Ex-Tax Commissioner Coleman added the opera house property to the list that Mr. Gould paid on personally.
“The peculiarity of the matter,” said Mr. Coleman, “is that Gould was never really in business in New York City. His wealth was very largely in stocks that had no particular value by themselves and that were not even on the market. He made his money by taking hold of almost bankrupt companies, getting control of the common stock that had no particular value beyond its voting power, and then by manipulating things to his own interest.
“Besides, his various railroad stocks, like the Union Pacific, Wabash, Texas and Kansas Pacific, were not assessable. The bonds that were assessable were generally those of roads that had been reorganized and reorganized till any estimate of value became a pure matter of guesswork. Then he could come in and swear down the valuations.”
The tax commissioners are compelled to take any man’s affidavit as to the value of his personal property, and, as Commissioner Baker put it, “Where it’s a question of dollars and cents, we find every man’s conscience becomes rather pliable.”
Mr. Gould seems not to have cared to pass as an exception to so well-established a rule, and hence the modest estimate he placed on his earthly possessions for the purposes of the tax collector. As a result of this trustful feature of the assessment laws, $25,000 a year is said to be an ample estimate for the entire amount of annual taxes Mr. Gould paid on his variously estimated millions.
CHAPTER XIX.
JAY GOULD’S RELATIONS WITH THE PUBLIC.
There are interesting features of the life of Jay Gould regarding his relations with the public, the church, the press and the people whom he met.
Jay Gould was not what is called a religious man. He was a pewholder in the Presbyterian church at Irvington and in the Rev. Dr. Paxton’s church on West Forty-second street, but not a communicant. If he ever expressed any religious views it was to the Rev. Dr. Paxton. Certainly he did not to the Rev. Dr. Henry M. MacCracken, chancellor of the University, nor to the Rev. Roderick Terry, with whom he was on intimate terms of friendship. Dr. Terry said:
“There was no pretense about Mr. Gould. He never made any public profession of Christianity that I know of. On the subject of religion, as on so many others, he was extremely reticent, unless he unbosomed himself to his pastor, Dr. Paxton. He certainly never talked with me about his feelings on the subject of religion, though the opportunity offered more than once.”