Austin Corbin was an American railroad executive and businessman. He was known as "Father of the Banking Industry".
Background
Austin Corbin was a descendant of Clement Corbin who had settled in Connecticut during the first half of the seventeenth century, was born on July 1827 at Newport, New Hampshire, United States. His parents were Austin and Mary (Chase) Corbin.
Education
Corbin's parents were well-to-do and had enjoyed educational advantages better than the average, but until he reached his twentieth year their son had no formal instruction beyond that afforded by the common schools of the neighborhood. About that time, however, he obtained employment in a Boston store and later entered the Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1849.
Career
Corbin began his law practise about 1827, but did not long continue in it. At that time the West was calling to the young men of New England in persuasive tones. Corbin was attracted to Davenport in the new state of Iowa and located there in 1851. Three years later the firm of Macklot & Corbin opened a bank that was to have a successful career during the period of “wild-cat” banking that preceded the Civil War. In the panic of 1857 it remained one of the few unshaken financial institutions in Iowa.
Corbin had induced friends in the East to loan money on Iowa farm lands as security. In a short time he built up in this way a profitable business, which was managed on conservative principles. On the establishment of the national banking system of 1863, the First National Bank of Davenport, organized by Corbin, was one of the earliest in the country to receive a charter and is said to have been actually the first to open its doors for business.
Corbin’s reputation for sound banking soon extended beyond Iowa. His Eastern connections continued to grow in importance and in 1865 led to his removal to New York City, where Austin Corbin & Company (after 1874 the Corbin Banking Company) opened an office. At that time Corbin was well started on the road to wealth, and, without great exertion, he might have achieved his ambitions so far as his personal fortune was concerned.
A man of initiative and vision, however, he was forming constructive objectives that involved far more than his individual profit. Not long after coming to New York his attention was directed to the advantages of Coney Island as an ocean resort within a short distance from the city. Thinking of New York’s population in terms of millions, instead of the hundreds of thousands then dwelling on Manhattan Island, Corbin looked forward to a day when those millions would be carried safely, cheaply, and quickly from the midsummer heat of the tenements to the breeze-swept beaches of Long Island.
Transportation between New York and the ocean-side resorts was a problem that had never been worked out. The Long Island Railroad at that time was an inefficient and unproductive system that failed to meet even the modest requirements of the day. Corbin got control of it, energized its operation, and in time made it a useful servant of the public. Through that and other rail connections he developed transportation to Coney Island and neighboring beaches so effectively that within a few years they were the most popular resorts in the metropolitan area. For a time, especially in the development of the Manhattan Beach Railway, his brother, Daniel Chase Corbin, was associated with him.
His reorganization of the Long Island Railroad having restored the earning power of that corporation, Corbin began to be regarded as a successful railroad executive. Under his management, in the years 1886-1888, the Philadelphia & Reading, which had been in a receivership, was rehabilitated and made a paying enterprise. Corbin’s railroad operations were all broadly constructive and planned for the future of communities and industries. Some of his projects were regarded as ahead of his time. He was interested in a transatlantic steamship port at the eastern end of Long Island, with a view to cutting the time required for the passage from Europe to New York Harbor. He gave much thought to a scheme of metropolitan subway transit, even having borings made and bringing an engineer from England to make plans, at his own personal expense. He could obtain no consideration for his project, however, and died long before the New York subway had been built.
The last great enterprise of public interest in which he engaged was the establishment near Newport, New Hampshire, of a game park eleven miles long and four miles wide, embracing 26, 000 acres. He spent $1, 000, 000 in stocking this preserve with animals and providing for their maintenance and increase. Thrown from his carriage in a runaway accident near his New Hampshire birthplace, he died within a few hours from the injuries thus received.
Achievements
Connections
Corbin was married in 1853 to Hannah M. Wheeler, who, with a son and a daughter, survived him.