Biography

Jason Gould (/ɡuːld/; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who is generally identified as one of the Robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.^[2][3][4]

Source: Jay Gould. Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply.

Jay Gould By W. T. Stead (The American Review of Reviews, February, 1893)

The first edition was not off the press when the telegram arrived announcing the death of Jay Gould – one of the greatest millionaires of them all. Jay Gould was dead at the age of fifty-eight, leaving a fortune of $70,000,000 to his children and making absolutely no bequests of any kind to the nation whose development had made him rich or to the society which tolerated and fostered his accumulations. And, as I turned over the files of the newspapers sent me from New York, I found that Mr. Morosini, who for the last eighteen years had been more closely associated with Mr. Gould than almost any other man, said, speaking of the cause of his death: “My opinion is that his system gave way under the great strain resulting from the consciousness of his great wealth. It was a tremendous care and he was always weighed down with the anxiety and excitement of protecting his properties.” That is a significant testimony as to the probability that nationalization may ultimately come about as the result of a bill to prevent the slow torture of millionaires. It is the new peine forte et dure. In old days, unwilling witnesses were pressed to death by a continually increasing weight upon their vitals; it is not unwilling witnesses, but only too willing millionaires, who are self-subjected to the latest variant of the old form of torture.

A MORAL FOR MILLIONAIRES

If we judge Jay Gould according to the impress which his character seems to have made upon the men of his own generation not personally acquainted with him, we would have to rank him very low in the scale of created beings.

“He was a broker,” says Henry Adams in his history of the gold conspiracy,” and a broker is almost by nature a gambler, perhaps the very last profession suitable for a railway manager. In character he was strongly marked by his disposition for silent intrigue. He preferred, as a rule, to operate on his own account without admitting other persons into his confidence, and he seemed never to be satisfied except when deceiving every one as to his intentions. There was a reminiscence of the spider in his nature. It is scarcely necessary to say that he had not a conception of amoral principle.”

That may be said to represent, not unfairly, the moderate view of his critics. The “reminiscence of a spider” is good, distinctly good. But the whole carnivora has been ransacked to find analogies for Jay Gould. He has been a vulture, a viper, a wolf, a fox, a bear, and no one knows what other animals of prey. There is little doubt that Jay Gould did not shed crocodile tears over his victims any more than Napoleon did over the Prussians and Austrians whom he crushed at Jena and Austerlitz. But, just as it is possible for great warriors to be very humane, so it is possible for eminent financial operators to preserve their “bird in their breast,” and, as a matter of fact, many of the kings of Wall street and of the Bourse have in the midst of their acquisition preserved a love of their fellow men as well as for their fellow men’s cash.

A GOOD MAN OUTSIDE FINANCE

Jay Gould was faithful to his wife, devoted to his children, and his character outside his all-absorbing devotion to money-making seems to have been tolerably simple and exceptionally good. He loved his friends and hated his enemies; there was no Phariseeism about him, and neither was there any of the ordinary vices. Calumny itself never attached any scandal to his name – other than financial. He seems to have paid his men well, to have rewarded liberally those who served him. He never went into society, being shunned rather than courted by the first families of New York. He was singularly free from affectation, and if there was a man diligent in business it was he. His taste in art seems to have been by no means bad. He was fond of reading. His one passion beyond that of getting money was the cultivation of flowers.

BUT WAS HE A GOOD MILLIONAIRE?

All this, it may be said, is beside the mark. As an individual, as a husband, as a father, and as a florist, he may have been ideal. But it is as a millionaire he must be judged, and as a millionaire he must be condemned or acquitted. That is to say, the judgment will go for or against Jay Gould, not upon the method in which he utilized the faculties and opportunities which are common to the whole human family, but as to the use he made of the exceptional faculties and opportunities that lay within his reach. In the plutocratic democracy, such as the United States, the millionaire is the king. His friends have again and again asserted that no man in the whole country was more powerful than Jay Gould. What use did he make of his millions? They say that he employed them to develop the resources of the great Southwest, to extend the telegraph system, and to generally promote the material welfare of the country. Well and good; that may be true, but of course there is another side to all this, and there are many who maintain that, even from a material progress point of view, the United States would have got on better if Jay Gould had never come out of the cellar in which his father locked him the first time he played truant. Those who take this view have a curious confirmation in the fact that within a week of Jay Gould’s death the value of the stocks in which his fortune was locked up increased greatly. It was estimated at no less than $400,000.

But is that all? His friends reply that he used his wealth not merely for the promotion of the material development of the United States, but for the prevention of panics, and in many cases for the saving of his friends from imminent ruin.

It may be so; the millionaire, with all his moneybags round about him, is driven by the instinct of self-preservation to endeavor to prevent catastrophes which would certainly impair the value of his securities.

Then, as to the saving of his friends, that is quite possible. All those who were in the inner circle declare that he was kindly dispositioned and inclined to help where he could.

HIS CHARITIES

Then they say further that, despite the evidence afforded by his will, in which $70,000,000 were left to his heirs, without a single cent being devoted to public charities or works of beneficence, that he had been extremely generous during his lifetime. But in strict accordance with the evangelical precept, he had not let his left hand know what his right hand did. It may be so, but it is to be regretted that he did not carry out other evangelical precepts, for nothing could be greater than the secrecy with which he covered all such beneficence. The secrecy is, indeed, so great that most people believe that no such beneficence existed. On one occasion it is said that he gave $10,000 to a Presbyterian building fund, and that stands out as almost the only gift of any importance that he is said to have made. Dr. Green declares that his noble impulse and generous benefactions are known only to those who were intimately acquainted with him. The directors of the Missouri also lay stress upon these personal qualities of which the world knows nothing:

“Of the personal qualities of Mr. Gould we may record the just estimate of those who, by long and intimate association with him, have been made, as we believe, fit judges. Mr. Gould was a man of tried personal and moral courage, a kind, considerate and generous friend, modest and gentle in demeanor, moderate in speech, judicial and just in his judgments. To those whose business and personal relationship to him had been longest and closest he was most endeared.”

According to Mr. Morosini:

“Mr. Gould gave away many fortunes in his lifetime. He always concealed his generous deeds, because rich men are besieged by beggars all the time. In one instance I was made the agent in a gift of $65,000 to one man out West whom Mr. Gould wished to befriend. No one ever heard of it. Several years ago it was telegraphed from Richmond that some unknown Northern man had responded to the appeal of those in charge at Mount Vernon and had purchased additional acres of land to be added to the old Washington estate. It turned out that Mr. Gould had bought the property and turned it over to the Mount Vernon people.”

THURLOW WEED’S TESTIMONY

The most remarkable statement, however, is that of the well-known philanthropist, the late Mr. Thurlow Weed, who in 1879 spoke as follows on this subject:- “I am Mr. Gould’s philanthropic adviser. Whenever a really deserving charity is brought to my attention, I explain it to Mr. Gould. He always takes my word as to when and how much to contribute. I have never known him to disregard my advice in such matters. His only condition is that there shall be no public blazonry of his benefactions. He is a constant and liberal giver, but doesn’t let his right hand know what his left hand is doing. Oh, there will be a full page to his credit when the record is opened above.”

If so, it is to be sincerely hoped that it will be to his credit hereafter, for it certainly has not been put to his credit at present. As an illustration of this, take the following extract from the sermon preached by the Rev. G. Inglehart, in Park Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church on the Sunday after his death:-

Gould, with his seventy millions, was one of the colossal failures of our time. He was a purely selfish man. His greed consumed his charity. He was like death and hell – gathering in all, giving back nothing. To build up an immense fortune for one’s self by fraud is a disgrace to the age, a mockery to virtue, a menace to public welfare. The love of money was the root of all evil in him. The motive that softens the footsteps of the burglar, that nerves the arm of the highwayman, was the same that prompted Gould to break his neighbor up to build himself up.

Source: W. T. Stead. Jay Gould. Attacking the Devil copyright statement, The American Review of Reviews (February 1893).