During his youth, Cornelius Vanderbilt worked in the ferries of New York, resigning to the school at the age of 11 years. By age 16, he was operating his own passenger transportation business between Staten Island and Manhattan.
During the War of 1812, he received a government contract to provide supplies to the forts located around the city of New York, by sailing schooners, office for which he earned his nickname "Commodore."
In 1818 he turned his attention to steamboats. The New York legislation gave Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston a legal monopoly on the traffic of steam vessels, which legally prohibited competition. Working for Thomas Gibbons, Vanderbilt competed by improving the prices offered by Fulton and Livingston for service between New Brunswick (New Jersey) and Manhattan, an important section of the commercial route between New York and Philadelphia.
Vanderbilt managed to sneak away from those who sought to arrest him and confiscate his boat. Livingston and Fulton offered him a lucrative job piloting his boat, but Vanderbilt declined the offer saying "I do not care so much about making money, but try my arguments and get an advantage." For Vanderbilt, the argument was the superiority of free competition and the malice of government monopolies, and as a result Livingston and Fulton filed a lawsuit; the case reached the Supreme Court of the United States and finally ended the monopoly of Fulton and Livingston.
In 1829 Vanderbilt became independent to provide steam boat service on the Hudson River between Manhattan and Albany, New York. By the 1840s he had 100 steamships scouring the Hudson and a reputation for more employees than any other business in the United States. During the California Gold Rush in 1849, he offered transportation through a shortcut through Nicaragua to California, eliminating 960 kilometers of the route and 50% of the cost of a trip through the Isthmus of Panama.
