TANNERY INSURRECTION IN PENNSYLVANIA.
BATTLE BETWEEN THE FORCES OF THE SWAMP LEATHER DEALERS—
THE LEUPP AND LEE TANNERY, IN GOULDSBORO, ATTACKED
AND DEFENDED—SIDES OF LEATHER USED FOR BREAST-
WORKS—INSURGENTS TWO HUNDRED STRONG—
THE TANNERY TAKEN—FLIGHT OF THE
DEFENDERS—WOUNDED
FOUR.
About half-past ten o’clock on Tuesday morning the lock was wrenched from the stable, the men having been concentrated into the tannery and the stable being unguarded. A little past twelve the tannery itself was attacked by a mob variously estimated at from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and fifty men, armed with axes, muskets, rifles and other weapons. Without a demand of possession or summons to surrender, the doors were beaten in, and but a few blows had been struck by the assailants before they began to fire ball and buckshot through the building, raking it in every direction. As vigorous a defense was made, by a force of fifteen men in the story attacked, with tannery sticks, stones and four revolvers, as was possible against such overwhelming odds. The tannery was finally carried on all sides, and those who did not escape were violently flung from the windows and doors, while the assailants rushed through the buildings, yelling like Indians, pursuing the fugitives with their guns in every direction. In the action many contusions were received and four gunshot wounds, and had it not been for the large number of sides of leather hung up the lofts, very few of the defending party would have escaped without wounds.
Mr. Jay Gould, in his version of the affair, in which he endeavors to exculpate himself, says:
“I quietly selected fifty men, commanding the reserve to keep aloof. I divided them into two companies, one of which I despatched to the upper end of the building, directing them to take off the boards, while I headed the other to open a large front door. I burst open the door and sprang in. I was immediately saluted with a shower of balls, forcing my men to retire, and I brought them up a second and third time and pressed them into the building, and by this time the company at the upper end of the tannery had succeeded in effecting an entrance and the firing now became general on all sides and the bullets were whistling in every direction. After a hard contested struggle on both sides we became the victors, and our opponents went flying from the tannery, some of them making fearful leaps from the second story.”
After this depreciation of value in the tannery property, Gould’s ready resources were so exhausted that it is related that he had to borrow the money to pay his railroad fare to New York. It is probable that no man in this or any other country has ever been a party to so many lawsuits as Gould. From the time of the contest over the map business there was scarcely a day during his whole life that he did not have some litigation on his hands. This ends the early chapters of Gould’s life. He now entered upon that career in the metropolis which has made his name familiar around the globe.
It is doubtful if many young men, before the age of twenty-four years, have passed through as many and as varied experiences as these of Jay Gould. All his training now for several years had been in the line, first, of competition with others in the same business as his own, and then in direct conflict and war with those who had been his associates. He had learned not only to conquer his enemies, but to conquer his friends. He had thoroughly developed and made apparent to every one who came in contact with him that spirit that remained with him through all his life, the mania for the aggrandizement of his own fortune, no matter whose money must be lost for him to gain it. The last chapter of his tannery experiences was a dark one, and there is nothing in it to be held up for admiration by any one, but rather as an example of the first notable evil in the nature of financial wrecking of the many that are found in a complete retrospect of his life. Gould himself always realized the discreditability of his actions in the tannery matter, as is evidenced by the way in which he tried to smooth it over before the investigating committee ten years later. As a matter of fact, he probably realized and recognized whatever else he did that was evil in his far greater financial operations during the next three decades, but if he did, he gave no sign nor did he ever indicate that he had any regrets in his career.
GOULD’S FIRST GLIMPSE OF HIS FUTURE WIFE.