CHAPTER XII
THE GOULD FORTUNE AND SOME ANTECEDENT FACTORS
With his score or more of millions of booty, Jay Gould now had much more than sufficient capital to compete with many of the richest magnates; and what he might lack in extent of capital when combated by a combination of magnates, he fully made up for by his pulverizing methods. His acute eye had previously lit upon the Union Pacific Railroad as offering a surpassingly prolific field for a new series of thefts. Nor was he mistaken. The looting of this railroad and allied railroads which he, Russell Sage and other members of the clique proceeded to accomplish, added to their wealth, it was estimated perhaps $60,000,000 or more, the major share of which Gould appropriated.
It was commonly supposed in 1873 that the Union Pacific Railroad had been so completely despoiled that scarcely a vestige was left to prey upon. But Gould had an extraordinary faculty for devising new and fresh schemes of spoliation. He would discern great opportunities for pillage in places that others dismissed as barren; projects that other adventurers had bled until convinced nothing more was to be extracted, would be taken up by Gould and become plethora of plunder under his dexterous touch. Again and again Gould was charged with being a wrecker of property; a financial beachcomber who destroyed that he might profit. These accusations, in the particular exclusive sense in which they were meant, were distortions. In almost every instance the railroads gathered in by Gould were wrecked before he secured control; all that he did was to revive, continue and elaborate the process of wrecking. It had been proved so in the case of the Erie Railroad; he now demonstrated it with the Union Pacific Railroad.