That hasty expression, “The public be damned,” which Mr. Vanderbilt used in an interview with a reporter for a Chicago newspaper, has received wide circulation, various comment and hostile criticism. Although the expression is literally correct, the public at first, and many of them to this day, received a wrong impression in regard to the spirit in which it was applied. It was represented as if Mr. Vanderbilt was a tyrannical monopolist, who defied public opinion. A true and simple relation of the interview is a sufficient answer to this. The subject was the fast mail train to Chicago. Mr. Vanderbilt was thinking of taking this train off, because it did not pay, and did not appear to him therefore to be a necessity, and he did not propose to run trains as a philanthropist. As part of the interview which relates to this point has become so widely historic, I think it will bear reproduction here, literally: “Why are you going to stop this fast mail train?” asked the reporter. “Because it doesn’t pay,” replied Mr. Vanderbilt; “I can’t run a train as far as this permanently at a loss.” “But the public find it very convenient and useful. You ought to accommodate them,” rejoined the reporter. “The public,” said Mr. Vanderbilt. “How do you know, or how can I know that they want it? If they want it why don’t they patronize it and make it pay? That’s the only test I have as to whether a thing is wanted or not. Does it pay? If it doesn’t pay I suppose it isn’t wanted.” “Are you working,” persisted the reporter, “for the public or for your stockholders?” “The public be damned!” exclaimed Mr. Vanderbilt, “I am working for my stockholders. If the public want the train why don’t they support it.” This, I think, was a very proper answer from a business standpoint, and the expression, when placed in its real connection in the interview, does not imply any slur upon the public. It simply intimates that he was urging a thing on the public which it did not want and practically refused. The “cuss” word might have been left out, but the crushing reply to the reporter would not have been so emphatic, and that obtrusive representative of public opinion might have gone away unsquelched. As it was, however, he and his editor exhibited considerable ingenuity in making the best misrepresentation possible out of the words of Mr. Vanderbilt, thus giving them a thousand times wider circulation than the journal in which they were first printed, and affording that paper a big advertisement. This is the correct account of that world-renowned expression, “The public be damned!”