Commodore Vanderbilt, after wearing out the reporters with his obstinate
vitality, is dead at last. He is believed to have been the wealthiest man in America, and was certainly one of its most succesaful money-makers, dying, we believe, owner of at least three great railroads. He was a born administrator, who applied his great faculty to business, first as an owner of steamboats— whence his nickname of "Commodore "—and then of railways, managing great multitudes of men with unfailing success. Though a great speculator and a bitterly hard man, he had one good quality in business,—he always tried to make his enterprises suc- ceed and return large dividends, which, in America, is not con- sidered the quickest way to a great fortune. The speculative idea there is to make your own shares rise and fall, and then deal in them,—to play, in fact, with loaded dice. It is probable that Mr. Vanderbilt died worth 115,000,000 sterling, much of it, however, in very fluctuating property.
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