I guess I've built a hundred steamships and steamboats… I never paid a dollar of insurance… Good vessels and good masters – that's the best kind of insurance. Why should I pay somebody else to carry my risks?
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"I'd rather have a dollar in my pocket than a hundred in the bank."
"The public be damned!"
"Law! What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?"
"I have never been afraid to take risks."
"I don't want to go to heaven; I want to go to New York."
American shipping and railroad magnate whose New York Central railroad and aggressive consolidation built the largest fortune in 19th-century America. Closely associated with John D. Rockefeller (later Gilded Age titan who learned the consolidation playbook). For an intellectual contrast, see Jay Gould, railroad speculator (1836-1892) — Vanderbilt built and ran railroads; Gould watered stock and manipulated markets. Their Erie Railroad rate-war and Gould's Black Friday (1869) gold-corner schemes were the public foil to Vanderbilt's quieter operational consolidation. The cleanest 'industrialist vs speculator' Gilded Age pairing.
His rationale for self-insurance, showcasing extreme self-reliance and risk tolerance.
Date: 1859
Money & BusinessFound in 1 providers: gemini
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