ipl-logo

What Are The Qualities Of Cornelius Vanderbilt Get A Competitive Advantage

1393 Words6 Pages

As we have progressed through this course, the reoccurring theme that tends to show up is the idea of the entrepreneurs who set the cornerstones to what the United States was going to be as well as what it stands for today. However the ways they sometimes did this are considered fraudulent today but back then were seen as a way to gain a competitive advantage over the competition. In this essay, all the of the successful business powers such as John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and many others used there successful entrepreneurial skills to produce economic growth as well as to gain a competitive advantage to be the best in their industry and collect the most money. With being such powerful players in their particular industries, it …show more content…

It was not till his later years that he took on the idea of railroads because of he did not see the steamboat industry blowing up into this power like was once thought. Instead, he took an amazing well-planned idea and this allowed for the railroad industry to expand drastically. He decided that there needed to be a way for trains to gain access to New York City seeing that this was such a major port and could really allow for the train industry to grow. He connected the two lines of New York Central and the Hudson River lines. This allowed the cities of Chicago and New York to be connected. At the time this was considered to be one of the largest businesses America had ever seen. Vanderbilt was booming and was beginning to really take over the world of industry and the supply of money was …show more content…

Rockefeller was another man who was able to use tactics and take advantage of situations that were considered legal at the time and make him into a very wealthy man. Rockefeller who was the owner of Standard Oil which is now known in the modern day as Exxon saw a vision with a partnership with Vanderbilt that he felt could end up being very lucrative and successful. He found that he ended up using a lot of the same tactics that Vanderbilt had once used. In 1937, The New York Times was quoted as saying “He was accused of crushing out competition, getting rich on rebates from railroads, bribing men to spy on competing companies, of making secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Oil Company under threat of being forced out of business, building up enormous fortunes on the ruins of other men, and so on” (New York Times 1937). He uses these tactics because he knew that is it was what it was going to take to make him become successful. At this time there are no such laws like there are now a days which people being able to manipulate the stock market by buying out all the competitors forcing the stocks to go down and once they have finally bought all the stocks allowing for the stock rate to soar and make them rich, there was no stopping anybody from doing anything that they wanted. They knew it was wrong at the time, however, they are trying to make a living and there idea of this was to get as much money as possible and be the richest most successful

Open Document