On October 12, 1940, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, was bustling with people and a grand parade of floats was underway. Pen ~ Fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info As early as 1792, on the 300th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Italians in New York City (Columbus was Italian) began to initiate celebrations to commemorate Columbus's landing.

Since 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared October 12 the date of Columbus Day, the day has become a holiday for all Americans. Every year, New York hosts a grand parade of floats to commemorate Columbus' first discovery of the American continent during an expedition of 1492.

As one of New York's premier families, the Vanderbilt family has been the main sponsor of the event. This year, however, while the Vanderbilt family's floats were still beautiful, the family members were absent from the main stage. At this moment, almost all the family members were in St. John's Cathedral to participate in the baptism of little Eric.

In the presence of hundreds of relatives and friends, the Episcopal Archbishop baptized little Eric. The little guy was very face-saving, he didn't cry or make trouble during the whole process, and he slept very sweetly. Little did he know that he had been washed and became a Christian, and that he had the nickname "Harry". This Christian name (Harry means ruler of the family) conveyed the high expectations of all the family members present for this "junior".

Well, this is a bit inaccurate, in fact, a considerable number of the family members present are still younger generations of little Eric. Like John, Eric is the youngest of the fifth generation of the Vanderbilt family. Some of his nephews and nieces are already married and have children. They had come to attend the baptism of their uncle or grandfather.

After the baptismal service, John and Adele bid farewell to their father-in-law, the Degallo, the Bradleys, and Principal Middleton, and then hurried to Grandpa William's old mansion. There, John had an important family meeting to attend.

By this time, it is clear to everyone that a great change is coming that will completely change the entire world pattern. It's like a huge game of cards, and all big families like Vanderbilt are inevitably involved.

If done well, a family may soar to the sky, and even have the opportunity to jump out of the hand and become a dealer in one fell swoop. If you don't do it well, you may be completely eliminated in the process of reshuffling.

In the last world war, for example, the Morgan family seized the opportunity to become the sole purchasing agent and bond underwriter in the United Kingdom, and established itself as a leader on Wall Street in one fell swoop. Now, even behemoths like the DuPont, Cleveland and Chicago conglomerates have to rely entirely on the Morgan family for their financial operations.

And the Vanderbilt family made a lot of money in that big gamble, although they initially made a lot of money through cooperation with French bankers. But in the end, he was broken by the failure of his investment in Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and completely lost the opportunity to become a top consortium.

Compared to the last time, this time the Vanderbilt family has less capital. At the time of World War I, the family was still the well-deserved "king of the railroad" in the United States. And most of the family resources are still in the hands of the second and third uncles, unlike now, which is completely scattered.

Now, except for John and Harold who can still control the basic market of the New York Central Railroad, the other family properties have long been scattered into the hands of hundreds of family members, and most of them have been turned into luxury homes.

Don't look at these properties at the moment. But with property taxes, inheritance taxes, and maintenance costs rising, these spendthrifts simply can't keep these properties. Historically, dozens of Vanderbilt family mansions have either been demolished, forced to be sold, or converted into museums decades later, and none of them have survived.

John had always believed that it was a failure to divide the huge family fortune equally among each heir when William's grandfather died. not only weakened the cohesion of the family, but also created a large number of rice worms who possessed huge wealth but had nothing to do but knew how to squander, which dragged down the development of the family.

Counting up, it has only been less than 50 years since William's grandfather died, and the family has not only been left far behind by the comparable Morgan, Rockefeller, Mellon, and DuPont families, but even the Ford and Watson families. In fact, if it weren't for John's desperate tossing with his golden finger in the past two years, the old Fan family would have been completely driven out of the circle of top families as in history and became a group of ordinary rich people.

Today, the bigwigs of the family have brought together more than 100 adult male family members, just to take the opportunity to unify their understanding and integrate their strength to face this change.

Of course, this time, the Vanderbilt family has no capital to go on their own. The family is now like a dying old lion, which looks quite scary, but in fact, it has not much combat power at all. Therefore, the family's overall economic strategy can be summed up in one word - hugging the thighs. The focus of the debate was on which thigh to hug.

Some families tend to board the Morgan's ship, which has already taken the lead in cooperation with the British. Other family members, such as Harold, tend to unite with the Kuhn-Loeb consortium. These people were wary of the Morgan's previous infiltration of the New York Central Railroad, and the Kuhn-Loeb consortium was the only top-tier consortium in the railroad sector that could compete with the Morgan family.

At present, the Kuhn-Lobb consortium, through its investment bank, not only controls five major railroad companies, including Pennsylvania Railroad and the South Pacific Railroad, but also controls several other railroad companies, including the Union Pacific Railroad, together with other consortia.

This time, John was on the opposite side of Harold. He chose to go it alone because he knew in his heart that the golden age of the American railroad industry was coming to an end. After the war, the entire American railroad industry will enter a long period of recession, and a large number of railroad companies will eventually have to be taken over by the government because of long-term losses. In the 60s, even the Kuhn-Loeb consortium, which was once ranked second, would gradually withdraw from the ranks of the top American conglomerates.

John believes that the family should not only focus on the traditional railway industry, but should also look for new investment directions as soon as possible. Compared to the Kuhn-Loeb consortium, the Morgan consortium has a much more diversified industry. Working with them helps to explore new ways for the family to grow. He even suggested that family members who liked to invest in farms should join forces to form an agricultural company and participate in the British procurement bidding through the Morgan family's channels.

However, John's ideas were not accepted by most family members. Considering that it would be difficult for him to have the energy to participate in this kind of business operation in the future, John did not insist anymore. In the short term, cooperating with the Kuhn-Loeb consortium is more conducive to the development of FedEx.

As for the future, in the process of helping Harold regain control of the New York Central Railroad Company recently, John has begun to redeem the shares of FedEx little by little. The big deal is that when the time comes, it will be completely cut with the New York Central Railroad, and I believe that FedEx will be able to become the pillar of the family.