Father's Fortune and Doubled It]

The old autocrat finally modified his contemptuous opinion, and put
him in an executive position in the management of the New York and
Harlem Railroad. Later, he elevated him to be a sort of coadjutor by
installing him as vice president of the New York Central Railroad,
and as an associate in the directing of other railroads. It was said
to be painful to note the exhausting persistence with which William
H. Vanderbilt daily struggled to get some perceptions of the details
of railroad management. He did succeed in absorbing considerable
knowledge. But his training at the hands of his father was not so
much in the direction of learning the system of management. Men of
ability could always be hired to manage the roads. What his father
principally taught him was the more essential astuteness required of
a railroad magnate; the manipulation of stocks and of common councils
and legislatures; how to fight and overthrow competitors and extend
the sphere of ownership and control; and how best to resist, and if
possible to destroy, the labor unions. In brief, his education was a
duplication of his father's scope of action: the methods of the sire
were infused into the son.

From the situation in which he found himself, and viewing the
particular traits required in the development of capitalistic
institutions, it was the most appropriate training that he could have
received. Book erudition and the cultivation of fine qualities would
have been sadly out of place; his father's teachings were precisely
what were needed to sustain and augment his possessions. On every
hand he was confronted either by competitors who, if they could get
the chance, would have stripped him without scruple, or by other men
of his own class who would have joyfully defrauded him. But