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Cornelius Vanderbilt's Impact On The Industrialization Of America

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In the 1860’s America started building the first continental railroad. It provided a cheap and efficient way to transport products from one side of the country to the other. One man in particular had a great impact on the industrialization of America, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt had a poor upbringing, but at the age of 16 he bought a ferry, over the next 40 years he built the largest shipping empire in the world. Vanderbilt sold all of his ships and invested everything in railroads. He owned 40% of all the railroads in America, but he wanted them all. So he closed down the Albany bridge creating a blockade prohibiting the rest of railroad from entering the busiest port, New York City. Other railroads started going bankrupt, so the presidents …show more content…

Vanderbilt realized he had been tricked and he never would let someone do that to him again. Vanderbilt saw the demand for kerosene skyrocket and he knew that the makers of the kerosine would need a new way to ship their oil. Vanderbilt reaches out to Rockerfeller a young oil businessman. The two men make a deal, Rockefeller will give 60 train carts full of kerosine a day to fill Vanderbilts trains. But Rockerfeller can produce that much kerosine a day, he needed to find a way to get Vanderbilt the kerosine. The demand for kerosene began to drop, because people thought it was dangerous. Rockefeller created the company Standard Oil and got investors to buy stocks. The demand for kerosene started to rise again and Rockerfeller can now meet his promise. Except, he now has more kerosene than Vanderbilt can ship. Thomas A. Scott wanted to take Vanderbilt over, so he made a deal with Rockefeller. Rockefeller created a monopoly with the refinery businesses and Scott and Vanderbilt decided to pull out of business with Rockefeller to make him pay going rates. Instead of caving in Rockefeller builds pipelines to transport the oil, and he no longer needs

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