[Illustration: Jay Gould]
THE
WIZARD OF WALL STREET
AND HIS WEALTH,
OR
THE LIFE AND DEEDS OF JAY GOULD
BY
TRUMBULL WHITE.
JOHN C. YORSTON & CO.,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
1893.
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
By MID-CONTINENT PUBLISHING CO.
PREFACE.
The history of any man who had been able to distinguish himself
by acquiring in his lifetime the greatest amount of wealth ever
accumulated by one man, would necessarily be of interest, even if
his success had been won by the most ordinary of methods or the most
marvelous succession of good fortune. But when that man is one whose
career was full of the most dramatic incidents; when he won his wealth
by feats of financial daring which astounded the world; when, in short,
that man is Jay Gould, “The Wizard of Wall Street,” then, indeed, the
interest is most absorbing. Jay Gould has been more prominently before
the people of the country for the last few years than has any other
man whose prominence depended upon the magnitude of his fortune. In
his history is much to be learned, both for imitation and avoidance,
by every American. This volume contains, not only a complete account
of the life and deeds of Jay Gould for the general reader, but also
much for the student of financial affairs and Wall street methods.
The particular effort of the author has been to secure its absolute
accuracy and to make it entirely reliable. The present absorbing
interest in the career of the great financier, and the fact that every
source of information concerning him is being sought most eagerly,
makes the work particularly timely.
TRUMBULL WHITE.
CHICAGO, December 15, 1892.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Jay Gould a Great Man 9
II. Youth and Ancestry of Jay Gould 18
III. Gould as Surveyor and Historian 29
IV. Gould and the Tannery War 37
V. Gould’s Romantic Marriage and First Railroad 49
VI. Gould’s Assault upon Erie 58
VII. Gould’s Victory and Final Defeat in Erie 73
VIII. The Gold Conspiracy 88
IX. Culmination of Conspiracy--Black Friday 106
X. Gould and the Western Railway Systems 132
XI. Gould and the Telegraph Monopoly 151
XII. Gould and the Manhattan Elevated 161
XIII. The Life of a Wall Street King 170
XIV. The King is Dead 181
XV. Jay Gould Laid to Rest 193
XVI. Personal Characteristics of Jay Gould 214
XVII. The Family of Jay Gould 226
XVIII. The Great Fortune and Its Inheritors 245
XIX. Jay Gould’s Relations with the Public 264
XX. A Chapter of Anecdotes 280
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF JAY GOULD _Frontispiece_
YOUNG GOULD IN HIS FATHER’S DAIRY 18
JAY GOULD AS A SURVEYOR 29
CANVASSING FOR HIS BOOK, “THE HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY” 32
THE TANNERY WAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 37
GOULD’S FIRST GLIMPSE OF HIS FUTURE WIFE 49
THE MEN OF “BLACK FRIDAY” 88
“BLACK FRIDAY” IN WALL STREET 106
GOULD BEFORE THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE 132
GOULD FAINTING AT DIRECTORS’ MEETING IN RUSSELL SAGE’S OFFICE 161
GOULD’S BIRTHPLACE AND PALACE ON THE HUDSON 170
JAY GOULD’S DEATH-BED 181
FUNERAL OF JAY GOULD 193
WHERE JAY GOULD RESTS 200
A FAMILY GROUP 226
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE GOULD 245
JAY GOULD’S PRIVATE CAR AND YACHT, “ATALANTA” 264
CHAPTER I.
JAY GOULD A GREAT MAN.
In every walk of human life, in every imaginable human occupation,
that man who stands at the very top, who is superior to all others in
that particular occupation, is of necessity a great man. No matter
how humble that occupation may be, absolute superiority in it, in
itself means greatness. The time once was when commercial eminence was
considered to belong rather to the lower classes, and was, indeed,
despised by those who thought themselves to be of knightlier blood than
their fellows. The Crusades, the Renaissance, the discovery of America,
and the impetus these gave to voyage and trade and commerce, were
potent factors in changing all of this. For the last few centuries,
commercial ability, financial capacity, knowledge of how to manipulate
men and measures in a way to increase fortune, and so to secure more
of what fortune will buy, have been more and more appreciated, until
to-day aristocracy and royalty clip coupons, families whose ancestors
trace from the Conqueror invest in stocks and draw dividends, and
the bluest blooded of all great families engage with avidity in the
struggle for business and wealth.
Since royalty and aristocracy thus deign to enter the lists of
business competition, does it not become more true that that man
is really great, who excels in money-making capacity every other
individual in the world, who wins the prize from all his high
competitors, and in his lifetime, by his own acumen and manipulation,
creates a greater fortune, adds more to his wealth, than has ever
any other person in the world? That is what has been done by Jay
Gould, “The Wizard of Wall Street,” who has just been taken from the
possession of this enormous wealth, and whose death has awakened such
universal interest in his life, his history and his personality.
It is hard to realize what an enormous distinction is in the fact
of being the richest man in the world. For Gould not only created
his fortune, but he made it greater than is possessed by any other
individual in the world. It is true that there are families, the
Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Rothschilds, whose aggregated wealth
far exceeds the fortune left by Mr. Gould. But no individual of one of
those families possesses an amount nearly equal to that represented by
the Gould properties. Mr. Gould has been absolutely unrivaled in his
position as a money-maker. Though he has met with reverses at times,
and was once on the verge of actual bankruptcy, these have been due,
in slight degree, to the action of his opponents in the market, but
rather to some relaxation of his own energies, or some unforeseen
combination of circumstances. The men who have been against him, with
few exceptions, have lost while he has won. To be wealthy and to play
with the Gould securities, it has been necessary to follow him, not to
oppose.
In downright dramatic interest, in its exhibition of results achieved
through the exercise of intellectual qualities which were themselves an
achievement, and in the examples which it furnishes of the consistent
development of traits which can scarcely be considered as the dower of
heredity, and yet were already apparent at the outset, the life story
of Jay Gould surpasses by far the histories of the great financiers,
speculators and railway managers with whom he was either directly
or remotely associated in a career which practically embraced the
whole modern phase of financial operation. Like Drew, Vanderbilt and
Fisk, he was of humble origin and began at an early age to carve out
his fortunes on lines which lay far from those to which his youthful
surroundings seemed to direct him. But his first exhibitions of
independent and original activity were directed toward the acquiring
of an intellectual equipment of an entirely different order from that
which his great rivals in Wall street boasted. Nothing is plainer than
that he was a born money-maker, but it is easily possible that if early
success in this direction had not encouraged him to bend his energies
solely to the acquisition of wealth, he might have devoted himself
not only successfully, but much to his own satisfaction, to higher
pursuits. Though he was an absolutely tireless worker in the field of
money-getting, one can scarcely study his operations, whether as a
mere speculator or as the creator and developer of great industrial
enterprises, without becoming convinced that the incitement to many
of his colossal operations was quite as much a love for intellectual
occupation as for money. Human nature is generally set down as a
universal possession, and Mr. Gould was yet a young man when the scope
of his financial operations was such as to give clear evidence that
the material things of this world were abundantly cared for in his
possessions. He had, of course, the instincts of a born speculator,
yet his was not the disposition to let results depend simply on the
accidental fall of the dice, or the turn of a card. He loved hazard,
but he loved better to compel chance to enter the channels he had dug
for it. It would be folly to deny the vast value of his work in the
development of the Western and Southwestern States, but perhaps as
great a folly to attribute a philanthropic or patriotic motive to it.
In a history of the life of such a man as Jay Gould, it is well that
certain of his personal characteristics and certain of the chief events
of his career be summarized before a complete study of his biography
and character is made. It is thus possible better to understand both
events and personal qualities.
The education which Jay Gould acquired through his own energies as
a youth, found its best application in this work of development. In
his purely speculative adventures he was aided by a disposition whose
traits, as has already been intimated, were formed in his youth or
early manhood. It is impossible to contemplate without astonishment
and even admiration, the spectacle of so stable a character as one
must admit Mr. Gould’s to have been, fixed in boyhood and remaining
unchanged all through a career which extended from a condition of the
most modest kind (not to call it absolute poverty) to a position from
which practically he ruled the financial world of this continent and
materially affected the fortunes of the other. With untold wealth at
his command, he was as simple in tastes, as unaffected in manner,
as abstemious in habits, as industrious, as self-dependent and
self-reliant, as when he set out in boyhood to make himself a rich
man. Nor did any of his less amiable characteristics undergo a less
change. In some of his first business ventures, can be read the same
disposition for silent intrigue, the same secretiveness touching his
intentions, the same subtlety and elaborateness of plan, and the same
indifference to the feelings or comments of others, as marked the
tremendous operations which are the climaxes of his purely speculative
career--the war over Erie and the gold operations which culminated in
that memorable and deplorable day which is written in history as “Black
Friday.”
There was, perhaps, never a time in Jay Gould’s career when it was
possible to estimate his wealth with anything approaching correctness.
His secretive disposition stood in the way of a general acquaintance
with the outcome of his many ventures. Long after he had gained
control of the Wabash system of Railways, the Manhattan Elevated
and the Western Union Telegraph Company, during a little flurry in
Wall street, in which everybody thought the finger of Jay Gould was
hidden, but nobody knew, a broker sagely observed, “Mr. Gould has many
properties, but a brass band is not one of them.” He never went forth
trumpeting his affairs. Moreover, his wealth always consisted of stocks
and bonds which were subject to the fluctuations of the market, and
which unquestionably derived a considerable proportion of their value
from the fact that he controlled the property which they represented.
Once, however, he put aside his natural secrecy and made an exhibition
of his wealth in order to quiet some annoying reports that were current
touching his financial condition. This was in March, 1882, when he
spread the contents of his strong box before his astonished visitors.
Mr. Gould’s secretiveness was exhibited quite as strikingly in his
benefactions as his speculations. He never achieved a reputation as
one in the habit of doing good to his fellowmen, and yet few rich men
were more charitable than he. Only once did he forego his customary
reticence, and then it was in a time of great public calamity. Yellow
fever was raging in Memphis, and subscriptions were being raised in all
the large cities of the country. Gould did not wait, but telegraphed
to the authorities of Memphis to draw on him for all the money they
needed. As a rule, like William H. Vanderbilt, he dispensed his
benefactions through a trustee. This, during the last few years of his
own life, was Thurlow Weed.
“I am Mr. Gould’s philanthropical adviser,” said this remarkable man on
one occasion in 1879; “whenever a really deserving charity is brought
to my attention, I explain it to Mr. Gould. He always takes my word as
to when and how much to contribute. I have never known him to disregard
my advice in such matters. His only condition is that there shall be
no public blazonry of his benefactions. He is a constant and liberal
giver, but doesn’t let his right hand know what his left hand is doing.
Oh, there will be a full page to his credit when the record is opened
above.”
It should also be added to the list of his virtues, that he abstained
absolutely from spirituous liquors, including wine, and never used
tobacco. He was, however, fond of highly-spiced food, and it is said
that indulgence in such viands caused the stomachic disarrangements
which forced him to devote himself in 1888 to the pursuit of
health. He loved flowers exceedingly, and in his country seat at
Irvington-on-the-Hudson built up one of the finest conservatories in
the world.
Jay Gould’s career was not a colorless one, but was full of episode and
variety. He was a genuine American in that he had engaged, before he
was out of his teens, in some dozen pursuits, which number he doubled
in the next few years. Milking twenty cows in his father’s dairy;
clerking in a country store; running a hardware shop; learning the
tinner’s trade; working in a country newspaper office, and writing
a history of Delaware county, were among his earlier employments.
And then came his enlistment in a surveying corps and his experience
in map drafting, which led up to the leather industry. This chapter
in Mr. Gould’s career is a sensational one. His enlargement of the
tannery business in Pennsylvania, his establishment of a village named
for himself, Gouldsborough, and of a bank of which he was director,
were the business portions of the sensation. The suicide of his
partner and the war for possession of the tannery, between two bands
of roughs fighting one for Gould and one for his partner’s estate,
were sensations of another kind. Next Mr. Gould went into the railroad
business, drifting there by the aid of his father-in-law, who wanted
to make the best of a marriage which he had opposed. From that time to
this, Mr. Gould has been prominently before the public in financial
operations, and his history is the history of Wall street. Opinions
of Mr. Gould have been just as varied as his own pursuits. There are
those who laud him to the skies for the success he had in creating
his enormous fortune, and who think him the sum of all good things.
There are many others who think of him as being simply a close-fisted,
unscrupulous, selfish business man of undoubted ability, but with
no thought except to add to his wealth by whatever means might be
necessary at the expense of others. And there is another large class
of those who consider Mr. Gould to have been a type of all that is
worst in Americans, a man who wrecked fortunes and honor of others
to add to his own, who purchased legislatures at will whenever he had
anything to desire from them, and who had absolutely no redeeming
traits of character. It will be our effort to show what justification
there may be for each opinion. Whatever other merit may be claimed for
this modest biography of a rich man, it is certainly to be considered
as entirely fair, with no bias for or against its subject, and no
inclination to do anything but justice to his memory. No effort has
been spared to secure reliable, accurate and exhaustive information
on the history and personal characteristics of Jay Gould. Inasmuch
as great influence is exerted on every man’s life by those business
associates most closely connected with him, attention has been given
to those other noted financiers whose association with the “wizard”
have been the nearest. The ever-present influence of ancestry and
immediate family make that subject also an essential one to the true
understanding of the man. The history of “Black Friday” and its
disastrous consequences are treated in full, also the investigation of
the Senatorial Committee and Gould’s connection with Missouri Pacific
and Western Union. His domestic life, his yacht, his home on the
Hudson, his magnificent conservatory, all indications of the spirit and
tastes of the man, are also given careful attention.
The early life of such a man must perforce afford an interesting study,
and no apology is necessary for a pretty full account of Jay Gould’s
boyhood, youth and early manhood.