s business and took
command of one of the first steamboats launched, at a salary of one
thousand dollars a year. Livingston and Fulton had acquired the sole
right to navigate New York waters by steam, but Vanderbilt thought the
law unconstitutional, and defied it until it was repealed. He soon
became a steamboat owner. When the government was paying a large
subsidy for carrying the European mails, he offered to carry them free
and give better service. His offer was accepted, and in this way he
soon built up an enormous freight and passenger traffic.

Foreseeing the great future of railroads in a country like ours, he
plunged into railroad enterprises with all his might, laying the
foundation for the vast Vanderbilt system of to-day.

Young Philip Armour joined the long caravan of Forty-Niners, and
crossed the "Great American Desert" with all his possessions in a
prairie schooner drawn by mules. Hard work and steady gains carefully
saved in the mines enabled him to start, six years later, in the grain
and warehouse business in Milwaukee. In nine years he made five
hundred thousand dollars. But he saw his great opportunity in Grant's
order, "On to Richmond." One morning in 1864 he knocked at the door of
Plankinton, partner in his venture as a pork packer. "I am going to
take the next train to New York," said he, "to sell pork 'short.'
Grant and Sherman have the rebellion by the throat, and pork will go
down to twelve dollars a barrel." This was his opportunity. He went
to New York and offered pork in large quantities at forty dollars per
barrel. It was eagerly taken. The shrewd Wall Street speculators
laughed at the young Westerner, and told him pork would go to sixty
dollars, for the war was not nearly over. Mr. Armour, however, kept on
selling, Grant continued to advance. Richmond fell, pork fell with it
to twelve dollars a barrel, and Mr. Armour cleared two millions of
dollars.

John D. Rockefeller saw his opportunity in petroleum. He could see a
large population in this country with very poor lights. Petroleum was
plentiful, but the refining process was so crude that the product was
inferior, and not wholly safe. Here was Rockefeller's chance. Taking
into partnership Samuel Andrews, the porter in a machine shop where
both men had worked, he started a single barrel "still" in 1870, using
an improved process discovered by his partner. They made a superior
grade of oil and prospered rapidly. They