VAST FORTUNE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22262, 9 November 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

VAST FORTUNE

VANDERBILT MILIJONF FOUNDER'S AMAZING RISE WORKED 16 HOURS A DAY £1.200,000 IN A POCKET Anotr.er Vanflerbilt has come into his own. George, tho son of Alfred Vanderbilt, who was drowned in the Lusitania, came of age last week and inherited the fortune of his father, states the Sunday Express, Ltmdon, of September 29. The figure is not known, but estimates give it as £-10.000,000.

Twenty-one-year-old George Vanderbilt thus takes his place as one of tho headmen of that ultra-conserVativo aristocratic' tribo that Ims been called the uncrowned Royal Family of America. He will succeed men who liavo given fete 3 that recall tho pageantry of Versailles, and for whoso daughters' hands princes clamoured and been repulsed. So much grandour is the heritage of a Vanderbilt. From what source docs it all comeP From the efforts of a farm-boy who started running a tiny ferry-boat and developed into a determined old man who lived to bo probably tho richest man in America. This old man, Cornelius, was born to a family of farmers in Staten Island, Now York, in 1794. Secret Chamber In Boat At the- age of 16 he began to run his own sqmll sailing ferry boat between Staten Island and New York. He sailed it sixteen, hours in tho twenty-four. He gave his mother £220 at the end of the first year, and bought a part interest in thred more boats. " By the time he was twenty-three he was worth £IBOO. Ho had been making £6OO a.year. But he sensed he was in a doomed trade. Steam had arrived. So he gave up all the position he had created ,for himself and took a poorlypaid job as captain of a small steam boat in another man's fleet. He stayed, learning'all * there was-to learn, for 12 years. He saved money steadily. They were exciting years. His steamer was a "pirate" running without a licence, and the New York City officials were constant!./ trying to catch him. For Bixty consecutive days officers boarded his boats with writs to arrest him. At first he would hide near the gangway, and then, as soon as' they had come aboard, slip off on to, the,.dock/ Later he had a secret chamber, with a sliding panel, constructed in the hold. Great Gold Rush In 1829 he started to build steamboats on his own account. , His boats were faster and more luxurious than those of his rivals, whom he gradually bought np„ Before he was forty hp had twenty boats, and was .worth £IOO,GOO. For fifteen' velars more he extended his steamboat lines. - ? Then came the great Californian gold rush of- 1849. Vanderbilt found a shorter to the West than anyone else, ic involved sailing down to "Central■ America, going up a rapid, dangerous river,, and crossing to the Pacific coast by coaches. The engineers reported that the river could not be ascended. So Vanderbilt took the wheel of his own boat, tied down the safety valves, hauled the boat over the rocks in the river by cables, and u jumped " the rapids. Hftving proved that the passage could be made, he - started carrying such adventurous souls as would risk the journey. This line was soon paying its founder £IOO,OOO a year f " v • , Moiey Put Into Railways In his fifties he was one of the richest men in Now York. He came to be known as " the commodore," and no one had any reason to expect that this elderly man would be rbmembered as anything but a successful steamboat owner. But instead; a few years later he did an extraordinary thing. He was nearly seventy. He was worth £5,000,000. He had always declared ho would never go into railways. Then, without a qualm, he changed his mind: He sold all his ships and put all the money into railways. He put his whole life's work into this grand last throw. People said it was senile madness. Actually the septuagenarian Vanderbilt doubled and redoubled his fortune in fifteen years of railways. Even in his first five years he made a clear profit of £5,000,000. One midnight during these five years he walked home with £1,200,000,1 his share of profits, in his pocket in notes. At the age of seventy he was just another millionaire, but gradually he became something legendary, a man famous even in Europe. - ' Yacht-like Liner He astounded the whole world by bnilding himself a private yacht which was as large and luxurious as tho best Transatlantic liners of the time. Nothing had been seen like it before. At eighty he was richer than ever, and still as straight as an Indian. Ho owned 978 miles of railway across the richest country in the world from Now York to Chicago. And he had never •read any book except the "Pilgrim's Progress." At the age of eighty-two he died, leaving £20,000,000. The bulk of his money went to his son, William K. Vanderbilt. Out of it "W. K." , built the finest house in America on Fifth Avenue. Six hundsed men worked on it, and it cost £500,000. When he gave a banquet in it the guests ate off gold plate and the flowers came from the Southern States at a cost of £BOO. He lived only eight years after his father. -In that- time he had so tended the fortune that his will disposed of £40,000,000.

The young American, Mr. George Vanderbilt arrived in Auckland with his wife by thd Lurline recently on a honeymoon tour of the world. They are spending some weeks in New Zealand.