Daily globe., 1882-10-07
GOTHAM GOSSIP
A C0smOp0litan's Estimate Of JAY
GOuh' Character and Achievements.
THE GREATEST MAN IN AMERICA.
His Enterprises All Directed for the
Coed Of the General Public.
FEELING THE POLITICAL PULSE,
The Indications All Favorable to the
Election Of Cleveland.
Especial Telegram to the Globe. /


Especial Telegram to the Globe
NEW YORK. Oct. 6.-Jay Gould is the
most important man in this country which
has SO many wealthy people and success
full politicians. Gould is more run after
by persons who want to use him, and
gives more fear and sweat to people with
monopolies of their own, than any living
man. While large proportion of the
people have apprehensions about his
wonderful increase and expansion, Few
are heard to say that Gould is the ablest
American ever produced in general busi-
ness.
was riding from Paris, in France to
the English channel last summer, when
1 encountered a capable man who
was mercantile buyer for large
interests in America and spoke nearly all
the languages OF the continent, and had
almost the address of an ambassador. He
said to me in the course of the cOnversa-
tion: II am not a politician ner literary
man, and know nothing much beyond
business, but in my Judgment your Jay
Gould is the ablest American your country
has yet produced, and though am told he
is not popular, he is the most useful man
on your continent"
waited minute or two to see is he
would continue the theme, and he said: sit
you consider the very ordinary beginning
of Mr.. Gould and the tremendous fight
he has made in the past
twenty years, it seems to me
that it is the most remarkable career in
modern banking. Here are our Roths-
childs, who have been in business over one
century. They have accumulated an i'm
mense amount of money, but it has not
done to the benefit of their native country
to give public works to the country, like
Gould's enterprises. The Rothschilds
probably aggregate a fortune of three
hundred million dollars.
suppose Mr.. Gould is either now worth.
or some day will be in possession of one
hundred millions. It is much more diff
cult to make the first million than the next
ten millions, and the man with fifty mil
lions of dollars can see his way clear to
| almost anything if he is right
in the current of opera
tions like Gould. Mr.. Gould never
had any prince to help him along like the
Rothschilds, who got their first big lift
from the duke of Hesse- -Cassel. He had
| made great sum of money by selling his
| subjects to the British to fight the Ameri-
cans, and when the French invaded his
duchy he let old Rothschild, the father Of
the subsequent bankers, have it for safe
keeping. 1t was very large amount of
money-$5,O 100000 in silver. Now Gould
was merely q tanner and country store
keeper year or two before the war. In
war, like the Rothschilds, he nave the ba-
sis of his enterprises. He has made his
money in railroads and tele.
graphs. Your telegraph system in
America under his direction has
become the most complete on the earth.
The system of building and then consolid-
| ating railroad lines which Gould was the
| first great master in, has become the gen.
eral policy. and hundred imitators are
doing it in other places, yet none have
done it so we'll as Gould. He started with
the little rural consolidation of the Rens-
sulaer &::Saratoga. and used the more auda-
cious Fisk to get into the Erie, which he
had to give up however. He then took up
small railroad in New Jersey, running to
Long Branch and tinkered with that some
years. Then he bought the Union Pacific
when it was considered worthless, and
made great property out of it. He next
began to build opposition telegraph lines,
and few cases are on record where
a man built so many opposition lines and
finally came to own the great line into
which they were all absorbed. He bought
the Missouri Pacific railroad with q few
millions of dollars and the purchase turns
out to have been one of the most sagacious
ever made, and has led Gould into the
whole southwestern system of railroads,
building with rapidity never known on
this continent. 1t is time, ''said this speak
er," that he picked up the money of manv
another operator, but that is merely their
game, and there is no reason why people
should scowl at Gould for winning at an
other mans game. Seldom receiv-
ing good words from anyone,
Gould has kept an invincible
heart. He has been in personal fear time
and again, and though a man of slight
physique he is not forced out of his
province, but you find him next day with
his pale, overworked face at the head of
the street, and he has held it longer in New
York than any man who ever
trod it. The usual life of
the leader lof the street is from two
to five years. Gould has held Wall street
with few intermissions for nineteen years.
''He is particularly native man." con-
tinued this cosmopolitan. 'He is one of
your kind bearing an old Connecticut
name, and men of that class in Europe
are not censured as if they were commit
| ting a tremendous ofense in being uc-
cessful where everybody else wants to be.
LOTTERIES AND THE POsTOFFICE.
hear that since the star route puddle
has been dried up, the next leak in the
postal service is letting the lottery ring run
it. The big Louisiana lottery has been los
ing great. deal of money by post Office
1