ALLIANCE WITH CORRUPT POLITICS AND JUDICIARY.
From 1868 to 1872 Gould, abetted by subservient directors, issued two hundred and thirty-five thousand more shares of stock. [Footnote: Fisk was murdered by a rival in 1872 in a feud over Fisk's mistress. His death did not interrupt Gould's plans.] The frauds were made uncommonly easy by having Tweed machine as an auxiliary; in turn, Tweed, up to 1871, controlled the New York City and State dominant political machine, including the Legislature and many of the judges. To insure Tweed's connivance, they made him a director of the Erie Railroad, besides heavily bribing him. [Footnote: "Did you ever receive any money from either Fisk or Gould to be used in bribing the Legislature?" Tweed was asked by an aldermanic committee in 1877, after his downfall.
A. "I did sir! They were of frequent occurrence. Not only did I receive money but I find by an examination of the papers that everybody else who received money from the Erie railroad charged it to me."—Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1877, Part II, No. 8:49.] With Tweed as an associate they were able to command the judges who owed their elevation to him. Barnard, one of Tweed's servile tools, was sold over to Gould and Fisk, and so throughly did this judge prostitute his office at their behest that once, late at night, at Fisk's order, he sportively held court in the apartment of Josie Mansfield, Fisk's mistress. [Footnote: The occasion grew out of an attempt of Gould and Fisk in 1869 to get control of the Albany and Sesquehanna Railroad. Two parties contested—The Gould and the "Ramsey," headed by J. Pierpont Morgan. Each claimed the election of its officers and board of directors. One night, at half-past ten o'clock, Fisk summoned Barnard from Poughkeepsie to open chambers in Josie Mansfield's rooms. Barnard hurried there, and issued an order ousting Ramsey from the presidency. Judge Smith at Rochester subsequently found that Ramsey was legally elected, and severely denounced Gould and Fisk—"Letters of General Francis C. Barlow, Albany": 1871.
The records of this suit (as set forth in Lansing's Reports, New York Supreme Court. I:308, etc.) show that each of the contesting parties accused the other of gross fraud, and that the final decision was favorable to the "Ramsey" party. See the chapters on J. Pierpont Morgan in Vol. III of this work.] When the English stockholders sent over a large number of shares to be voted in for a new management, it was Barnard who allowed this stock to be voted by Gould and Fisk. At another time Gould and Fisk called at Barnard's house and obtained an injunction while he was eating breakfast.
It was largely by means of his corrupt alliance with the Tweed "ring" that Gould was able to put through his gigantic frauds from 1868 to 1872.
Gould was, indeed, the unquestioned master mind in these transactions; Fisk and the others merely executed his directions. The various fraudulent devices were of Gould's origination. A biographer of Fisk casually wrote at the time: "Jay Gould and Fisk took William M. Tweed into their board, and the State Legislature, Tammany Hall and the Erie 'ring' were fused together and have contrived to serve each other faithfully." [Footnote: "A Life of James Fisk, Jr.," New York, 1871.] Gould admitted before a New York State Assembly investigating committee in 1873 that, in the three years prior to 1873, he had paid large sums to Tweed and to others, and that he had also disbursed large sums "which might have been used to influence legislation or elections." These sums were facetiously charged on the Erie books to "India Rubber Account"—whatever that meant.
Gould cynically gave more information. He could distinctly recall, he said, "that he had been in the habit of sending money into various districts throughout the State," either to control nominations or elections for Senators or members of the Assembly. He considered "that, as a rule, such investments paid better than to wait until the men got to Albany." Significantly he added that it would be as impossible to specify the numerous instances "as it would be to recall the number of freight cars sent over the Erie Railroad from day to day." His corrupt operations, he indifferently testified, extended into four different States. "In a Republican district I was a Republican; in a Democratic district, a Democrat; in a doubtful district I was doubtful; but I was always for Erie." [Footnote: Report of, and Testimony Before, the Select Assembly Committee, 1873, Assembly Documents, Doc. No. 98: xx, etc.] The funds that he thus used in widespread corruption came obviously from the proceeds of his great thefts; and he might have added, with equal truth, that with this stolen money he was able to employ some of the most eminent lawyers of the day, and purchase judges.