Cornelius Vanderbilt — "If I could not run a steamboat alongside another man and do it as well as he for…"
If I could not run a steamboat alongside another man and do it as well as he for twenty percent less, I would leave the business.
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More from Cornelius Vanderbilt
"I don't bother with anything that doesn't pay."
"I'd rather have a dollar in my pocket than a hundred in the bank."
"I have always gone with my own judgment."
"I have always served the public interest by serving my own."
"I have no regrets."
About Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877)
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.