Comparing The Competition Between Cornelius Vanderbilt And John D. Rockefeller

477 Words2 Pages

This episode is about the competition between Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. As the US is changing, Vanderbilt, who currently owns many ships for transportation, notices the need for change of transportation and decides he needs to get involved with railroads. He sells all of his ships and buys many railroad. Once Vanderbilt gets into the railroad business, he sees the competition and wants it all. In attempts to earn more money, he blocks off the the railroad in NY that leads to Albany so he can buy all the stock there. One of the main railroads he wanted was the Erie. Instead of selling it all to him, Gould and Fisk sold him only shares which made Vanderbilt lose millions. This made Vanderbilt angry, but caused him to realize that there are way too many railroads and he will not be able to make money off of them unless they are transporting something of value. …show more content…

Rockefeller, who owns an oil refinery. When they first made the deal, Rockefeller promise too much oil and he knew he had to get it or that would be the end of his career. Rockefeller then improved his kerosene, and with more money from doing this he could own more oil refineries which meant more oil. Later, it became too much oil for Vanderbilt to ship with trains, so there was a need for someone else to also ship the kerosene. This is when Carnegie and Scott came into play, they wanted in on the kerosene. Vanderbilt lost his competitive edge and decided to form an alliance with Scott. This made rates increase for Rockefeller, which called for war. Rockefeller them created a pipeline system that made railroads unnecessary. This upset railroad companies and one-third of the railroad companies went bankrupt. Many people lost their jobs and the first depression in the US

Open Document