“Well, I remember parting with a lot of stock at ten cents for which I could have got par a few days afterward. Wouldn’t that impress the occasion on your memory, Mr. Anderson?”
Everybody laughed at this, and the witness, although he had lost a million or two, laughed as heartily as the loudest.
As far as the Denver Pacific stock was concerned Mr. Gould said it was worth practically nothing unless the consolidation was made. It was the signature of the Union Pacific that made it good.
“Do you consider that the trustees fulfilled their duty in letting this stock out of trust?” he was asked.
“I consider that it was the only thing to do, and I stand on what was done. I am ready to take the responsibility for it that day, or this day, or any other day.”
[From the New York Times, May 19, 1887.]
Jay Gould gave another day to the Pacific Railway Commission yesterday. His manner was, as usual, cool and collected, and he was apparently full of a patient desire to tell everything he knew. Yet Mr. Gould told very little, although he answered hundreds of questions, some of them puzzling enough to drive a less long-headed financier into a corner. The Denver Pacific stock and the way it got out of the trust were first taken up. Mr. Gould said he thought the course taken was best for everybody. Naturally he wanted the Denver Pacific to go into the consolidation, holding as he did, $1,000,000 of the securities, and being trustee of over $3,000,000 more. At first it was doubtful if the Union Pacific would take it, but it did for the franchises. “I want to say again,” declared Mr. Gould, “that no director or person connected with the Union Pacific ever made a dollar out of Denver Pacific. I am glad to put a final nail in that coffin.”
His plan at one time was to build a line from Denver to Ogden, via Salt Lake and Loveland Pass. It would have been shorter than the Union Pacific and obtained more local business, for the Union Pacific ran north of the mineral belt and the Southern Pacific south of it. After he obtained the Missouri Pacific he saw what a good thing he had in it, but he was persuaded to give his pledge to go on with the consolidation of the other roads. The Boston folk became agitated within a month after he bought the Missouri Pacific, and got the pledge from him. If the Missouri Pacific had been put through it would have injured the Union Pacific a great deal.
“According to the ethics of Wall Street,” Mr. Gould was asked, do you consider it absolutely within the limits of your duty, while a director of the Union Pacific, to purchase another property and to design an extension of the road which would perhaps ruin the Union Pacific?”
“I don’t think it would have been proper. That’s the reason I let it go.”