The best example of the American railroad president after the war was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt began his career by ferrying passengers and freight between Staten Island and New York City. Later he turned his attention to shipping, in which he made a fortune, and planned the operation of steamships on a large scale. Becoming interested in railroading, he clearly perceived the importance of the western trade and the necessity of consolidation. Vanderbilt was a man of vision, a man who combined magnitude of plan with the vigorous grasp of the practical details necessary for the realization of his ambitions. He was buoyant, energetic, confident, ambitious, determined, despotic. Unhampered by modern conceptions of public duty, undeterred by the hostility of powerful opponents, with eyes fixed upon the combination and control of a great transportation system, Vanderbilt entered courageously upon bitter struggles for supremacy which involved the misuse of the courts, the control of the New York state legislature and a thousand charges of corrupt influence and bribery, but he welded railroads together, replaced wood and iron with steel, and constructed tracks and terminals. At his death in 1877 he left a huge fortune and bequeathed to his successors a great, consolidated railroad enterprise, skillfully and successfully administered. The great weakness of Commodore Vanderbilt and his associates, and of those who later imitated his work was their fundamental conception of the railroad as a private venture. Success consisted in bigness, great profits, crushing or buying out competitors, and administering the business for the best good of the few owners, regardless of the interests of the region through which the railway passed. Vanderbilt and many of his contemporaries were men of business sagacity and foresight, but their ethical outlook was restricted and their sense of public responsibility not well developed. So considerable a list of grievances naturally bestirred the people to seek relief at the hands of their legislators. Two lines of action were followed. In Massachusetts, as early as 1869, a state commission was formed with purely advisory powers. Under the able leadership of Charles Francis Adams it attained great influence and worked effectively for the elimination of railroad abuses through conference and the weight of public opinion. In Illinois, on the other hand, reliance was placed upon compulsory action. The state constitution of 1870 declared the railroads to be public highways and required the legislature to fix rates for the carriage of freight and passengers, and to pass laws to correct abuses connected with the railways and grain warehouses. In compliance with the constitution the state passed the necessary legislation and placed their execution in the hands of a commission with considerable power. Other western states followed the Illinois model.