USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century.

Detailed explanation-2: -Cornelius Vanderbilt gained control of most of the railroad industry. He offered rebates to customers and refused service for people traveling on competing railroad lines.

Detailed explanation-3: -Some 19th-century industrialists who were called “captains of industry” overlap with those called “robber barons”. These include people such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Leland Stanford and John D. Rockefeller.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Vanderbilts’ lavish homes, opulent parties and colorful characters made them the Gilded Age’s poster family. At one time some of America’s richest thanks to a booming railroad business, they have seen their dollars turn to dust.

Detailed explanation-5: -By the 1850s he had turned his attention to railroads, buying up so much stock in the New York and Harlem Railroad that by 1863 he owned the line. He later acquired the Hudson River Railroad and the New York Central Railroad and consolidated them in 1869.