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The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
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But since they originally chased oil freight to use excess capacity, oil revenues needed only to exceed variable costs to be attractive. A careful review by the industry historian Harold Williamson suggests that the oil traffic was almost always profitable, which canny businessmen like Gould and Vanderbilt would have understood intuitively. The
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
Gould did not think like most railroad men. Like Carnegie and Rockefeller, he regarded pools as refuges for the weak, although useful for masking predatory intentions. The solution for the fragmented state of the railroads was to consolidate, not to negotiate elaborate paper compacts. Roads that were willing to join his network would find him a
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
More important, Tarbell did not understand that the great Gould–Vanderbilt–Scott trunk line battles were never primarily about oil; they were about dominating the grain traffic routes to Chicago and the Midwest. In the early days especially, oil freight was hardly more than ballast for the much bigger business of grain shipping.
Charles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
Potts’s ambitions were unbounded: he believed that fast-freight companies, by controlling transshipping points, loading facilities, and specialized carriers like tank cars, could emerge as the freight balancer and rate-setter for all railroad traffic. The cross-ownership with the Pennsylvania ensured that the Empire’s facilities were designed to
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
When talks with existing line owners proved fruitless, Flagler did what anyone with his resources might: he ponied up half a million dollars and bought the railroad.
Les Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
As usual, Rockefeller did not haggle over the price of $3.4 million. He even let Scott demand that $2.5 million of it be paid in cash within twenty-four hours, necessitating flying visits by him and William to their New York and Cleveland bankers to gather up funds. When his other partners balked at including a fleet of antiquated lake barges in
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
Rockefeller would come to freely attribute the secret of the firm’s success to his partner, for they were not long in the business, said Rockefeller, before Flagler realized that the negotiation of a lower freight rate was the key to the entire matter. If oil could be brought to their refineries at a rate below that offered to competitors, it would
... See more