This article was originally published by George Ford Smith at The Mises Institute.
In the early evening of October 8, 1882, one of the richest men in the world was about to eat his supper in his private dining car. The train to which he was attached had just arrived in Chicago from Michigan City, Indiana, but before he could pick up his fork, a brash young reporter, freelancer Clarence Dresser, burst into his car asking for an interview. He wanted to know the railroad’s guidelines for establishing freight rates.
“I’ll talk to you after supper,” William Henry Vanderbilt told him.
“But I have a deadline to meet,” Dresser persisted, “and the public has a right to know.”
“The public be damned! Get out!”
In this one unfortunate outburst, Dresser already had more than he could ever have dreamed of getting.
Dresser tried to sell the encounter to the Chicago Daily News, but the night editor “was not interested in words provoked from a man whose patience and privacy has been assaulted.” Dresser then rewrote the story and sold it to the Chicago Tribune. Here is what they printed:
“Does your limited express [between New York and Chicago] pay?” Dresser asked.
“No, not a bit of it. We only run it because we are forced to do so by the action of the Pennsylvania Road. It doesn’t pay expenses. We would abandon it if it was not for our competitor keeping its train on.”
“But don’t you run it for the public benefit?”
“The public be damned. What does the public care for the railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible. I don’t take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody’s good but our own, because we are not. When we make
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