Bare-knuckled capitalism

摘要

Especially now, the world has misgivings about unbridled American capitalism. But let us not forget that the foundations of the greatest economy on earth were laid timber by timber, railway sleeper by railway sleeper, by capitalists who fought for business often with bare fists and only the vaguest notions of fair play.rnCornelius Vanderbilt was the toughest of the lot. With his hard nose protruding like a ship's prow, and his hands leathered from a youth spent piloting his cut-price ferry into Manhattan, he took to business as if it were war. He even masterminded a war-against an American filibustero in Nicaragua-to save a shipping business he had built to serve the Gold Rush.