“No; you know, I’m very much interested in such things, and so I don’t mind the work. I would much prefer working in the yards and round-houses to working in the offices. It is much more to my taste.”
I asked Mr. Vanderbilt whether he ever expected to run an engine attached to a train, and he said he had no idea of doing so, but he could, if necessary. “I’m glad to know how,” he said.
And then Mr. Vanderbilt went to attend to some work awaiting him outside, and I entered Mr. Depew’s office. When I asked Mr. Depew to tell me something more of the young man whom he has so nobly befriended in all his trials, he spoke with great animation.
WISE DEVELOPMENT OF INHERITED TENDENCIES.
“Cornelius,” said he, “is a remarkable youth. From his early boyhood, I have seen in him signs of a peculiar ability. He has always been passionately fond of mechanics, and once, when a boy, was found trying to construct a steam engine out of an old saucepan. I have always hoped that he would enter actively into the work of the road, and I believe he has now begun a career that will prove both remarkable and glorious. I believe that, by pursuing this course, he will be the greatest railroad man of the age.”
“Where did he get this natural taste for the work, Mr. Depew?” I asked.
“From his father, who did much the same work, when he was young, that Cornelius Jr., is doing now. But I believe Cornelius, Jr., takes an even greater interest in the work. It is not a new duty with him, but a natural ambition, and I believe that he would have become a railroad man even if he were the son of the poorest parents in the land. He is fitted by nature for such a career.
“His progress has so far been very satisfactory in every way. He has a genius for mastering details, and has already learned the construction of a locomotive. He has an inventive faculty, too, and has prepared plans for a locomotive that will achieve greater speed with smaller expenditure of coal. He expects to devote the next few years to mastering every department of railroad business, and he will eventually be competent to fill almost any position on the road. He will shovel coal and dig in the trenches, and polish engines. He will lay rails and take them up, and learn how to mend a cracked one. He will learn to detect uncertain ground, too, and how to make it solid again. He agrees with me that the way to make a workman respect you is to work with him.”
HE WILL MASTER EVERY DETAIL.
“When he has finished his work on the road, he will take his place in the offices here, and learn how the system is administered. He will study the financial department especially, which deals with expenditures and receipts. This is, perhaps, the most important department of all for him, but he will also study the freight and passenger departments, and learn why the business increases and decreases, and the remedy for a falling off. There are a hundred and one things to learn, and he couldn’t learn them in any other way. It will, of course, take a long time, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years, but he has a great deal of grit and perseverance, and I believe he will stick to it until he has thoroughly mastered the business.
“He will, in all likelihood, be the next member of the family to enter into the active management of the road. His brothers and cousins may eventually go through the same training, but Cornelius, Jr., is destined to be the most active in the management. I may not live to see it, but if his health holds out, and he is allowed to pursue his own course, he will perpetuate the name and fame of the Vanderbilts for another century.”
“He is a chip of the old block, indeed,” said another friend of the Vanderbilt family, “and his industry brings to mind the push and energy of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt in the early part of his career. The Commodore was never ashamed of any kind of honest work, and Cornelius is not. He will always be a worker, and his success in life is therefore assured, whether his father disinherits him or not. It is not believed, however, that Cornelius Vanderbilt will deprive his son of his fair share in the estate. On the contrary, however strong the feeling of displeasure the father may have entertained toward Cornelius, it is thought by friends of the family that he will treat his son and namesake fairly and even liberally.”
WORKING AS A MACHINIST.
Young Cornelius, in his work as a machinist and office clerk, presents an example which other sons of millionaires could follow with profit. He is not alone, however, among young men of his class in training for a useful life. One of New York’s richest young men is said to be not only a worker, but an authority on mechanics, and is able both to roll up his shirt-sleeves and go to the bench, and to describe in the minutest detail the work on which he is engaged. His ability in the mechanical line would probably have won wealth and success for him, even had he not been born to a vast fortune. At the same time, the course of the next in succession to the control of the Vanderbilt millions, in entering upon an education in skilled labor as a common workingman, is an excellent assurance that the family stock is not degenerating, and that its interests are in trustworthy hands.
The ambition of Commodore Vanderbilt to establish and perpetuate a great railway empire seems likely to be fulfilled, so far as the present and the rising generation of the Vanderbilts are concerned. It is the most remarkable experiment of the kind since the beginning of the American republic.
XII
A Messenger Boy’s Zeal Lifts Him to the Head of the World’s Greatest Telegraph System.
WHEN romance can be added to hard facts in telling the life-story of a man, such a narrative becomes more pointed and interesting than the rarest dreams of a fictionist; therefore, the true story of a man who has made himself cannot fail to be instructive as well as interesting. No other man in the United States, to-day, can look back on a more remarkable career than that of Colonel Robert C. Clowry, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Clowry was delivering messages for that company in 1852, with but one object in view—to hold his position. He is the busiest man, perhaps, in America to-day, and has little time to spend with an interviewer. He dislikes the notoriety that the world gives to men who fight and win, but the story of such a man is of more than passing interest. It is an important, valuable, uplifting factor in the great compound that makes America. It belongs to the people. It is for their use to profit by, and, with this one condition impressed on Mr. Clowry, he agreed to tell what he knows about himself.
“I began my telegraph career on April 4, 1852,” he said. “I shall never forget the day. I walked into the office of Judge Caton’s old Illinois and Mississippi Telegraph Company, at Joliet, Illinois, and told the operator that I had come to learn the business. I can see the rickety building now, and the surprised expression on the operator’s face when he looked at me.
HE WAS SO POOR HE HAD TO DO HIS OWN COOKING.
“I
