THE TEACHINGS OF HIS ENVIRONMENT.
To understand the incentives and methods of Gould's career, it is necessary to know the endemic environment in which he grew up and flourished, and its standards and spirit. He, like others of his stamp, were, in a great measure, but products of the times; and it is not the man so much as the times that are of paramount interest, for it is they which supply the explanatory key. In preceding chapters repeated insights have been given into the methods not merely of one phase, but of all phases, of capitalist formulas and processes. At the outset, however, in order to approach impartially this narrative of the Gould fortune, and to get a clear perception of the dominant forces of his generation, a further presentation of the business- class methods of that day will be given.
As a young man what did Jay Gould see? He saw, in the first place, that society, as it was organized, had neither patience nor compassion for the very poverty its grotesque system created. Prate its higher classes might of the blessings of poverty; and they might spread broadcast their prolix homilies on the virtues of a useful life, "rounded by an honorable poverty." But all of these teachings were, in one sense, chatter and nonsense; the very classes which so unctuously preached them were those who most strained themselves to acquire all of the wealth that they possibly could. In another sense, these teachings proved an effective agency in the infusing into the minds of the masses of established habits of thought calculated to render them easy and unresisting victims to the rapacity of their despoilers.
From these "upper classes" proceeded the dictation of laws; and the laws showed (as they do now) what the real, unvarnished attitude of these fine, exhorting moralists was towards the poor. Poverty was virtually prescribed as a crime. The impoverished were regarded in law as paupers, and so repugnant a term of odium was that of pauper, so humiliating its significance and treatment, that great numbers of the destitute preferred to suffer and die in want and silence rather than avail themselves of the scanty and mortifying public aid obtainable only by acknowledging themselves paupers.
Sickness, disability, old age, and even normal life, in poverty were a terrifying prospect. The one sure way of escaping it was to get and hold wealth. The only guarantee of security was wealth, provided its possessor could keep it intact against the maraudings of his own class. Every influence conspired to drive men into making desperate attempts to break away from the stigma and thraldom of poverty, and gain economic independence and social prestige by the ownership of wealth.
But how was this wealth to be obtained? Here another set of influences combined with the first set to suppress or shatter whatever doubts, reluctance or scruples the aspirant might have. The acquisitive young man soon saw that toiling for the profit of others brought nothing but poverty himself; perhaps at the most, some small savings that were constantly endangered. To get wealth he must not only exploit his fellow men, he found, but he must not be squeamish in his methods. This lesson was powerfully and energetically taught on every hand by the whole capitalist class.
Conventional writers have descanted with a show of great indignation upon Gould's bribing of legislative bodies and upon his cheatings and swindlings. Without adverting again to the corruption, reaching far back into the centuries, existing before his time, we shall simply describe some of the conditions that as a young man he witnessed or which were prevalent synchronously with his youth.
Whatever sphere of business was investigated, there it was at once discovered that wealth was being amassed, not only by fraudulent methods, but by methods often a positive peril to human life itself. Whether large or small trader, these methods were the same, varying only in degree.
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