HE BUYS RAILROAD BONDS WITH HIS STEALINGS.
Three years later, in 1860, Gould set up as a leather merchant in New
York City; the New York directory for that year contains this entry:
"Jay Gould, leather merchant, 39 Spruce street; house Newark." For
several years after this his name did not appear in the directory.
He had been, however, edging his way into the railroad business with the sums that he had stolen from Pratt and Leupp. At the very time that Leupp committed suicide, Gould was buying the first mortgage bonds of the Rutland and Washington Railroad—a small line, sixty-two miles long, running from Troy, New York, to Rutland, Vermont. These bonds, which he purchased for ten cents on the dollar, gave him control of this bankrupt railroad. He hired men of managerial ability, had them improve the railroad, and he then consolidated it with other small railroads, the stock of which he had bought in.
With the passing of the panic of 1857, and with the incoming of the stupendous corruption of the Civil War period, Gould was able to manipulate his bonds and stock until they reached a high figure. With a part of his profits from his speculation in the bonds of the Rutland and Washington Railroad, he bought enough stock of the Cleveland and Pittsburg Railroad to give him control of that line. This he manipulated until its price greatly rose, when he sold the line to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In these transactions there were tortuous substrata of methods, of which little to-day can be learned, except for the most part what Gould himself testified to in 1883, which testimony he took pains to make as favorable to his past as possible.
His career from 1867 onward stood out in the fullest prominence; a multitude of official reports and investigations and court records contribute a translucent record. He became invested with a sinister distinction as the most cold-blooded corruptionist, spoliator, and financial pirate of his time; and so thoroughly did he earn this reputation that to the end of his days it confronted him at every step, and survived to become the standing reproach and terror of his descendants. For nearly a half century the very name of Jay Gould has been a persisting jeer and by-word, an object of popular contumely and hatred, the signification of every foul and base crime by which greed triumphs.