While for many years after the death of the Commodore the Vanderbilt family remained in direct financial and operating control of the New York Central and its myriad of subsidiary lines and their genius as railroad builders and operators was distinctly evident, yet the brains and resources of the Vanderbilts were not alone responsible for the brilliant career of the system down to recent times. William H. Vanderbilt, though a man of unusual ability, did not possess the breadth of view or the sagacity of his father, and in the course of a few years he found himself exposed to a cyclone of public criticism. He had let it be widely known that he was personally the owner of over eighty-seven per cent of the hundred million capital of the company. In 1879 the New York Legislature, backed by the force of the popular anger and surprise at the accumulation of a hundred million dollar fortune by one man in ten years, was investigating the management of the New York Central with a view to curtailing its power; the rate wars were on between the seaboard and Chicago; and Jay Gould was threatening to divert all the traffic of his Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific lines from the New York Central and turn it over to other Eastern connections unless Vanderbilt would give him a vital interest in the Vanderbilt lines. Vanderbilt was harassed beyond endurance and, being of softer material than his father, was fearful of the outcome of public opinion, notwithstanding the fact that in a moment of anger--according to the statement of a newspaper reporter whose veracity Vanderbilt denied to his dying day--he had used the familiar expression, "The public be damned!" There were intimations that the Legislature was planning to impose heavy taxes on the property, solely because Vanderbilt held this gigantic personal ownership in the property. This prospect frightened him and he consulted friends whose judgment he respected. They urged him to sell a considerable part of his holdings in order to distribute the ownership of the property among a large number of people.