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Cecil Rhodes
(1853 - 1902)
( this account was written by Andrew Winlerd, thank you very much )

Financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890-96) and organizer of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. (1888). By his will he established the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford (1902). Early struggles and financial successes. Rhodes was the son of the vicar of Bishop's Stortford, and the family's roots were in the countryside, where Cecil Rhodes always felt at home: tree planting and agricultural improvement were among his lifelong passions, though his earliest ambition was to be a barrister or a clergyman. His father was prosperous enough to send one son to Eton College, another to Winchester College, and three into the army. Cecil, however, was kept at home because of a weakness of the lungs and was educated at the local grammar school. Poor health also debarred him from the professional career he planned. Instead of going to the university, he was sent to South Africa in 1870 to work on a cotton farm, where his brother Herbert was already established. The farm in Natal was not a success. On his arrival Rhodes found that his brother had already left for the diamond fields of Griqualand West. Although Herbert returned to the farm, and the two brothers continued stubbornly trying to grow cotton for a year, the "diamond fever" eventually overcame them. In 1871 they moved to Kimberley, the centre of mining, where life was even harder than in Natal. Herbert was restless and stayed only until 1873, but Cecil's characteristic determination kept him at Kimberley off and on for years. For eight years, until he took a belated degree in 1881, he divided his life between Kimberley and Oxford. Both societies found him odd, though he did his best to conform outwardly to the conventions. At Oxford his eccentric habits, falsetto giggle, rambling monologues, and his unusual background intrigued the younger students around him. So did his philosophy of an almost mystical imperialism. He gradually advanced from being a speculative digger to the status of a man of substance with ambitious ideas on the future of the diamond industry. His first partnerships were with young men as impoverished as himself, such as C.D. Rudd, with whom he formed De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.--so called after the De Beers mining claims, many of which he had acquired. Eventually, success brought new friends and also rivals. Alfred Beit, a German who knew the diamond market intimately, was his most valued friend. With Beit's help, Rhodes expanded his claims until all the De Beers mines were under his control. In 1887 he set about acquiring the Kimberley mine, which was mainly controlled by Barney Barnato. A furious competition to buy up shares ended in Rhodes's favour in 1888. He finally paid more than £5,000,000 ($25,000,000)--a generous settlement--for Barnato's holding and celebrated by making his rival a member of the Kimberley Club, into which Barnato had never before even been admitted. Other lesser mines also fell under Rhodes's control, until by 1891 De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., owned 90 percent of the world's production of diamonds. He also acquired a large stake in the Transvaal gold mines, which had been discovered in 1885, and formed the Gold Fields of South Africa Company in 1887. Both Rhodes's major companies had terms in their articles of association allowing them to finance schemes of northward expansion. Political involvement in Africa. Rhodes never regarded moneymaking as an end in itself. "Painting the map red," building a railway from the Cape to Cairo, reconciling the Boers and the British under the British flag, even recovering the American colonies for the British Empire, were all part of his dream. With these ideas in view, he first went into politics in 1881, offering himself for election to the parliament of the Cape Colony in a constituency in which he had to depend on Boer support. He held it for the rest of his life. Though unimpressive as a speaker and contemptuous of parliamentary procedure, he earned respect by his original views. He made friends with many Boer politicians, he espoused the cause of the natives in what were then Basutoland and Bechuanaland (now Lesotho and Botswana), and always he had his eyes fixed on the north. His first intervention in native policy came in 1882, when he was appointed to a commission to pacify Basutoland after a minor rebellion. The rebellion had been put down by the former British governor of the Egyptian Sudan, General Charles Gordon, acting for the Cape government. Gordon had succeeded not by force but by organizing discussion meetings with the tribal chiefs. Rhodes was impressed by the man and his methods, though less favourably by the contempt that Gordon showed for financial reward. His determination to keep open a road to the north involved him in many disputes. Other imperial powers--the Germans, Belgians, and Portuguese--were in competition for the uncharted interior of Africa, as were the Transvaal Boers. The missionaries were, in Rhodes's view, overly solicitous of native interests; the Cape government was weak; and the British government, which he called the "imperial factor," was too distant to understand his ideas. But he assiduously cultivated the government's representatives in Cape Town--particularly the high commissioner Sir Hercules Robinson--with profitable results. The crucial area was Bechuanaland, through which ran the route used by the missionaries. Rhodes intended to use it to open up the northern territories of Mashonaland and Matabeleland (both now in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia]). Mineral wealth, communications, and, eventually, white settlement were his objectives. All the boundaries were unsettled, however, and many intrusions had to be frustrated first. Boers from the Transvaal, trying to annex slices
of Bechuanaland, proclaimed two small independent republics in Stellaland and Goshen. In 1882 a boundary commission, to which Rhodes again secured appointment, was sent to settle the boundaries of Griqualand West. Rhodes persuaded the commission to extend its mandate to the two small republics. In 1884, when the Germans in South West Africa (now Namibia) declared a protectorate over two territories (which, along with Stellaland and Goshen, would have sealed off the Cape Colony from the north), he persuaded the high commissioner that the British government must intervene. By the London Convention of 1884, the two republics were excluded from the Transvaal, and the Cape government agreed to help finance a protectorate over Bechuanaland. His settlement of the Bechuanaland question was also soon threatened, for the deputy commissioner in the new area antagonized the Boers. Rhodes insisted on his removal and was appointed in his place. He succeeded in conciliating the Boers of Stellaland but could not prevent Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, from declaring a protectorate over Goshen, from which he withdrew only after an expeditionary force was sent up from the Cape. A conference to settle the matter was held in February 1885 on the Vaal River, where Rhodes and Kruger met for the first time. These two stubborn men, each determined to dominate Africa, each ever ready to quote Scripture for his purpose, naturally failed to achieve any meeting of minds. Although Kruger was forced to give up Goshen, Rhodes did not get everything his own way. It was decided that southern Bechuanaland should become a crown colony and northern Bechuanaland a protectorate. Rhodes, who wanted both annexed by the Cape Colony, resigned in protest in March 1885 and thereafter devoted strenuous efforts, both in Cape Town and London, to securing the
transfer of the colony to the Cape. Two men still stood in the way of Rhodes's plans for developing the north. One was Kruger, with his policy of "Africa for the Afrikaners"--the Boers. By the Franchise Law of 1890, he denied political rights to the Britons and other foreigners (Uitlanders) who had come to work the gold mines in the Tra nsvaal. He also tried to extend Boer control to Mashonaland and Matabeleland. The ruler of the Matabele was King Lobengula, Rhodes's second obstacle. Kruger had approached him for a treaty and mining concessions in 1887, and so had many others. Lobengula, however, though uneducated, knew that once he let the white men in, he would never see their backs. The only white men he trusted were missionaries; and Rhodes duly found in John Moffat, the son of a famous missionary, a man to serve his purpose. Once Moffat, as assistant commissioner for the crown colony of Bechuanaland, had, in February 1888, persuaded Lobengula to sign an exclusive treaty of friendship, Rhodes sent three of his trusted agents to obtain a mining concession based on the treaty. The concession was extracted from the reluctant Lobengula in October 1888: to the last, he hoped he had only allowed the white man to dig "a big hole." In fact, however, he had virtually signed away his kingdom, and Rhodes hastened to press the British government, through the high commissioner, to grant a charter to a new company, the British South Africa Company, to develop the new territory. In October 1889 the charter was granted, and Lobengula allowed the digging to begin. Queen Victoria found Rhodes's imperialism attractive, no less than his courtly rebuttal of the accusation of being a woman hater: "How could I dislike a sex to which your Majesty belongs?" The upshot of his successful propaganda was that the charter granted by the British government went far beyond what Lobengula had conceded. There was no northern limit on it; and Rhodes intended to extend the chartered company's control to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi), as well as to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now in Botswana). In 1890 Rhodes's Pioneers began their hazardous march into Matabeleland and thence to Mashonaland, where they established a fort in September, to be called Salisbury, after the British prime minister. In the following year Harry Johnston took over the administration of Nyasaland in a dual capacity, as commissioner of the British government and an employee of the chartered company. Although eventually the protectorate reverted fully to the British government, Rhodes's influence was felt both north and south of the Zambezi River, and soon the new territories were called by his name. Policies as prime minister of Cape Colony. In the meantime, he had returned to office in 1890 in the only post big enough for him, as prime minister of Cape Colony. For five years he proved a successful and imaginative prime minister. He acquired a property called Groote Schuur, which he rebuilt in the Dutch colonial style and bequeathed as an official residence for future prime ministers of the Union of South Africa. There he lavishly entertained Dutch and British inhabitants of the Cape Colony and eminent visitors of all nationalities. Everything he undertook was on a massive scale. In parliament he cultivated the support of the Afrikaner Bond without losing the goodwill of British liberals. His agricultural policies were sensible and effective. In native policy he had to move cautiously. His Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) was passed, limiting the native vote by financial and educational qualifications. The Glen Grey Act (1894), assigning an area for exclusively African development, was introduced from the highest motives: "a Bill for Africa," as Rhodes proudly called it. His main aim was to preventt he Dutch and British quarreling over such policies. To him that involved the risk of "mixing up the native question with the race question." He also sought to unite the Boers and the British on his northern policy. The prospects were good because Kruger's obstinacy alienated the Cape Dutch. To ensure that commercial traffic did not have to reach the Transvaal through the Cape Colony, Kruger had built a railway to Delagoa Bay. Then in 1894 he closed the "drifts," or fords, of the Vaal River to prevent the transport of goods by wagon, besides imposing heavy duties on Cape produce. Rhodes went to the Transvaal capital to protest, but in vain. Kruger was compelled to yield only after a declaration by Rhodes's attorney general that he was in breach of the London Convention, coupled with a threat by Joseph Chamberlain, who had become British colonial secretary in 1895, to support a military expedition. Rhodes's patience had begun to wear thin even earlier, partly because he knew his health was precarious, partly because he learned that the gold deposits of the Transvaal were enormous, whereas those of Mashonaland were proving poor. His northern policy was encountering unexpected frustrations. The chartered company was in financial difficulties, its resources being overstretched. Although Rhodes's agents secured some new territories for the company, elsewhere he was forestalled. An Anglo-German agreement of 1889 gave a strip of land to Germany, cutting off Bechuanaland from the north. The Belgian king Leopold anticipated Rhodes by laying claim to Katanga (1890). The Anglo-Portuguese Convention of 1891 ended his hopes of eliminating Portugal from Africa. Harry Johnston proved uncooperative in administering Nyasaland. When Rhodes paid his first visit to Rhodesia in 1891, he found the pioneers in an angry mood; to pacify them, he helped them generously out of his own pocket. Serious trouble broke out in 1893, when Lobengula tried to reassert his control over Mashonaland. A short, sharp war ended in the total defeat and death of Lobengula. Rhodes was then at the pinnacle of his achievement, but still the wider union of southern Africa eluded him. He was growing petulant and impatient and was visibly aging. By 1895 he was determined to settle accounts with the last obstacle, President Kruger. There was already talk of using force to remedy the grievances of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal. The Uitlanders formed a National Union to support their cause, with Rhodes's brother Frank among its leaders. Kruger sought the support of Germany, and in 1895 he again closed the "drifts" across the Vaal. Once more he was forced to withdraw, and by this time a conspiracy against him was under way. Rhodes knew about it and worked actively to foster it. Effects of the Jameson raid on Rhodes's career. Chamberlain was privy to the plan, but no one foresaw what actually resulted. The National Union in Johannesburg lost heart and decided not to act. Rhodes, the high commissioner Sir Herbert Robinson, and Chamberlain all assumed that the plan had been called off; but Leander Starr Jameson, Rhodes's personally appointed administrator of Matabele, recklessly decided to force the hand of the Uitlanders by invading the Transvaal on his own. He launched the famous raid on Dec. 29, 1895. It was a fiasco, his whole force being captured apart from a few killed. Rhodes was compelled to resign all
his offices, not only in the Cape government but also in the chartered company, but he refused to denounce Jameson. The raid was an almost complete disaster for Rhodes. Jameson and his colleagues were sent to prison; Kruger's power was consolidated; the Dutch and British colonials were more deeply split than ever; Rhodesia and Bechuanaland were taken over by the imperial government. Only the charter was preserved, and Rhodes spent the rest of his life promoting developments in the north. He even won public sympathy. His last years were full of disappointments, both personal and political. Early in 1896, while Rhodes was in England, there was a serious revolt in Matabeleland. Rhodes returned by way of Egypt and took an active part in suppressing the revolt. He finally brought it to an end by holding a peace conference. On this occasion Rhodes found the site in the Matopo Hills that he called the "View of the World" and chose it for his burial place. His last years were soured by an unfortunate relationship with an aristocratic adventuress, Princess Radziwill, who sought to manipulate Rhodes and Milner and even Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, to promote her ideas of the British Empire. Rhodes was unused to scheming women, nor could the young bachelors surrounding him protect him from her. She forged letters and bills of exchange in his name and was finally sent to prison, but not before she had caused him much annoyance and scandal. In 1901, while he was in Europe, he was recalled to Cape Town to give evidence at her trial. His last political act on his return was to support Milner in suspending the constitution of the colony until the South African War, which broke out in October 1899, was over. He was, however, already dying of an incurable heart disease. Before either the war or even Princess Radziwill's trial was over, he died. His last journey through Africa in the funeral train to the Matopo Hills was a triumphal procession. When his will was read in April 1902, his reputation immediately rose to new heights. He had devised an imaginative scheme of awarding scholarships at Oxford to young men from the colonies and from the United States and Germany. This appealed to the public instinct for a more disinterested kind of imperialism. Most of his fortune was devoted to the scholarships. As the will forbade disqualification on grounds of race, many nonwhite students have benefited from the scholarships, though it is doubtful that that was Rhodes's intention. He once defined his policy as "equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi" and later, under liberal pressure, amended "white" to "civilized."

Henry Villard
(1835 - 1900)journalist, railway promoter, financier,whose name was originally Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard, was born in Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria, the son of Gustav Leonhard Hilgard and Katharina Antonia Elisabeth (Pfeiffer) Hilgard. He came from an important family, his father being a jurist who rose to the supreme court of Bavaria, while two of his uncles were leaders in the revolution of 1848 in Rhenish Bavaria. Young Heinrich's sympathy with their republican sentiments estranged him from his father and the boy was sent for a time to a military school at Phalsbourg in Lorraine. He graduated from the Gymnasium in Speyer, and attended the universtities of Munich and Wuerzburg for a time, but disagreed again with his father and emigrated to America. Fearing that his father would have him returned to Germany and placed in the army, he adopted the name Villard, which had been borne by one of his schoolmates at Phalsbourg. Upon landing at New York in October 1853, he proceeded to the West by easy stages, spent some time in Cincinnati and Chicago, and eventually arrived at the home of relatives in Belleville, Ill. During the year 1855-56 he successively read law, peddled books, sold real estate, and edited a small-town newspaper, but made little progress along any line except the mastery of the English language. Increasing facility in the use of his adopted tongue served to equip him for the field of journalism which was to occupy his attention largely for the next decade. In 1858 he served as a special correspondent for the Staats-Zeitung of New York, observed and reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for that paper, began a personal friendship with Lincoln, and collected his Lincoln stories, which have since been widely quoted. Service with this German-American paper, however, he regarded merely as preliminary to his real objective - a regular berth with the English-language press. Late in 1858 reports of the discovery of gold in Pike's Peak country so aroused his adventurous spirit that he conceived a plan for a journey to the Rocky Mountains in the role of a correspondent, made a connection with the Cincinnati Commercial, and in the spring of 1859 set out acros the Plains. His sojourn of some months in the mining camps not only enabled him to make the aquaintance of several noteworthy men, including Horace Greeley, but provided him with the materials for a guidebook for immigrants which he published in 1860 under the title The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions, a very accurate account of the natural resources of Colorado and a rather extraordinary achievement for a young man of twenty-five who seven years before had not kown a word of English.
As correspondent for the Commercial he covered the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1860, and he served in a similar capacity for that paper, as well as for the Daily Missouri Democrat of St. Louis and the New York Tribune during the ensuing campaign. With the election of Lincoln, he was selected by the New York Herald as its corresponent at Springfield, Ill. Here he remained until the departure of Lincoln for Washington, supplying his paper with regular dispatches, which the Herald was forced to share with other members of the New York Associated Press. Since at the same time Villard corresponded freely with Western papers, a considerable portion of the political news which the country read during those memorable weeks was supplied by the young immigrant who had not yet turned his twenty-sixth birthday.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, he suppported the Union cause and became a war correspondent, first for the New York Herald, and later for the New York Tribune, accompanying the Union armies in Virginia and the West until late in November 1863, when ill health forced him to abandon field work for a time. The following year, in conjunction with the Washingtong representative of the Chicago Daily Tribune, he organized a news agency to compete with the New York Associated Press, and represented his agency with the Army of the Potomac in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. Upon the conclusion of the war, he served as a corresponent in the United States and Europe until the autumn of 1868, when he became secretary of the American Social Science Association, with headquarters in Boston. This work, in addition to bringing him into the movement for civil service reform, enabled him to study and investigate public and corporate financing, including that of railways and banks, and thus indirectly prepared him for the most notable phase of his career - that of railway promoter and financier.
In 1871, to restore his failing health, he went to Germany and then to Switzerland. In Germany again, in the winter of 1873, he was brought into contact with a protective committee for the bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad Company. He became a member of the committee, and the following year was sent to Oregon as their representative, to investigate and recommend as to the future policy to be employed by the bondholders. He perfected a plan for the harmonic operation of the Oregon & California Railroad, the Oregon Central Railroad, and the Oregon Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco; in 1876 he became president of the first and last named companies. Meanwhile he had joined a committee for the protection of the bondholders of the Kansas Pacific Railway, and when in 1876 this company became financially embarrassed he was named a receiver of the road, a position which forced him to match his wits with such redoubtable foes as Jay Gould and Sidey Dillon of the Union Pacific. It was in connection with this company that he achieved his first important financial success and laid the foundation of his later fortune.
Villard's real love, however, was the Oregon country. On his first visit to the region he had been very favourably impressed with its possibilities and there gradually developed in his mind the idea of building a railway empire in the far Northwest. Perceiving the great strategic value of the south bank of the Columbia River as a railway route, he purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation Company from Simeon Gannett Reed and his associates in 1879, organized the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, and proceeded to construct a railway eastward from Portland along this route. His plan was to make this line the Pacific Coast outlet for any northern transcontinental railway which might be built, and to concentrated the trade of the Northwest in Portland. As he progressed with his plans, however, he clashed with the Northen Pacific, then recovering from the financial disasters of the seventies, whose objective was Puget Sound. Appreciating the great advantage which the superior harbor of the Sound would give the Northern Pacific over his own road with terminus at Portland, Villard resolved to prevent the completion of the rival road. When his offer of running rights over his line to tidewater was refused, he decided to purchase a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific. After quietly buying the stock of the Company to the limit of his recources (December 1880 - January 1881), he appealed to his friends and supporters for assistance. Issuing a confidential circular to about fifty persons, he asked them to subscribe toward a fund of eight million dollars, the precise purpose of which was not then revealed. It is eloquent testimony to the confidence which he inspired in men that, besides the sum first requested, an additional twelve million dollars was eventually subscribed. This transaction, commonly known as the "Blind Pool", remains one of the notable achievements in the annals of railway finance.
With the means thus secured he established his control of the Northern Pacific; he organized a holding company - the Oregon & Transcontinental - to harmonize the interests of his various railway properties; on Sep.15, 1881, he became president of the Northern Pacific, and completed the line in 1883. Since he also controlled the Oregon & California Railroad, and had recently organized the Oregon Improvement Company for the development of the natural recources of the region, he now dominated every important agency of transportation in that part of the country. His triumph, however, was of short duration. Because of a combination of circumstances, including faulty estimates of construction costs, the Northern Pacific, upon its completion, was confronted with a huge deficit which forced the resignation of Villard from the presidency early in 1884. From 1884 to 1886 he was in Germany, recovering from a nervous breakdown; in the latter year he returned to New York as agent of the Deutsche Bank. With the aid of Germany capital he saved the Oregon & Transcontinental in September 1887, and reentered the board of the Northern Pacific in 1888, where, for the next two years, he strove earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to effect an adjustment of the clashing interests of the various cities and transportation companies of the Pacific Northwest. His failure in this effort was attended by his retirement from the Orgeon Railway & Navigation Company, though after a brief interval he continued as chairman of the board of the Northern Pacific until 1893, when his railway career came to an end.
Meanwhile Villard was displaying his versality by activities along other lines. His early realization of the possibilities of the electrical industry prompted him to extend financial assistance to Thomas A. Edison and to found the Edison General Electric Company in 1889. In 1881 he inaugurated, under the direction of Raphael Pumpelly, the Northern Transcontinental Survey, an examination of the Northern Pacific land grant of genuine scientific value. Nor had his activity as a financier dulled his earlier interest in journalism. When, through his finacial successes with the Kansas Pacific and the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, he became a man of wealth, his thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of controlling a journal of independence and fearlessness, and of such high editorial standarts as to compel attention from the entire country. Accordingly, in 1881, he aquired a controlling interest in the New York Evening Post, placed Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz in charge of the editorial department, and, as a guarantee of independence on the part of the paper, promtly abdicated the right of influencing its editorial policy.
During the years 1879 to 1883 Villard was probably the most important railway promoter in the United States. In those years he was frankly aiming at a monopoly of transportation facilities in the Pacific Northwest; yet he showed no disposition to take unfair advantage of such a position, or to victimize the people of the region. Although alert to the protection of his interests against rival companies, he displayed fairness, moderation, and breadth of view in dealing with the cities on the Coast. On Jan. 3, 1866 Villard married the only daughter of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1879 he established a home at Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where in his sixtysixth year he died. He was survived by his wife, Helen Francis Garrison Villard, with a daughter and two sons.

Cornelius Vanderbilt
(1794-1877)steamship and railroad promoter, financier, born at Port Richmond, Staten Island, N.Y. (now part of New York City), was the fourth child and second son of Cornelius and Phebe (Hand) Vander Bilt. His paternal ancestors, who came from Holland and settled on Long Island in the latter half of the seventeenth century, wrote the family name in three words, van der Bilt. The subject of the present sketch preferred to write it Van Derbilt, but during his lifetime other members of the family consolidated the name into one word. His father, a poor man with a large family, did a bit of farming on Staten Island and some boating and lightering aroung New York harbor. The blue eyed, flaxen-haired, boisterous boy Cornelius had no inclination and little opportunity for education, and did not spend a day in school after he was eleven. Already big in body and strong, he became at that age his father's helper. At about thirteen he is said to have superintended the job of lightering a vessel, his father being engaged elsewhere. He had barely reached his sxiteenth birthday when, with $100 advanced by his parents, he bought a small sailing vessel called a piragua and began a freight and passenger ferrying business between Staten Island and New York City. On Dec. 19 1813, whe he was only nineteen yeras old, he married his cousin and neighbor, Sophia Johnson, daughter of his father's sister Eleanor, and set up a home of his own near his birthplace.
The War of 1812 had opened new opportunities for him, and he was busy day and night. Among other important jobs, he had a three months' contract from the government for provisioning the forts in and around New York harbor. Before the war was over, he had several boats under his command. He built a schooner in 1814 for service to Long Island Sound, and, in the following two years, two larger schooners for the coastwise trade. These he sent out - he himself being in command of the largest - not only as cargo boats, but also as traders up the Hudson River and along the coast from New England to Charleston. In 1818 he startled his friends by selling all his sailing vessels and going to work as a captain for Thomas Gibbons, owner of a ferry between New Brunswick, on the Raritan estuary, and New York City - an important link in the New York-Philadelphia fright, mail, and passenger route. Gibbons was fighting for life against the steam-navigation monopoly in New York waters which had been granted to Robert Fulton by the New York legislature several years before. Vanderbilt loved a fight; he took Gibbons' one small vessel, put her in better condition, selected a hard-bitten crew and drove them to the limit of endurance, and within a year had turned a losing venture into a profitable one. Whe he entered Gibbons' service, he removed his family to New Brunswick, took over a rundown tavern by the river-side there, and installed his wife as hotel keeper. She renovated the house and made it famous for good food an service. "Bellona Hall", as it was called, became a favourite stopping place for travelers between New York and Philadelphia. In addition to her duties as chief factotum of the hotel, Mrs. Vanderbilt gave birth to a child about every two years while living in New Brunswick; she had thirteen in all. Vanderbilt soon induced Gibbons to build a larger and finer steamer, the Bellona (1818). Meanwhile, the New York monopoly had brought suit against Gibbons, and for several years there was legal, and sometimes physical warfare. Only Vanderbilt's lusty, dynamic spirit and recourcefulness kept his employer's line in operation. For months on end New York deputy sheriffs tried to arrest him whenever his boat entered New York waters, but he foiled them in one way or another. He is said to have built a secret compartment on the vessel in which he would hide at such times. Finally, in 1824, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a monopoly such as that granted by the New York legislature was unconsitutional. During the eleven years of his service with Gibbons, young Vanderbilt increased and broadened the business enormously. He had built seven more steamers for his employer,some for the New York-New Brunswick-Elisabeth ferries, others to ply a new line on the Delaware. Vanderbilt had ambitions of his own; and in 1829, having accumulated a considerable nestegg through his own and his wife's exertions, he resigned from Gibbons' employ in order to enter the steamboat business on his own. Much against the will of his wife, he disposed of "Bellona Hall" and moved her and the eight or nine children to New York City. His first ventures were on the Hudson River, where other concerns were already operating; he inaugurated rate wars with a characteristic zest for conflict. here, in a competition for the trade between New York and Peekskill, he came into collision, in 1834, with Daniel Drew. The fare between the two points was finally cut to twelve and a half cents, and then Drew sold out to Vanderbilt. The latter now entered the Albany trade, where a more powerful corporation, the Hudson River Association, was functioning. He put two boats on the Albany run and began cutting rates again. In the end his opponents paid him a goodly sum for his agreement to withdraw from competition for ten years. He next established lines on Long Island Sound and on to Providence and Boston. Later he returned to the Hudson River.He is given credit for bringing about a great and rapid advance in the size, comfort, and elegance of steamboats. The "floating palaces" of the 1840's and 1850's would not suffer greatly by comparison with the boats of today in such waters; in many cses they were more luxurious,even if they lacked electric appliances and some other modern conveniences. Vanderbilt found pleasure in making his vessels stanch, fast, handsome,and comfortable. About 1846 he launched on the Hudson perhaps the finest boat yet seen by New Yorkers; it was named for himself.
Before his time he was undoubtedly a millionaire. He was supposed to have passed the half million mark at the age of forty. But he and his family had so far failed to make any impression upon the exclusive New York society of that day. Cornelius himself was not a figure for the drawing-room or for a luncheon table of fastidious gentlemen. He was apt to be loud, rustic, and coarse in speech, his talk interlarded with profanity and slang of the wharves. He was a big, bumptious, ruthless, tobacco-chewing, hardheaded, hard-swearing, hard-fighting man, yet constructive,courageous, clear-sighted in buisness matters, broad-visioned for his day and graced by a certain alluring frankness and faithfulness to a bargain. It is believed that a certain smoldering resentment because of the social cold shoulder turned to him, together with the persuasion of his wife, caused him to build a fine mansion on Staten Island and take his family back there in 1840. But he still wanted to pry open those closed doors on Manhattan, and in 1846, despite his wife's protests, he began building a town house on Washington Place. Scarcely was it ready when Mrs. Vanderbilt was committed to a private sanitarium for insanity, upon his delation, and perhaps because of her tearful yet stubborn refusal to move back to New York. She was released in the spring of 1847, after a few months' confinement, and went obediently to the new home in the city.
The gold rush opened new vistas to Vanderbilt, whom men were now calling "Commodore." Before the end of 1849, traffic to California was beginning to go via Panama, freight and passengers crossing the Isthmus on muleback. Vanderbilt conceived the idea of starting a line of his own via Nicaragua - through San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua and perhaps thence by canal to the Pacific. At first he called this the American Atlantic & Pacific Ship Canal Company. A trip to England in 1850 in search of capital to finance the venture was fruitless, and he proceeded to develop the route himself. He procured from the Nicaraguan government a charter for himself in the name of the Accessory Transit Company. He then improved to some extent the channel of San Juan River, built docks on the east and west coasts of Nicaragua, and made a fine twelve-mile macadam road from the latter place to his west-coast port. Meanwhile, he was beginning the construction of a fleet of eight new steamers with which he ran lines from New York, and later from New Orleans. His route was two days shorter than that via Panama; he greatly reduced the New York - San Francisco passenger fare and garnered most of the traffic. He made money so rapidly that in 1853 he announced that he was going to take the first vacaction of his life. He built a steam yacht, the North Star, sumptuously appointed, and with his entire family, even his sons-in-law and grandchildren, and with several invited guests, including the Rev. Dr. John Overton Choules as chaplain and chronicler, he embarked for a triumphal tour of Europe. Dr. Choules wrote a fulsome history of the voyage, full of unconscious humor, which was published as The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star (1854). Before going abroad, Vanderbilt resigned the presidency of the Accessory Transit Company, and committed its management to Charles Morgan and Cornelius K. Garrison who, durin his absence, manipulated the stock and secured control of the company; but by shrewd buying he won it back in a few months. However, William Walker, the America filibuster who had seized control of the Nicaraguan government, allied himself with Morgan and Garrison, rescinded the Transit Company's charter on the ground that its terms had been disregarded, and issued a new charter to the rival group. Vanderbilt thereupon aided in bringing about Walker's downfall early in 1857. The doughty "Commodore", now sixty-three, but a harder fighter than ever, had to battle his way through other enemies in Wall Street and Central America, but he triumphed, and the Transit Company was his own again. Scarcely had he brushed aside the last opposition, however, when he approached the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the United States Mail Steamship Company, the great carriers via Panama, and offered to abandon the Nicaragua line if they would buy the North Star for some $400,000 and pay him $ 40,000 a month indemnity. They came to his figures reluctantly, but a year later, when he threatened to open the Transit line again, they increased his monthly stipend to $ 56,000. In the middle fifities he built three vessels, one of which, the Vanderbilt,was the largest and finest he had yet constructed, and entered into competition for the Atlantic trade with the Cunard Line and the Collins line, even offering to carry the mail to Havre for nothing. He found this an unprofitable venture, however, and at the beginning of the Civil War was glad to sell his Atlantic line for $ 3,000,000 retaining only the Vanderbilt which he fitted up as a warship and turned over to the government. It has benn claimed that he intended only to make a loan of this vessel, but it was interpreted as a gift. His connection with the expedition of Nathaniel P. Banks to New Orleans was less happy, for many of the vessels chartered by him under commission of the government proved unseaworthy. However, his name was expunged from the Senate resolution of censure.
Of Vanderbilt's thirteen children, one boy had died young and all of the nine daughters were living. His youngest and favourite child, George, born in 1839, was a soldier in the Civil War and died in 1866 from effects of exposure in the Corinth campaign. His second son, Cornelius Jeremiah, an epileptic, gambler, and ne'er-do-well, had been a gread disappointment. The eldest son, William Henry, he had regarded as being of little force, and had exiled to a farm on Staten Island, though later he became aware of his ability and at last gave him opportunity to use it. This was in connection with railroad enterprises, to which Vanderbilt turned from shipping as he neared seventy. He had begun buying New York & Harlem Railroad stock in 1862 when it was selling at a very low figure. In 1863 he induced the city council to give him permission to extend the line by street-car tracks to the Battery. The stock, which he had already driven up, rose greatly upon public announcement of the ordinance, and even more when Vanderbilt was elected president. Daniel Drew now plotted with members of the council to sell Harlem stock "short", rescind the ordinance, and buy the shares for delivery after the price had dropped to a certain figure. The plot was carried out, but the price dropped much less than was expected, for Vanderbilt bought every share that was offered, and presently it was discovered that the "short" traders had sold more shares than were in existence. The price rapidly rose, and when Vanderbilt forced a settlement, many of the plotters were ruined. He made William vice-president of the Harlem road, and thereafter his son was his first lieutenant.
He next turned his attention to the Harlem's competitor, the Hudson River Railroad, another rundown property. While buying control of the railroad, he sought authority from the legislature to combine the two. Undeterred by his former experience, Drew again plotted, this time with some of the legislators, to sell the stock "short", defeat the consolidation bill, hammer down the price, and make a "killing". The former story was repeated: The bill was lost; the price declined considerably but not enough; Vanderbilt, aided by other operators, bought every share offered; the "shorts" discovered that they had agreed to deliver far more shares than were in existence; the price rose greatly; and again Cornelius had revenge on those who had tried to break him. He bided his time on the consolidation of the roads, improving their equipment and service, as he did that of every property he owned, and presently had them on a paying basis. He next sought control of the New York Central Railroad, running from Albany to Buffalo. Its directors countered by forming an alliance with Drew's Hudson River boat line and sending through freight and passengers from Albany to New York by that route. But when the river froze in early winter and the steamboats were stopped, they sought to transfer traffic to the Hudson River road, only to discover that Vanderbilt was halting its trains on the east side of the river, a mile from Albany. Stock in the New York Central declined and Vanderbilt bought quantities of it, finally securing control in 1867. He promptly spent $ 2,000,000 of his own money in improving the line and buying new rolling stock. He united these two railroads by legislative act in 1869, as the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, and in 1872 leased the Harlem Railroad to it. He increased the capital stock by $ 42,000,000 (which was a stock-watering operation of magnitude), but out of three inefficient roads he created a single line, giving uninterrupted service.
In 1868 he sought control of the Erie Railway, a rival line to Buffalo and Chicago. He pursued the same tactics as before, buying every share of stock offered. Buth this time Drew, Jay Gould, and James Fisk, Jr., who were in control of Erie, outmaneuvered him, throwing 50,000 shares of fraudulent stock into the marked, then fleeing to New Jersey to avoid prosecution and bribing the New Jersey legislature to legalize the stock issue. Vanderbilt lost millions by this coup, but the plotters had to compromise with him inorder to return to New York with impunity, and his loss was greatly reduced. Upon the insistence of his son William that extension of their rail system to Chicago was advisable in 1873 he bought control of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, and two years before his death the Michigan Central Railroad and the Canada Southern Railway. Thus did he create one of the great American systems of transportation. In the last years of his life, his influence on national finance was stabilizing. When the panic of 1873 was at its worst, he announced that the New York Central was paying its millions of dividends as usual, and let contracts for the building of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, with four tracks leading from it, giving employment to thousands of men. He saw to it, however, that the city paid half the cost of the viaduct and open-cut approacheds to the station.
His first wife died in1868, and on Aug. 21, 1869, he married Frank Armstrong Crawford, a young lady from Mobile, Ala., who survived him when he died on Jan. 4, 1877, after an illness of about eight months. His fortune was estimated at more than $ 100,000,000, of which he left about $ 90,000,000 to William and about $7,500,000 to the latter's four sons; he expressed his contempt for womankind by leaving less than $4,000,000 to be distributed amon his own eight daughters. His wife received a half million in cash, the New York home, and 2,000 shares of New York Central stock. Vanderbilt bestowed no money philantropically until late in life, when he gave $ 1,000,000 to Vanderbilt University (previously Central University) at Nashville, Tenn., of which he is regarded as the founder, and $50,000 to the Church of the Strangers in New York, of which his friend, the Rev. Charles F. Deems, was pastor.

Jay Gould
(1836 - 1892)financier, christened Jason by his parents, was born at Roxbury, N.Y., the son of John Burr and Mary (Moore) Gould, who owned a poor hill farm. On his father's side he was descended from Nathan Gold, of Bury St. Edmunds, England, who emigrated to Milford, Connecticut, in 1647 and some three years later settled in Fairfield, Conn. On his mother's side he was of Scottish descent. By determined effort, working for a blacksmith and later as clerk in a country store, he obtained some education in an academy and learned the rudiments of surveying. With this equipment he showed a precocious knack in money-making. Between his eighteenth and twenty-first years he helped prepare maps of Ulster, Albany and Delaware counties in New York, Lake and Geauga counties in Ohio, and Oakland County in Michigan, and in 1856 he published a volume of local history, History of Delaware County, and Border Wars of New York. At twenty-one, an undersized, keen-witted, unscrupulous young man, he had saved $ 5,000. With Zadock Pratt, a New York politician, he opened a large tannery in northern Pennsylvania, and shortly prevailed upon a New york leather merchant, C.M.Leupp, to assist him in obtaining full control of it. His business relations with both men were sharp to the point of knavery, and his enemies always declared that his speculations were partly responsible for Leupp's suicide in 1857. Abandoning the tannery, after a brief career in 1859-60 as leather merchant at 39 Spruce St.,New York, he began speculating in small railways. A profitable deal in bonds of the Rutland & Washington was followed by his managership of the Rensselaer & Saratoga and investments in other lines.
Gould's operations first became spectacular when in October 1867 he and James Fisk joined the directorate of the Erie Railroad, of which Daniel Drew was treasurer and controlling agent. In the titanic and scandalous battle with Cornelius Vanderbilt which followed, Gould supplied the strategic imagination while Drew contributed low cunning and Fisk impudence. Defying a court injunction, they broke Vanderbilt's attempted corner by flinging 50,000 shares of Erie upon the market (March 1868). Gould and his fellow conspirators were promptly forced to flee to Jersey City, whence he descended upon Albany to buy the passage of a bill legalizing the recent issue of Erie stock and forbidding a union of the Erie and New York Central. Lavish bribes secured this legislation. A peace was then patched up with the Vanderbilt interests, and Drew retired from the Erie, leaving Gould and Fisk in absolute control. A series of sensational operations followed. The Gould-Fisk partnership, reinforced by the addition of Peter B. Sweeny and William M. Tweed as directors, looted the Erie by huge stock-watering measures; carried out a daring raid on the credit, produce and export markets of the nation in the fall of 1868; and attempted a year later to corner the gold market, bringing about the disastrous panic of Black Friday (Sept. 24, 1869). The result was an avalanche of popular anger. Litigation over the sale of fraudulent Erie stock was begun, and following Fisk's death and the overthrow of the "Tweed ring", Gould was ejected from his control of the Erie on March 10, 1872, Gen. John A. Dix taking his place.
His destructive activities were now to be succeded by operations with at least some constructive elements. Posessing a fortune which has been estimated at $ 25,000,000, Gould was in a position to undertake ambitious strokes. He turned to the West. Buying large blocks of Union Pacific Railroad stock, he became a director in 1874 and remained in virtual control until 1878, meanwhile buying control of the Kansas Pacific. In 1879 he also bought control of the Denver Pacific, Central Pacific and Missouri Pacific. By threatening to extend the Kansas Pacific to Salt Lake City to connect with the Central Pacific, thus forming a new transcontinental railroad in competition with the Union Pacific, he compelled the Union Pacific to consolidate with the Kansas Pacific at par. Soon afterward he sold his Kansas Pacific stock, thus clearing a sum which Henry Villard placed at $ 10,000,000. He retained possession of the Missouri Pacific and increased its efficency. By 1890 he owned the Missouri Pacific system (5,300 miles), the Texas & Pacific (1,499), the St.Louis Southwestern ( 1,222), and the International & Great Northern (825), or one-half of all the mileage in the Southwest. His system, at a time when practically all Southwestern traffic was carried to St. Louis or Kansas City, was the only real competitor of the Santa Fé. Meanwhile, Gould had extended his dealings into other fields. He owned the New York World from 1879 to 1883; became part owner of the New York elevated railways in 1881 and practically full owner in 1886; and bought control of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Working almost to the end, and remaining the same cold, astute, unscrupulous man, without friends and caring for no diversions except books and gardening, he died of tuberculosis in his fifty-seventh year. He had married Helen Day Miller early in life, and his sons, especially George Jay Gould, succeeded to the control of his property.

James Fisk
(1834-1872)capitalist, speculator, was the son of James and Love B. (Ryan) Fisk, of Bennington, and later Brattleboro, Vt. After scanty schooling, he was successively waiter in a hotel, ticket-seller for the Van Amberg circus, and salesman with his father's "traveling emporium", which, he later purchased and operated himself, graciously admitting his father to his employ. A boastful, flashy, genial youth, with endless impudence and push, he was soon aspiring to larger spheres. He branched from peddling into a jobbing business for Jordan & Marsh of Boston, entered their wholesale department in 1860, and managed large war contracts for them on a commission basis. Later he went South to buy cotton in the occupied districts for a Boston syndicate, handled extensive purchases for Northern ports, and England, and became wealthy enough to launch into business for himself. His Boston establishment as dry-goods jobber was badly hit in 1865 by post-war deflation, and a brokerage office in Broad Street, New York, was a failure. But his conceit, swaggering energy, and taste for speculation were undiminished. He recouped his fortunes by acting as agent in the sale of Daniel Drew's Stonington steamboats to a Boston group, returned to New York, and with Drew's support founded in 1866 the brokerage house of Fisk & Belden.
Fisk’s rise to fortune was thereafter rapid. Drawn into the "Erie War" between Drew and Vanderbilt, he became a director of the Erie, helped Gould and Drew despoil it, and was an able, self-assertive second in all their schemes. During the battle royal of 1868, when Vanderbilt with the aid of Justice Barnard tried to capture the line, it was he who evaded Barnard's injunction against the issue of more stock by seizing 50,000 ready-signed shares, who used them to break Vanderbilt’s attempted corner, thus netting millions for the trio, and who led the famous flight with Gould and Drew to Taylor's Hote in Jersey City. When Drew and Vanderbilt made peace, Fisk and Gould shared control of the half-wrecked Erie Railroad. They at once embarked on a series of bold and unscrupulous ventures. They increased the Erie stock during the summer of 1868 from $ 34,265,000 to $ 57,766,000, where it stood on Oct. 24. Part of the proceeds was used for expansion, the two managers - Fisk as controller, Gould as president - leasing other railways, building branches, buying steamboats, rolling-mills, and car shops, and adding new equipment; part was used in reckless speculative forays. They launched a campaign with Drew in the fall of 1868 to make credit tight and raise the price of gold which reacted disastrously upon the nation's business and was felt even in Europe, but which netted them large sums. They also carried out a cornering operation which was so outrageous that Erie stock was stricken from the broker's board; a raid upon the United States Express Company, whose stock they manipulated at will; and a raid upon the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad which resulted in a pitched battle of gangs of employees near Binghampton. These raids, exasperating public sentiment, culminated in the famous Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market (September 1869), when once more hundreds were ruined and all business suffered a profound shock. The coup disastrously failed, and Fisk flatly repudiated contracts of many millions through his responsible partner Belden. American opinion regarded him and Gould as public enemies, but he flippantly told a Congressional committee that the money had "gone where the woodbine twineth".
Meanwhile Fisk, now a fat, jovial, brassy voluptuary, was leading a life of half-barbaric prodigality. Buying Pike's Opera House at Twenty-third St. and Eighth Avenue he fitted up costly offices there, at the same time producing dramas and French opera bouffe; he leased the Academy of Music and put on grand opera till the expense chilled him; swaggered as "admiral" of the Fall River and the Bristol lines of steamboats, which he controlled; placed on the Hudson its largest ferryboat, the "James Fisk"; bought a summer garden for a resturant; kept a large stable; and diverted the East by his antics as colonel of the 9th Regiment of the New York militia, a post to which he bought his way in May 1870. His visit with this regiment to Boston on Bunker Hill Day in 1871, when he asked permission to celebrate "divine service" on Boston Common, was one of the best-advertised episodes of his career. His end befitted his flashy life. After keeping numerous mistresses he singled out the actress Josie Mansfield as his favourite, quarreled over her and over business transactions with the dissolute Edward Stokes, was fatally shot by the latter in the Grand Central Hotel on Jan. 6, 1872, and died the next day. A spectacular funeral, with every honor from the Tammany administration and a cortège including the 9th Regiment and a band of two hundred pieces, was accompanied by innumerable denunciatory sermons and editorials. He was survived by his wife, Lucy D. Moore, of Springfield, Mass., whom he married in November 1855.

Daniel Drew
(1797-1879) capitalist,specualtor, son of Gilbert and Catherine (Muckelworth) Drew, was born at Carmel, N.Y., and spent his boyhood on his father's hundred-acre stock-farm with meager schooling. At fifteen he was left by his farther's death to make his way, and, in order to earn the hundred dollars paid for substitutes, enlisted in the War of 1812, spending three months at Fort Gansevoort near Paulus Hook, N.J. After a brief service with the Nathaniel Howe menagerie, he found work suited to his temperament as cattle drover and horse trader, collecting live stock in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys and driving it to New York City. His training made him sharp-witted, grasping, and unscrupulous, though his trickiness was combined with a sanctimonious devotion to Methodism. By shrewdness and enterprise he soon became preeminent as a cattle buyer, and with the help of capital supplied by Henry Astor he extended his operations wesward, being the first to drive cattle from Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois across the Alleghanies. In 182 took up a permanent residence in New York, making his Bull's Head Tavern at Third Ave. and Twenty-fourth St., with yards for 1,500 cattle, the principa headquarters and exchange for dovers. During 1834 he went into the steamboat business in competition with Cornelius Vanderbilt, running "anti-monopoly" boats first to Peekskill and then between Albany and New York. Beginning with the steamboats Westchester and Emerald, he reduced the Albany fare from three dollars to one, added to his fleet a series of well-known vessels, the Knickerbocker, Oregon, Isaac Newton (the first 300-foot boat on the Hudson), and New World, carried passengers for as little as a shilling, and by adroit management overcame Vanderbilt's opposition. When the Hudson River Railroad opened in 1852 he held undaunted to his line; for twenty-two years he also controlled the Sonington Line in Long Island Sound; and he established a profitable steamboat service on Lake Champlain. Having accumulated capital, he entered Wall St. in 1844, forming the house of Drew, Robinson & Company, which for ten years did a large stock-broking and banking business; and when the death of his partners dissolved the firm he became one of the boldest and craftiest of independent operators. "I had been wonderfully blessed in money-making", he said late in life. "I got to be a millionaire afore I know'd it, hardly". His connection with the Erie Railroad began in 1853, and in 1857, assisted by the panic, he forced his election as director. This fiduciary position enabled him to manipulate the Erie stock, and he did so shamelessly, becoming the first notorious type of speculative director. But in the famous Harlem Railroad corner which Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Tobin planned in 1864, he was outwitted, went short on large commitments as the stock rose in five months from 90 to 285, and lost a half million dollars, an episode which left him eager for revenge.
Drew's greatest business battle, affording numerous illustrations of the outrageous business practices permitted, just after the Civil War, was the "Erie War" with Vanderbilt in 1866-68. As treasurer of the hard-pressed line, Drew, in the spring of 1866, advanced it $ 3,500,000 taking 28,000 shares of unissued stock and bonds for $ 3,000,000 convertible into stock. He simultaneously went short on Erie on a rising market, suddenly unloaded 58,000 shares on the bulls, and as the stock sank from 95 to 50 made enormous profits. Vanderbilt, determined to control the line, made an alliance with Boston speculators who held stock, threatened court proceedings, and frightened Drew and his allies, Jay Gould and James Fisk, into a treaty of peace - to which Drew shortly proved treacherous. The crisis came when, in 1868, Vanderbilt, with the aid of court injunctions to stop the Erie printing-presses, tried to corner Drew. But Drew, Gould and Fisk succeeded, despite the courts, in dumping 50,000 shares of newly printed stock in the market, depressed the price from 83 to 71, and sheared Vanderbilt of millions. Judge Barnard ordered their arrest, and the trio retreated with $ 6,000,000 in greenbacks to Taylor's hotel, Jersey City, which they fortified. The combat was then transferred from the courts to the legislature at Albany. Gould bought the passage of a bill legalizing the stock issue, and Vanderbilt consented to a peace by which the plundered wreck of the Erie was handed over to Gould and Fisk. While the nation was still gasping at the depths of business dishonesty and political corruption revealed by the Erie War, Drew, Gould, and Fisk used their gains and the proceeds of fresh stock-water for an assault (October 1868) upon bank credit, stock prices, and foreign exchange which ruined thousands. Drew was at the height of his fortunes, but the press voiced general opinion in calling upon every one to treat him and his associates as infamous.
In 1870 Drew's luck failed him, and he was the victim of a combination managed by his former associates, Gould and Fisk, who sold enough Erie stock in England to produce an unexpected rise, cornered him, and were credited with mulcting him of a million and a half. His descent thereafter was rapid. Further stock losses were followed by ruin in the panic of 1873 and the resulting failure of Kenyon, Cox & Company, a firm in which he was largely interested. After many struggles, he filed a schedule in bankruptcy in March 1876, his liabilities exceeding one million and his assets being negligible. In his twenty-fifth year he had married Roxana Mead. Now a broken, illiterate, despised old man, he spent his last years dependent upon his son, William H. Drew, and living at 3 East Forty-second St. In his days of wealth he had built Methodist churches at Carmel and Brewster, N.Y., and had spent roughly $ 250,000 on the Drew Theological Seminary at Madison, N.J., and a somewhat smaller sum for the Drew Seminary for Young Ladies at Carmel; but his pledges for an endowment for the Drew Theological Seminary and for Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn., were involved in his bankruptcy. Throughout life he had the tastes and habits of a drover, and he was survived by many stories of his ignorance, naiveté, parsimony, and mixture of piety and rascality.

James Robert Keene
(1838-1913)speculator and turfman, was born at Chester, near Liverpool, England. Little is known of his parentage. He once described his father as an "Irish gentleman". The boy had good opportunities in English schools, but when about fourteen he accompanied his father to America. They lived for a short time at Lynchburg, Va., but early in the fifties they both set out for California. In Shasta County James engaged in a variety of occupations-- selling milk, teaching school, studying law, editing newspapers, caring for horses, working in a mill, mining, freighting, and stock-raising. After the Civil War the discovery of the Comstock silver lode in Nevada gave him an opportunity for speculation from which he quickly realized $ 10,000. With that capital he began a career as stock manipulator on the San Francisco Exchange which lasted ten years and involved the winning and losing of fortunes. At first he was only a street broker handling the orders of active speculators. In 1869 Charles N. Felton, assistant treasurer of the United States, made him a loan and within a year Keene repaid the loan and cleared $ 400,000 on the market. At the height of his success he married Sara Jay Daingerfield, sister of Judge William P. Daingerfield, of an old Virginia family. Within a few months he lost by speculation all that he had won and even his household goods were attached for debt. But bold and skilful trading in Nevada mining stocks soon retrieved his losses. Within five years he was reputed to be worth $ 5,000,000. In 1875 he was made president of the Stock and Exchange Board and in the same year had a part in rehabilitating the Bank of California after the suicide of its president. In 1876 Keene crossed the continent from San Francisco with a voyage to Europe in prospect. He stopped in New York and became greatly interested in Wall Street and its mechanism -- particularly in the operations of Jay Gould. When he joined Gould in a pool formed with the avowed purpose of putting down Western Union stock (Note from the Robber Baron: A telegraph company with monopoly-status), Gould unscrupulously sold him out. Keene found that Wall Street was not so easily controlled as the San Francisco market, but the challenge only put him on his mettle. In other pools that he formed he was successful. At the top of the wild speculation that set in during 1879 Keene's profits may have reached $ 9,000,000. But in corn and wheat trading he did not fare so well. After a few years of prosperity he over-extended his credits and bought recklessly. The climax was reached in 1884 when Keene tried to manipulate wheat, pushing the price up to $ 1.30 a bushel. Here he overplayed and when it fell to $0.90 (Note from the Robber Baron: in part due to the bear raids of Jay Gould) his failure was announced. Recovery from this defeat was long-delayed. Keene tasted poverty for the second time since his early days of affluence. Trading in National Cordage, sugar, and tobacco at last put him on his feet again. In the early nineties he engineered movements in sugar stock for the Havemeyers and his share of the profits was estimated at $ 4,500,000. In 1901, when the new issue of the United States Steel Company's stock had to be marketed, Pierpont Morgan, Sr.,was willing to put the undertaking in Keene's hands. J.J.Hill and the Great Northern interests also employed Keene to buy $ 15,000,000 of Northern Pacific stock to insure control of Harriman.
All his life Keene had been a lover of horses. Soon after going to New York he began to buy thoroughbreds. In 1881 his horse Foxhall won the Grand Prix at Paris. Thereafter for more than a quarter of a century Keene's horses won many of the most famous sweepstakes in England, France, and America. Domino, Cap-and-Bell, and Sysonby were among his favourites. Domino, Cap-and-Bell, and Sysonby were among his favourites. For the ten years from 1898 his total turf winnings were believed to exceed $ 2,000,000. At his death, in 1913, he was again a millionaire.