Fifty years in Wall Street
It seems that during their temporary exile beyond the State Gould sought
a private interview one night with the Commodore, in the hope of
bringing about conciliatory measures.
The Commodore conversed freely for some time, but in the midst of his
conversation he seemed to be suddenly seized with a fainting spell, and
rolled from his seat unto the carpet, where he lay motionless and
apparently breathless.
Mr. Gould’s first impulse was to go to the door and summon aid, but he
found it locked and no key in it. This increased his alarm and he became
greatly agitated. He shook the prostrate form of the Commodore, but the
latter was limp and motionless. Once there was a heavy sigh and a half
suffocated breathing, as if it were the last act of respiration.
Immediately afterward the Commodore was still and remained in this
condition for nearly half an hour. Doubtless this was one of the most
anxious half hours that ever Mr. Gould has experienced.
If I were permitted to indulge in the latitude of the ordinary story
teller, I might here draw a harassing picture of Mr. Gould’s internal
emotions, gloomy prospects in a criminal court and dark forebodings. His
prolific brain would naturally be racked to find a plausible explanation
in the event of the Commodore’s death, which had occurred while they
were the sole occupants of the room; and at that time, in the eyes of
the public, they were bitter enemies.
I can imagine that, in the height of his anxiety, he would have been
ready to make very easy terms with his great rival, on condition of
being relieved from his perilous position. It would have been a great
opportunity, if such had been possible, for a third party to have come
in as a physician, pronouncing it a case of heart disease. No doubt Mr.
Gould would have been willing to pay an enormous fee to be relieved of
such an oppressive suspicion.
The object of the Commodore’s feint was evidently to try the courage and
soften the heart of Mr. Gould, who never seemed to suspect that it was a
mere hoax. His presence of mind, however, was equal to the occasion, as
he bore the ordeal with fortitude until the practical joker was pleased
to assume his normal condition and usual vivacity. If Mr. Gould had been
a man of common excitability he might have acted very foolishly under
these trying circumstances, and this doubtless would have pleased his
tormentor intensely.
The _modus operandi_ of Mr. Gould, in the purchase and sale of
railroads, has been to buy up two or more bad roads, put them together,
give the united roads a new name, call it a good, prosperous line, with
immense prospects in the immediate future, get a great number of people
to believe all this, then make large issues of bonds and sell them at a
good price, for the purpose of further improving and enhancing the value
of the property. After these preliminaries had been gone through, if
profitable purchasers came along, they could have the road at a price
that would amply compensate Mr. Gould for all his labor and acute
management. If these purchasers should be unable to run the road
profitably and were obliged to go into liquidation after a year or two,
as frequently happens, then Mr. Gould or his agents would very likely be
found on hand at the sale to take back the road at a greatly reduced
price. Mr. Gould would then get a fresh opportunity of showing the
superiority of his management. He would be able to demonstrate that the
road had left his possession in excellent and progressive condition, but
through loose management had been run down. He would then set about the
work of reorganization again and go through the same role substantially,
with slight variations, as before, realizing a handsome profit on each
successive reorganization.
It would take too much time, and swell this volume far beyond the space
which I have laid out for it, to go minutely into the history of all Mr.
Gould’s great enterprises. In fact, it would take a large volume in
itself to do justice to the various schemes which have been put under
way by him directly and indirectly and carried to a successful issue
during his busy life of a quarter of a century in Wall Street. This
seems a long time for a man who is still so young, although he is a
grandfather, and enjoying the use of his mental faculties more
vigorously than ever.
Owing to my own busy life I have only time to sketch the most salient
points of Mr. Gould’s prosperous career. Some future historian of Wall
Street is destined to make a big “spread” upon him, as the newspaper
reporter would say. He will have ample material if he only begins his
work soon; but whoever undertakes the job should not forget the maxim of
that great veteran of literature, old Dr. Samuel Johnson, about material
for biography having a general tendency to become scarce, and, in some
instances, eventually to vanish. While the reliable material for Mr.
Gould’s biography may be subject to the common fate of growing less, as
time advances, there is no danger of utter oblivion in his case. He has
impressed his footprints on the sands of time too firmly for that.
I don’t for a moment mean to insinuate the reason for this, which is
given by Shakespeare as applicable to similar cases, although some
ill-natured and envious people might use the well-known quotation in
this connection:
“The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often interred with their bones.”
I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Gould will leave a large amount
of good after him, and, indeed, it seems now as if the Shakespearian
adage was to be reversed in his case. The evil that he may have done is
likely to be forgotten. He bids fair to outlive most of it, if he only
goes on to the end as he has been doing for the past few years. He is
now showing a decided disposition to become more of a builder up than a
wrecker of values.
Through his great executive ability in railroad management and
construction he has been instrumental in making many blades of grass
grow where none had grown before, causing the desert to blossom like the
rose, assisting thousands who had formerly been poor and almost
destitute, pent up either in European hovels or New York tenement
houses, to find happy homes in the West and South. He has been a great
factor in improving the value of the land, and thus, while he was
enriching himself, adding materially to the wealth and prestige of the
nation and thereby elevating it in the appreciation of the world at
large.
The correspondent of the London _Times_ recently sent over here to write
up a description of the country, dwells emphatically on this
characteristic of Mr. Gould and other great millionaires and railroad
magnates, who contribute so largely to the general prosperity of which
they seem to be the indispensable mediums.
It was as the managing power in the Erie Railroad that Mr. Gould laid
the broad foundation of his fortune. His speculative connections with
Erie are more fully dealt with in the lives of Daniel Drew and Commodore
Vanderbilt. The money and influence which he gained, in connection with
the Erie corporation, enabled him to extend his operations in the
acquisition of railroad property until, through Union Pacific and its
various connections, Wabash and a number of Southwestern roads, it
seemed probable, at one time, that he was in a fair way of grasping the
entire control of the trans-continental business in railroad matters.
And this was prior to the time when he obtained his present hold on
telegraph facilities.
Some of the able schemes in which Mr. Gould has had credit for playing
an important part, and sometimes a role that was considered rather
reprehensible, were managed, so far as the outside business was
concerned, chiefly by one or more of his wicked partners. In one of the
most noteworthy of those projects, namely, the attempt to capture the
Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, Mr. Gould seldom or never appeared in
person before the public. His partner, James Fisk, Jr., was cast in that
role and played it with great ability. With the essential aid of those
two shining lights of the New York bar, David Dudley Field and Thomas G.
Shearman, the Prince of Erie, (as Jim Fisk was called,) came pretty near
snatching possession of 142 miles of a very important railroad, with the
control of only 6,500 out of 30,000 shares of the stock, and 3,000
shares of these 6,500 had been illegally obtained, as was eventually
decreed by the court.
Mr. Fisk, though the silent member of the Erie firm, had also control of
Judge Barnard, of the Supreme Court of the City and County of New York.
The Albany & Susquehanna road would have been a valuable prize for Erie.
It runs from the eastern extremity of the New York Central at Albany to
a junction with Erie at Binghamton. At that time Erie aspired to be a
successful competitor with Central for New England business, and had
determined to monopolize the coal trade between that section and
Pennsylvania. This connecting link of 142 miles was therefore regarded
as a very valuable acquisition by both the large roads. Hence it was
worth a desperate effort, and Jim Fisk showed that he had a true
appreciation of its value, for he organized a company of New York
roughs, placed himself at their head, and being armed with bludgeons and
pistols and an injunction from Judge Barnard, obtained from him in New
York city—while he was really in Poughkeepsie at the time—went to Albany
and took forcible possession of the offices of the railroad. He had the
President, Secretary, counsel and receiver of the road arrested and put
under $25,000 bonds each. Mr. Fisk went through the farce of an election
of Erie candidates for the offices which he had forcibly made vacant in
the Albany & Susquehanna, bringing his roughs up to vote as
stockholders.
The President of the road, Mr. Joseph H. Ramsey, fought stoutly for his
rights and ousted the intruders. He had spent eighteen years building
the road, and was naturally attached to it. He also found a Judge to aid
him. Justice E. Darwin Smith, of Rochester, eventually rendered a
decision in favor of the Ramsey party, with the opinion that “Mr. Fisk’s
attempt to carry the election by his contingent of ‘toughs’ was a gross
perversion and abuse of the right to vote by proxy, tending to convert
corporation meetings into places of disorder, lawlessness and riot.”
Costs were decreed to the Ramsey directors, and a reference made to
ex-Judge Samuel L. Selden, of the Court of Appeals, who fixed the
allowance to be paid by the Fisk board to the Ramsey board at $92,000.
It is worthy of note that the Fisk board consisted of the unlucky number
of thirteen.
The Erie party appealed, but long before the appeal could be heard the
Albany & Susquehanna was leased in perpetuity to the Delaware & Hudson
Canal Company, against whom the Erie party was not strong enough to go
to law. Thus ended the struggle for this great connecting link.
It is worthy of remark that this was one of the few cases in which,
where Mr. Gould made up his mind to obtain the control, possession or
ownership of property, he did not succeed.
The methods of acquiring the control and the possession of other
people’s property have been raised to the dignity of a fine art by Mr.
Gould. This art has been prosecuted, too, through “legitimate” means. He
has had the law at his back every time, and been supported in his
marvellous acquisitions by the highest Court authority.
The manner in which he managed to get Western Union into his hands
affords a very striking illustration of his methods and the great secret
of his success.
When first laying his schemes to obtain the control of the telegraph
property he got up a construction company to build a telegraph line.