February 20. From what John Sherwood tells me, his chance of success in his great Nicaraguan Transit Company suit against old Vanderbilt seems good.* That energetic old scoundrel, the general trustee and manager of the company, has somehow about three millions of corporate assets, for which equity should compel him to account. Possibly George C. Anthon’s stock may yet be woth something.
* The directors of the Pacific Mail were giving battle to Commodore Vanderbilt for control of the trans-Isthmian traffic. A year of fierce competition between Vanderbilt’s Atlantic & Pacific Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail Company, accompanied by legal warfare, opened. Various New York interests participated in the struggle, which was still continuing when the Civil War began.**
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
** See the Harper’s Weekly editorial on page 4 above.
RE: the Pacific Mail Steamship Company - “The company was a charter member of the Dow Jones Transportation Average.”
February 22. Thorndike, George Anthon, and Murray Hoffman here this evening. Strolled with George Anthon to Forty-second Street and back, discoursing of old times – college days – when our walks above Tenth Street took us into the fields, when the “House of Refuge” stood where Madison Square begins, and the Fifth Avenue was a mere tentative group of houses from Washington Square to Tenth Street and the new Ascension Church. “Thinking on the days that are long enough gone” is always sad work.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas