The loyalty of S. S. H. Clark, general manager of the Missouri Pacific and president of the Union Pacific, to Mr. Gould has been the subject of frequent comment. Mr. Clark is by no means a low-priced man, and the fact that he has long been one of Mr. Gould’s trusted lieutenants means that he has not worked for low pay.
It is related that the Atchison people once tried to get Mr. Clark to enter their employ by offering him an advance of $10,000 on the salary the Missouri Pacific company was giving him. Mr. Clark promptly refused the offer and said nothing. Mr. Gould, however, heard of the matter from other sources, and on the Christmas day following Mr. Clark received a check for $50,000 with a short note which read: “A merry Christmas to my loyal friend.—Jay Gould.”
“During the big strike troubles in the Missouri Pacific,” said one broker, “one of the employees who stood by the company was shot and killed. I entered Mr. Gould’s office a few days later and found him making out a check. As I approached the desk I saw that the check was for $5,000, drawn to the order of the widow of the murdered man. Mr. Gould quickly turned the paper face downward.
“‘You are too late, Mr. Gould,’ I said. ‘I unintentionally read the check.’
“He smiled a little as he quietly remarked, ‘We must look out for those who stand by us.’”
CHAPTER XX.
A CHAPTER OF ANECDOTES.
While it is true that Gould loved to envelope his transactions in mystery, and was a master of the art of keeping silence, and though during most of his life he was engaged in financial intrigues and occult speculations, yet the main facts of his life can be found in the official records of law cases and the numerous legislative and congressional investigations that were held on many of his transactions. The facts of this volume are not to be understood as doing Mr. Gould an injustice, for almost the worst things that are said about him are the ones to which he himself testified under oath.
The greatest financial transaction ever consummated in America is believed by many people to have been the creation of the Union Pacific Railway Company by Jay Gould. By a stroke of financial genius at once bold and adroit, he consolidated into that corporation other great railroad companies, assuming control of all. It will be remembered that the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Union Pacific Railway Company are two distinct corporations. The former was the original company.
It was in 1873 that Gould went into Union Pacific. He bought about $10,000,000 of the stock, had it bound into a book and put it in a safe, as he told a friend at the time, “for his wife and family as an investment.” In 1878 Gould conceived the idea of a grand coup, and this was carried out so successfully that in sixty days he had made terms which netted him about $21,000,000 in profits.