Читать книгу The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth; or, The Life and Deeds of Jay Gould - White Trumbull - Страница 9

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When Jay Gould reached New York in 1860, after the tannery war, he was almost impoverished. He settled down at the Everett House, a comfortable hotel, and there he lived for a little time while waiting for something to turn up. Gould was not very busy just then and used to wander around the city, up town and down town, through Wall street and Lower Broadway, where in later years he became such a power; maybe, even then, wondering if he would ever reach the point in wealth and influence that belonged to the men he met, and figuring, as every one does at times, what he would do if he were a millionaire. He knew the tannery business thoroughly and had many influential acquaintances in “The Swamp,” which was the seat then, as it is now, of the leather trade in New York. But he most wanted to get into the railroad business. He believed that greater opportunities were there than in any other occupation for the acquiring of wealth and influence. So he bent all his energies in that direction.

One day just before the war, Gould came walking down the street toward his hotel, and looking up toward the window of the parlor, he saw seated there, looking toward him, a most charming young lady. He was not by any means inclined toward flirtation, but he could not avoid an appearance of interest in her, and he passed on into the hotel. Soon after that the same episode was repeated. By a little investigation, Mr. Gould learned that the young lady was Miss Ellen Miller, whose father, a wealthy New York merchant, was a member of the grocery house of Philip Dater & Co. She lived in a house across the street, and a delightful flirtation with the girl whose pretty face appeared at the window preceded any formal acquaintance. Circumstances, however, permitted them to meet socially, and they became excellently well acquainted. After a few weeks, the acquaintance became more and more intimate and finally ripened into love. Miss Miller’s father indicated opposition to their marriage, their desire for which they made evident, and they were compelled to seek some roundabout way to accomplish their purpose. The result was, that after trying several ways to circumvent the unsympathetic parent, they decided upon a secret marriage, and this was actually accomplished. There were no runaway features about the match, except that to avoid the opposition that they were certain would come, they simply walked to a minister’s, a short distance from their home, and were married without letting any one know of it. When they returned, Mr. Miller indicated no ill-will at their action, and went to work to make the best of it all. He did this by giving the famous financier his first introduction into the railroad business. Mr. Miller owned some shares in the Rutland and Washington railroad. He asked his son-in-law to look the property over and see if anything could be done to save the investment. The road was sixty-two miles long, running from Troy, New York, to Rutland, Vermont. The panic of 1857 had left this road in a demoralized condition, and Gould found that he could buy a majority of the first mortgage bonds at ten cents on the dollar. He had now found the true field for his peculiar talent. He made himself president, treasurer and general superintendent of the road, studied the business of railroading on the ground, developed the local traffic, and finally effected the Rensselaer and Saratoga Consolidation. By this time, both bonds and stocks were good and he sold the latter for one hundred and twenty dollars.

There has been no time when it was possible to estimate the wealth of Mr. Gould, and as he was secretive in those early days as in his later, there was no saying what he was worth when in 1860 he came into Wall street. One statement has it that when the firm of Smith, Gould & Martin was organized, Mr. Gould’s possessions amounted to thirty thousand dollars in cash. Another is that when he sold out his holdings in the Rensselaer and Saratoga Consolidation, he was worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

With a mind peculiarly alert to all the influences which affected the values of railway securities, with habits of great industry, with phenomenal tenacity of purpose, with a fair amount at least of capital to back him, it is not surprising that Mr. Gould profited largely by his speculation in railway stocks and gold during the war of the rebellion. The keen-sighted, intelligent men in “the Street” at that time nearly all made money, and Mr. Gould was at least a millionaire when the Confederacy fell. What his methods were at the time it is useless to speculate about. It was before the day when by absolute mastery of gigantic railway and telegraph systems he could at his will depress the value of almost any institution on which he fixed his eye by setting on foot a ruinous war in rates until he had made it to be his own interest to restore a more normal and healthful condition of affairs by ceasing his antagonism and building up the property which he had acquired cheaply during the period of depression. But the details of his operations were always so subtle as to be shut out from the discovery of either friend or foe.

Gould was now fairly on the way toward his colossal fortune. Though friends warned him against entering into the whirlpool of blasted hopes and ruined fortunes of Wall street, his inclinations in that direction were too strong to be resisted. Gould was a born speculator. It is true that his great fortune was created mainly in hazardous enterprises outside of Wall street, and that in stock speculations, pure and simple, he was not always so successful or so infallible as many have supposed, but by nature and habit Gould was at this time of his life a commercial gambler, and it was as natural that he should enter Wall street as for a duck to take to water. It was in 1859 or 1860 that Gould first entered Wall street. It was not very long before he stepped to the front rank. What a long list of brainy and courageous men do Gould’s contemporaries in the street make! With most of them Gould has been at sword’s point, with a few he has been an ally, with some he has been both ally and enemy. Most of them are no longer powers in the speculative world. Some of them are dead. Not a few have been overwhelmed in the swift, resistless torrent of stock speculation. Three or four yet remain with power in their hands and millions in their vaults. The Vanderbilts—the commodore, his son and grandsons—Daniel Drew, James Fisk, Jr., the Beldens, Commodore Garrison, Henry N. Smith, James R. Keene, William Heath, George I. Seney, Gen. Thomas, Calvin S. Brice, D.O. Mills, Horace F. Clark, Alfred Sully, Addison Cammack, C.F. Woerishoffer, the Rockefellers, S.M. Kneeland, C.J. Osborn, D.P. Morgan, H.S. Ives, C.P. Huntington, Russell Sage, Cyrus W. Field, John W. Garrett, Robert Garrett, J.P. Morgan, the Seligmans, Brown Bros., Jay Cooke, Hugh J. Jewett, Lathrop, Little and Austin Corbin, Henry Clews, Washington E. Connor, Burnham, Gen. E.F. Winslow, Edward S. Stokes, S.V. White, William Dowd, Solon Humphreys, William R. Travers, Rufus Hatch, Samuel Sloan—these were some of the men identified with various Wall street interests with whom Gould has been allied or at enmity, or both, during his long career in the street. That he has been able among all these financial giants to make himself the leader is the highest evidence that can be given of his genius in speculation and railroad financiering. As we read some of these names there arise before our eyes the visions of murder, of suicide, of bankruptcy, of the debtor’s prison, of the felon’s cell, of ruined fortunes and blasted reputations. Others of the men have achieved wealth and honorable names. It is interesting to note that at the time Gould first entered the street one of his fellow-boarders at the Everett House was James Gordon Bennett, the elder, with whose son and successor he became engaged in such bitter business and personal antagonisms.

Gould not only gambled in Wall street, but he defended the operation. “People,” he told a State Senate Committee which was investigating into stock and grain corners, “will deal in chance. Your minister, doctor and barber all have the same interest in speculation. Would you not, if you stopped it, promote gambling?”

Jay Gould was twenty-three years old when he went into Wall street as a broker. In addition to whatever amount of money he had, he had the confidence of two or three large capitalists, which is the best capital of all for beginning a business of speculation. He started on his Wall street career in a small office and frequently took his stand with the “curb-stone” brokers. He made money right along. In 1860 he became intimately acquainted with Henry N. Smith, who was then one of the big men in Wall street. Soon the firm of Smith, Gould & Martin was formed and it was prosperous from the start. Gould made a careful study of the railroad situation and became an expert in the manipulation of railroad securities in the speculative market. He paid the closest attention to business, allowing himself few of the social pleasures of which young men are usually fond. He had no small vices, being a teetotaler.

During the war of the rebellion, the firm did a large business in railway securities, and also made a great deal of money speculating in gold. Gould had private sources of information in the field, and he was able to turn almost every success or defeat of the Union army to profitable account.

At last Gould had found his exact niche, the corner in which the railroads were put away. That “corner” was ever after the one in which he found both his labor and his recreation, his fortune bad and good. He was a natural railroad magnate. Almost always he won, and when he did not, it was simply because he attempted schemes that would have seemed to any other man entirely beyond possibility. From this time his history never loses its intense dramatic interest and never goes back to the humdrum life that he had abandoned. From this time, there could be no night in which Jay Gould could sleep in dreamless rest, with no thought of the morrow. From this time, there could be never a day of freedom from the intensest strain of business anxiety. He had chosen speculation for a life work, and its cares must sit upon him. His could not be the experience of the man in mercantile life, or of the man of smaller affairs, who finishes his work in the evening and goes to his home with never a thought of the cares to-morrow will bring. Great enterprises make great responsibilities. From this time the enormous weight of the responsibilities upon Jay Gould’s shoulders could never again lessen.

Did he ever, in those years of scheming and fighting for wealth, cast his recollection backward to the old days at Roxbury, when he was but a barefoot farmer’s boy, with nothing more oppressive on his mind than the necessity to go through the rain for the cows, or to find the nest that the blue hen had hidden away some place in the hay-mow?

There was little in the associations that he made during these first Wall street years to remind him of those days. For while many of the men with whom he came in contact had been like himself, the sons of farmers with the first years of their lives spent far from the city, yet from this time, all their “watering” of stock was entirely in the direction of stocks which represented the value of railroads and other properties, and all their knowledge of farm products was devoted to the manipulation of grain markets.

As Gould’s acquaintance grew larger, and his success in ordinary small ventures became assured, his disposition began to demand something of greater magnitude, something with more satisfaction in it for that appetite that was already becoming insatiable. A few small railroad ventures were carried through in a manner bordering upon perfection, and this increased the confidence in him of those speculators who were already his acquaintances. The way opened for him to enter into the manipulations of Erie, and, as before, when opportunity came he recognized and grasped it.