GOULD AS SURVEYOR AND HISTORIAN.
The tin shop was profitable but slow, and with an outcropping of
the avidity which he afterward showed, he sought for something more
lucrative. In 1852 he transferred his interest to his father and
arranged to take charge of a surveying party at twenty dollars a month.
Gould had heard of a man in Ulster county who was looking for an
assistant. He was making a map of that county and Gould wrote to him.
When he left home to take the position, his father offered him money,
but he left all his capital in the store, burned his ships behind him,
and took only money enough to pay his fare to the place where the new
position was to begin. His new employer started him out to make the
surveys, to see where the roads were and to locate the residences. He
also instructed young Gould to get trusted for his living expenses
along the way, and that he would pay them following after him. Two
or three days later, Gould ran against the first objection to this
arrangement from one of his entertainers, who knew that the employer
had already failed three times. He agreed to trust young Gould but
would not trust the employer. The boy wandered on after this rebuff
until three o’clock, before making an effort to get his dinner. His
wretchedness and its relief are interestingly told in a letter that Mr.
Gould wrote to a friend some years later.
“I was out of money--that is to say, every cent I had at my command
was a ten-cent piece, with which I had determined not to part. Fall
was approaching, and, unless our surveys were completed before winter
set in, the final completion of our enterprise would be necessarily
delayed until another season, subjecting us to additional expense,
which I feared would prove hazardous to the enterprise. I was among
entire strangers and consequently without credit. I could not spare
time to go to Delaware county after funds, and I had not money to reach
there. If tears had been coin my empty coffers would soon have been
amply replenished. In this emergency a welcome expedient accidentally
presented itself. I was prosecuting my surveys at this time in the
town of Shawangunk, and, while the tears were even trickling down my
cheek, a farmer came running after me and asked me if I would not
return with him to dinner and make a ‘noon mark,’ which is a north
and south line, to indicate, by the shadow caused by the rays falling
against an upright object and striking the line, the hour of midday. I
accepted the invitation with pleasure, as a couple of crackers was all
I had eaten since the preceding night, and I had been working since
daylight and was consequently hungry and faint. After dinner I made
the noon mark, and, turning to leave, the farmer asked me my bill. I
replied that he ‘was welcome.’ He insisted, however, on paying me a
half dollar, which he assured me a neighbor had paid for one, which I
accepted, and started on my way, and had I that moment discovered a
continent it would have afforded me less joy. I saw that I could turn
this discovery to practical account, and I felt already half rich,
and I prosecuted my labors with a lighter step than for many a day.
The fame of my noon marks preceded me, and the applications from the
farmers were numerous. By this means I paid all the expenses of the
surveys and came out at the completion with six dollars in my pocket.”
In the early part of this embarrassment he had no overcoat and
sometimes traveled forty miles a day on foot. His employer failed
completely and Gould continued the business for himself. Jay proposed
to the two other young surveyors, who had also been engaged on the
work, to complete it on their own account. The other two young fellows
had money, and when the map was ready for the engraver, Jay, finding
his colleagues anxious to put their names on it, sold his interest to
them for $500. With that capital he undertook similar surveys of Albany
and Delaware counties, and was successful in turning out satisfactory
maps of those regions. He sold enough maps to bring his capital up to
$5,000. The accuracy of his survey of Ulster county in the meantime,
had attracted the attention of John Delafield, in Albany, who applied
to the Legislature for aid in the completion of a topographical
survey of the entire state by Mr. Gould. Mr. Delafield died before
any material progress was made in this work. His application to the
Legislature was not successful. Some particulars of interest in regard
to the map-making business are related by Oliver J. Tillson, one of his
partners in the map-making enterprise, after the failure of the man
who had first employed him in the business. Mr. Tillson confirms Mr.
Gould’s account and tells of the bargain in which the latter sold out
to his partners. Here is a copy of a receipt given by Gould on that
occasion:
DECEMBER 27, 1852.
Received of Oliver J. Tillson and Peter H. Brink ninety dollars and
wheel in full of all debts and demands and dues against them and
the Ulster county map.
JASON GOULD,
for JOHN B. GOULD.
It will be observed that he signed his name “Jason,” not Jay. He was
christened “Jason,” but about this time began to change it to Jay, by
which he was ever after known. “There wasn’t any foolishness in Jason’s
books,” says Mr. Tillson, referring to the books in which Gould had
made his notes of the surveys. “He was all business in those days, as
he is now. Why, even at meal times he was always talking map. He was a
worker, and my father used to say: ‘Look at Gould; isn’t he a driver?’”
[Illustration: CANVASSING FOR HIS BOOK “HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.”]
This, in fact, is the testimony of all his contemporaries. From his
earlier years he was absorbed in schemes for making money, and his
whole aim in life was to “get on.” With every passing year his
ambition broadened, until it enveloped a continent.
It is a striking coincidence that young Gould and his two partners in
the map business were sued by the man who first employed the former
in the project, and they placed their case in the hands of Lawyer T.
R. Westbrook, who succeeded in having the suit dismissed. Westbrook
afterward became (and this is the coincidence) the supreme court judge,
who years after scandalized the legal profession by holding court in
Jay Gould’s private office and issuing an order in one of the Manhattan
railway litigations.
He and his cousin, with whom he entered into partnership at Albany,
increased the map business to the extent of sending surveyors into
various portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, but afterward the
contracts were transferred to a surveyor in Philadelphia.
From this time he was continuously employed as a surveyor, until
a severe attack of typhoid fever compelled him to give up outdoor
exposure. He had determined to make a complete survey of the entire
state of New York, and he did complete maps of Albany county, the
village of Cohoes, the Albany and Niscayuna Plank road and Delaware
county. He also surveyed Lake and Geauga counties in Ohio, Oakland
county in Michigan, and a proposed railroad from Newburg to Syracuse.
Then he was seriously ill for several months, but his money was not
used up, and he wrote with some degree of interest and also profit a
history of Delaware county and partial histories of Greene, Ulster and
Sullivan counties.
Gould had gathered his ideas of casual writing from a brief experience
in a country newspaper office, where he had worked gratuitously.
The history of Delaware county was four hundred pages long, and is
said to have been an exceedingly creditable performance, both as an
example of diligence and care in the collection of facts and skill
and taste in the literary presentation of them. It never came into
general circulation, however, probably because the printer, who lived
in Philadelphia, insisted, in spite of “copy” and proof corrections,
in spelling the name of the author “Gold.” When the books arrived in
Roxbury and the young historian discovered the blunder he shipped them
all back to the manufacturer and would have nothing more to do with
them.
Gould’s taste of money and profits had acted upon him almost as does
the taste of blood to a lion. By this time he was making enough money
to furnish himself a realization of what money could do and to make
him want it with an insatiable desire. His child life had been a short
one, and he was a man in business and responsibility at an age when
most persons of no greater age are considered to be but the merest
children. And what there was of his child life had been cold, and not
of a character to teach him, what few yet know, that money is the least
important thing in the world. All his life he had felt the lack of
it. He had been needy. He had been compelled to struggle to supply
his physical necessities, and then at times they were but scantily
supplied. One favorite sister, his elder one, who was his first teacher
of mathematics, was almost the only person whose recollection at home
was any delight to the boy and young man. So, now that his well-applied
and earnest labors have brought fruit to the extent of several thousand
dollars of cash capital available to him, it is not strange that he
sought for some enterprise in which the profits would be certain and
large. This opportunity opened before him and he grasped it.
It is very doubtful if, at that period in his career, young Gould had
ever read the works of Shakespeare, but be that as it may, he followed
that great bard in the opportunity which was now his. Shakespeare says:
“There is a tide in the affairs of man
“Which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
“Omitted, all the voyage of our life
“Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
“On such a full sea are we now afloat,
“And we must take the current when it serves,
“Or lose our ventures.”
Gould’s tide was in; it was turning, and the chance of his life
was waiting to be taken. It was this same faculty of being able to
recognize what was the right thing to do, that all his life stood him
in good play. He recognized it now, and changed the whole current of
his life.
The lessons to be learned from this early period of the life of the
one who was in future time to be the “Wizard of Wall Street,” are not
in anything obscure. Unceasing vigilance and unflagging energy were
the qualities that were most prominently developed in him from his
very youth. These qualities properly directed and controlled, are in
this age bound to win success for any young man. Gould never lost an
opportunity to make more money by increased efforts. He was not afraid
to assume any amount of extra work if he saw in it a just amount of
remuneration. From the time when he left his father’s house and started
out into the world to take care of himself and make his own living,
there was never a man with whom he came in contact who did not consider
the young fellow a valuable person to have attached to his business.
Gould always made it a point to prove himself valuable. He made his
employer’s interests his own, and was always ready for whatever
appeared necessary to be done. In all of this, his example is most
worthy of emulation. And while it is not to be expected that the same
efforts will bring to every one equal results, one may rest assured
that they will amply repay for their adoption.
[Illustration: THE TANNERY WAR IN PENNSYLVANIA.]