Erie War

For the conflict over different rail gauges, see Erie Gauge War.

The Erie War was a 19th-century conflict between American financiers for control of the Erie Railway Company, which owned and operated the Erie Railroad.[1] Built with public funds raised by taxation and on land donated by public officials and private developers, by the middle of the 1850s the railroad was mismanaged and heavily in debt.[2] A cattle drover turned Wall Street banker and broker, Daniel Drew, at first loaned $2 million to the railroad, and then acquired control over it. He amassed a fortune by skillfully manipulating the Erie railroad shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who set his mind on building a railroad empire, saw multiple business and financial opportunities in railways and decided in 1866 to corner the market on Erie by silently scooping-up the Erie railroad stock. After succeeding, Vanderbilt permitted Drew to stay on the board of directors in his former capacity as treasurer.[3]

  1. ^ Gordon, John Steele. The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Erie Railway Wars, and the Birth of Wall Street. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
  2. ^ Hicks, Frederick C., and Charles Francis Adams. High Finance in the Sixties; Chapters from the Early History of the Erie Railway. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1966.
  3. ^ Myers, Gustavus. History of the Great American Fortunes. Vol.2. Chicago: Kerr, 1910, p. 154-155.