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May 27, 2009 12:43 PM EDT
I write from the standpoint of being a native of Staten Island, a student of America, and a teacher of Constitutional Law in San Francisco for a number of years. Before 'Tycoon,' I'd had no idea of the contribution of Commodore Vanderbilt to the island, the city, the region, and the nation. Of course Islanders knew that the Vanderbilts were buried in the Moravian Cemetery on the New Dorp side of Todt Hill.Victory Boulevard, so-renamed after WWI, which remains one of the main surface streets through the Island, had originally been the Richmond Turnpike, a Vanderbilt endeavor. Travelers took his ferry to S.I., his turnpike over it, his boat up the Raritan River to New Brunswick, then a stage-coach to Camden and the Stevens steamboat line to Philadelphia. I traveled Victory Boulevard daily as a yoot,' not to mention the ferry, which he started. Imagine a ferryboat race, I thought, but none never materialized, alas. Vanderbilt engaged in them with some frequency, Mr. Stiles reveals. I appreciate that Prof. Stiles has chosen as his overarching theme one of the most challenging things to do for a biographer, to relate his subject to the changing political philosophies of his time. Today's great battles for the soul of the nation occur in presidential races, Supreme Court nominations, and Court decisions, with the outcome being Robert Bork, Bush v. Gore, decided by the Court, and other important decisions, such as affirmative action and equality for minority groups generally, and gays especially, usually 5:4, reflecting the fractured nature of national attitudes. Welcome to Vanderbilt's dog-eat-dog world. He was a Jacksonian uncommon common man, as opposed to a patrician or Whig. After all, he came from StatNisland, where a pompous attitude won't get you very far at all.Stiles shows how our notions of government involvement with business have changed from the liberal-radical laissez-faire of the age of Jackson to the conservative-reactionary laissez-faire of the age of Reagan-Bush-Cheney, with one thing remaining the same, how to keep government away from business activity and how to get government to regulate it better than it has, in light of our periodically falling off a cliff, such as now.Vanderbilt, through Stiles, provides a great vehicle for explaining all this and especially for showing who we are in his wake. The highlighting of conservative attitudes, originally liberal attitudes, in 'Tycoon' reminds me of the John Maynard Keynes quote, one version of which goes like this:The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. NUMBER: 32525QUOTATION: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.ATTRIBUTION: John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), British economist. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, ch. 24 (1936). Vanderbilt was a hero for breaking the patrician-owned Livingston steamboat monopoly on the Hudson River (Gibbons vs. Ogden, a famous and a transforming decision by Chief Justice John Marshall; Vanderbilt was a steamboat captain for the line's owner, Thomas Gibbons) and opening transportation to competition, first by water and later by rail. As Stiles points out, along the way he showed what an abstract, invisible, legal construct called a corporation really was and how it could be used to private advantage, possibly even public good, if it was good for business, which it often was.Before the Commodore, you practically, or literally, had to bribe the legislature to obtain a charter to establish a corporation to build a canal, turnpike, bank, or bridge. If you were of the patrician class, to whom deference was owed, your chances were better than if you were a farmer or mechanic. The activity usually had to appear to benefit the public. The charter was only good for a term of years, say twenty for a bank. By contrast, today we simply file a form with the secretary-of-state of the state of your choice (Delaware, for example), and pay the annual franchise tax, to establish a corporation good forever for any lawful purpose. Some things have changed, as Stiles illustrates. 'Tycoon' is one great book on how this country, and New York and New England developed. As an emigre to San Francisco, I was interested to see how much my fellow StatNisland predecessor contributed to delivering the '49ers (the gold diggers, not the NFL-team) to the gold fields and sailing back with the yellow metal used finance the Civil War and turn Wall Street and its bankers into the paragons they are today...Hats off to T.J. Stiles for a wonderful piece of work.
- Robert Sheridan