting new businesses in America, if you didn't know the data, you probably”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, now here's what happens he gets stuck into a He has to recuperate. So a man of action becomes a man of inaction has to be laid in bed for, I think a few months. But this he takes him even more purpose when he heals. And so we're going to talk about that. Close encounters with death have a reputation for transforming lives, for starting dramatic new departures. Vanderbilt's near extension concentrated his existing qualities, his decisiveness, his will to dominate, his ability to rapidly assess a chaotic situation. Indeed, it could be argued that this gruesome accident had nothing to do with the transformation that he would undergo in the next decade from obscure captain to fearsome Commodore, whose name alone would terrify hardened businessmen. This is now a direct quote from him. If I had died in Jersey in eighteen eighty eight.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then sink the boats. So it says, you know, his brother, his dad dies, he has all these troubles. He himself had narrowly overcome a deadly fever, but he had gone ahead. He saw no point in mulling over dangers when a world of competition demanded that he seize the next opportunity. Like one of his boats caught in the currents of Hell's Gate, he had to drive forward or be wrecked. Fortunately for Vanderbilt, whose entire business was transportation, transportation was precisely the next opportunity appeared. The first rattling, chuffing, clanking trains of steam drawn railway cars captured the public imagination. So he's going to expand here into the newest technology. Now it's not just steamboats, but now it's steam-powered railroads. So he goes up to take a ride on one of the first railroads, and he almost dies.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If he had been disposed to dwell, he might have stewed gloomily at all that had happened in the previous two years. So keep in mind, I'm skipping over vast parts of the book. The death of his father, his defeat by Drew, meaning Drew made him pay, his humiliation at the racetrack, he would collect resources and try to run him against other rich people's rours. By temperament, this is a great description of him too. By temperament and necessity, however, he was given not to reflection, but to movement.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so here's another way that Vanderbilt expands his empire. Remember, the cornerstone of his empire is frugality. So he'd always spend ever since his kids spend less than he earns, keep his expenses at the absolute minimum. I told you on the other podcast with Rockefeller, he was definitely like this. I don't know if Rockefeller learned it from him or he was just like to sell his life, but it's a huge strategic, if you have the discipline to make all your to whittle out the expenses and to just be extremely frugal in your business, even when you're making tons and tons of money that is an advantage that can't be overstated because it's so counter to human nature. And so this is another example of frugality wins. So, you know, around this time, in Cornelius' lake, there's tons of financial panics. And every time he comes out richer than before. So it says bankruptcy shadowed Vanderbilt as well.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the stress he now faced was unmistakable. It is not too much to say that Thomas Gibbons had been a second father to him, complete with father-son conflict. No matter how many businesses Vanderbilt had kept going for himself, he had remained with Gibbon's house, which gave him both shelter and a sense of purpose. Now the old man was dead, the house was closed up. Vanderbilt would have to find his own way forward, to use what he learned from Gibbons to shape his enterprises, to develop his own vision of the future, and in his solitary steamboat, he sailed off to fight the economic war. So after reading this book, this economic war that's happening at this time in Cornelius' life, I feel that it had to, like he had such a respect for Gibbons, I feel that Gibbons might have been the only person that Cornelius actually thought could compete with him and might actually.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I came away with after reading the book is like, I think Gibbons thought of Cornelius more like a son than Gibbon's own son. And so this is Cornelius talking about Gibbon's son, which is around his same age. I do not know that William Gibbons ever started a project which his father did not originate. Rough-edged, hard muscled, and self-made, Vanderbilt couldn't quite bring himself to hate William, but he seemed to suspect that this rich boy lacked the drive, even the mental machinery, to cope with the age of commerce. So he just had the unfortunate personality traits to be born at a time when you couldn't just get by on your family's name, that you are now going to have very, very real competition to these multi-generation almost monopolistic practices.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He ran out on the dock and ordered Vanderbilt to haul ahead in order to accommodate the legislator. With characteristic contempt for empty authority, Vanderbilt refused to do so. Vanderbilt continued to block out Fisher whenever he could, snorting at the threat of a two hundred fifty dollars fine. The battle was all that mattered. So we see that highly competitive spirit that we talked about when he was six years old never leaves him. More about his personality. Vanderbilt disdained the delicacy of cultured men. So there's a huge war going on, like a cultural war at the time.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which starts with steam engines and then continues our railroads. I always now this direct quote from. From Vanderbilt, and there's not a lot of direct quotes from him because he didn't write letters and he didn't, he was illiterate. And he didn't have a diary or anything. I always thought Thomas Gibbons, a very strong-minded man, the strongest I ever knew, he later said. I don't believe any human being could control him. He was a man that could not be led. He could just have been easily have been describing himself. So let me pause there. I don't know if he was illiterate. He would write phonetically. So there's some of his writings when he's doing business deals where like, it doesn't look that. I mean, he didn't have any proper education. So I'm sure he could read because he did contracts and stuff. I just don't know how well. Okay.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vanderbilt was proud, of course, and filled with the desire for riches. So what they're talking about there is Gibbons approaches Vanderbilt because he has a good reputation at the time and says, hey, I need help. I need somebody to run my steamboat business. And this is the one time in history in his entire life that Vanderbilt actually has an employment contract the rest of the time he works for himself. But why he's running Gibbon's Empire, he's building his own too. The guy never rested, apparently. His sense of physical power, too, should not be underestimated. He was a big man who lived by strength, straining daily against the winds and current. Remember, he's a sailor up until this point. There was no such thing as like motorized transport. His combative manner, which had been hardened in a fringe of society marked by rough independence, where confrontation was the stuff of daily life. He sneered with...”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so this is actually really interesting because he was very much a loner, very much somebody that wanted complete control. Never would. He would reject business deals where he had to partner with other people. Except in this case, he'd partner with other people but with that stipulation that he had control. So he winds up very shrewdly. He's 23 years old at the time. And he partners with somebody that's very rich and powerful. And this is the Gibbon, Thomas Gibbons, which is, you might have heard that name from the Supreme Court case that was just referencing, which is Gibbon v. Ogden, which is famous to this day. So it says, the 23-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt had no way of knowing he was making the most important decision of his life. Then again, not even Thomas Gibbons, who saw a good deal, could foresee how far-reaching their collaboration would prove to be, how it would help unlock the potential of the steam engine, recast the Constitution, and contribute to the remaking of American society. So there's important things in those sentences. The steam engine is the most dramatic technological breakthrough of the time, which we're going to get to in a minute.”
2019-01-08 · Founders · #54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source