It would take too much time, and swell this volume far beyond the space which I have laid out for it, to go minutely into the history of all Mr. Gould’s great enterprises. In fact, it would take a large volume in itself to do justice to the various schemes which have been put under way by him directly and indirectly and carried to a successful issue during his busy life of a quarter of a century in Wall Street. This seems a long time for a man who is still so young, although he is a grandfather, and enjoying the use of his mental faculties more vigorously than ever.
Owing to my own busy life I have only time to sketch the most salient points of Mr. Gould’s prosperous career. Some future historian of Wall Street is destined to make a big “spread” upon him, as the newspaper reporter would say. He will have ample material if he only begins his work soon; but whoever undertakes the job should not forget the maxim of that great veteran of literature, old Dr. Samuel Johnson, about material for biography having a general tendency to become scarce, and, in some instances, eventually to vanish. While the reliable material for Mr. Gould’s biography may be subject to the common fate of growing less, as time advances, there is no danger of utter oblivion in his case. He has impressed his footprints on the sands of time too firmly for that.
I don’t for a moment mean to insinuate the reason for this, which is given by Shakespeare as applicable to similar cases, although some ill-natured and envious people might use the well-known quotation in this connection:
“The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often interred with their bones.”
I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Gould will leave a large amount of good after him, and, indeed, it seems now as if the Shakespearian adage was to be reversed in his case. The evil that he may have done is likely to be forgotten. He bids fair to outlive most of it, if he only goes on to the end as he has been doing for the past few years. He is now showing a decided disposition to become more of a builder up than a wrecker of values.
Through his great executive ability in railroad management and construction he has been instrumental in making many blades of grass grow where none had grown before, causing the desert to blossom like the rose, assisting thousands who had formerly been poor and almost destitute, pent up either in European hovels or New York tenement houses, to find happy homes in the West and South. He has been a great factor in improving the value of the land, and thus, while he was enriching himself, adding materially to the wealth and prestige of the nation and thereby elevating it in the appreciation of the world at large.
The correspondent of the London Times recently sent over here to write up a description of the country, dwells emphatically on this characteristic of Mr. Gould and other great millionaires and railroad magnates, who contribute so largely to the general prosperity of which they seem to be the indispensable mediums.
It was as the managing power in the Erie Railroad that Mr. Gould laid the broad foundation of his fortune. His speculative connections with Erie are more fully dealt with in the lives of Daniel Drew and Commodore Vanderbilt. The money and influence which he gained, in connection with the Erie corporation, enabled him to extend his operations in the acquisition of railroad property until, through Union Pacific and its various connections, Wabash and a number of Southwestern roads, it seemed probable, at one time, that he was in a fair way of grasping the entire control of the trans-continental business in railroad matters. And this was prior to the time when he obtained his present hold on telegraph facilities.
Some of the able schemes in which Mr. Gould has had credit for playing an important part, and sometimes a role that was considered rather reprehensible, were managed, so far as the outside business was concerned, chiefly by one or more of his wicked partners. In one of the most noteworthy of those projects, namely, the attempt to capture the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, Mr. Gould seldom or never appeared in person before the public. His partner, James Fisk, Jr., was cast in that role and played it with great ability. With the essential aid of those two shining lights of the New York bar, David Dudley Field and Thomas G. Shearman, the Prince of Erie, (as Jim Fisk was called,) came pretty near snatching possession of 142 miles of a very important railroad, with the control of only 6,500 out of 30,000 shares of the stock, and 3,000 shares of these 6,500 had been illegally obtained, as was eventually decreed by the court.