What Do I Care About The

Attributed to Vanderbilt in various nineteenth-century accounts and repeated in biographies including T.J. Stiles's The First Tycoon (2009). It reflects Vanderbilt's openly antagonistic attitude toward regulatory interference with his business operations. In the railroad and steamship era, Vanderbilt frequently operated at the edge of or in conflict with existing law, and his willingness to use raw economic power rather than legal process was a defining feature of his career.