GOULD EMBARKS ON HIS CONSPIRACY
After the opening of the Civil War, gold was exceedingly scarce, and commanded a high premium. The supply of this metal, this yellow dross, which to a considerable degree regulated the world's relative values of wages and commodities, was monopolized by the powerful banking interests. In 1869 but fifteen million dollars of gold was in actual circulation in the United States.
Notwithstanding the increase of industrial productive power, the continuous displacement of obsolete methods by the introduction of labor-saving machinery, and the consecutive discovery of new means for the production of wealth, the task of the worker was not lightened. He had, for the most part, after great struggles, secured a shorter workday, but if the hours were shorter the work was more tense and racking than in the days before steam-driven machinery supplanted the hand tool. The mass of the workers were in a state of dependence and poverty. The land, industrial and financial system, operating in the three-fold form of rent, interest and profit, tore away from the producer nearly the whole of what he produced. Even those factory-owning capitalists exercising a personal and direct supervision over their plants, were often at the mercy of the clique of bankers who controlled the money marts.
Had the supply of money been proportionate to the growth of population and of business, this process of expropriation would have been less rapid. As it was, the associated monopolies, the international and national banking interests, and the income classes in general, constricted the volume of money into as narrow a compress as possible. As they were the very class which controlled the law- making power of Government, this was not difficult.
The resulting scarcity of money produced high rates of interest. These, on the one hand, facilitated usury, and, on the other, exacted more labor and produce for the privilege of using that money. Staggering under burdensome rates of interest, factory owners, business men in general, farmers operating on a large scale, and landowners with tenants, shunted the load on to the worker. The producing population had to foot the additional bill by accepting wages which had a falling buying power, and by having to pay more rent and greater prices for necessities. Such conditions were certain to accelerate the growth of poverty and the centralization of wealth.
Gould's plan was to get control of the outstanding fifteen millions of dollars of gold and fix his own price upon them. Not only from what was regarded as legitimate commerce would he exact tribute, but he would squeeze to the bone the whole tribe of gold speculators—for at that time gold was extensively speculated in to an intensive degree.
With the funds stolen from the Erie Railroad treasury, he began to buy in gold. To accommodate the crowd of speculators in this metal, the Stock Exchange had set apart a "Gold Room," devoted entirely to the speculative purchase and sale of gold. Gould was confident that his plan would not miscarry if the Government would not put in circulation any part of the ninety-five million dollars in gold hoarded as a reserve in the National Treasury. The urgent and all- important point was to ascertain whether the Government intended to keep this sum entirely shut out from circulation.