Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1885-06-11
JAY GOULD AT WORK.
How the Railway King Manages to Dis
pose of His Vast Business.

pose of His Vast Business.
Jay Gould is president of or director
in more than twenty great corpora
tons, writes correspondent of The
Utica Observer. He keeps the run of
the business of each of them, and at
tends also to the care of the 100000
900 that he owns. To do this requires
an immense amount of work, but Mr..
Gould is a manager of no mean ability,
and he does a vast amount of work
with the same ease that almost all peo-
pie do little work. There is connected
with all great corporations some man
who has the details of the entire bust
ness of the corporation at his instant
command. They are men who have
learned this detail through long famili-
arity with the work. Gen. Eckert
knows every in and out of the Western
Union Telegraph company. He can
tell instantly whether the company has
line to Hastings Centre, Montana,
and if not how long time and what cost
will be required to stretch wire there.
Supt. Toucey, of the Hudson River
railroad, knew every foot of track so
perfectly that he did not hesitate an
instant when it was flashed to him that
Sing Sing conyicts had captured
train running through the prison
grounds and were escaping on it. He
telegraphed to an agent at town four
miles below: "Open the switch and
turn train No. 80 into the Hudson
river" and the station agent obeyed
orders. The managing editors of the
big newspapers know every four-line
item of news that is printed in New
York city, and they know instantly,
from long experience, just how to get
news and how to use it.
Mr.. Gould in the same manner has =
thousand letters and questions to an
swer. He gets through his work as do
managers generally, by the use of one
to five assistants, whom he directs.
Gould is an early bird. He is up before
5 in the morning, and by 8 he has
skipped over to the West Side Elevated
railroad and is on his way down town.
MIR. Gould detests carriages and hacks,
and he does not enter one unless COM
PEELED to do so. At his office in lower
Broadway he finds his partner, Wash
ington L. Conner. his confidential
assistant, G. P. Morosini, and his son,
George Gould.
There are in Mr.. Gould's office two
or three young men who make them
selves generally, useful in writing let
ters and following directions. They
have opened the one hundred or more
letters, that have been directed to Mr..
Gould, and have smoothed them out in
broad sheets, and have piled them one
al IN. s..
reading. Mr.. Morosini first goes
through this mass of correspondence,
and from it takes such letters as he
thinks necessary Mr.. Gould should see.
The others he attends to himself. The
twenty or thirty that remain then occu-
Ply Mr.. Gould's attention. The first
may ask if Mr.. Gould would like to put
money into new copper mining COM
pany in Michigan. He reads it care
fully, takes up pen, and writes mo-
on the letter. That means that one of
the young men will reply to the writer
thanking him for his kind offer to make
Mr.. Gould a stakeholder in the COM
pany. but regretting Mr.. Gould's ina
bility at present to avail himself of it,
etc.
The next letter may be from the
commander of Mr.. Gould's yacht, say
ing that she has smashed her machin-
cry, and must be fixed right away. An
other grab is made for the pen and
something like this is written: Have
her towed around to John Roach's and
repaired soon as possible-must be
done in six days" Almost anyone else
who owned so valuable piece of pro-
perty would make a visit to her, and
spend half day looking her over, and
ascertaining whether 81, 900 could not
be saved by sending her to the man
that made her; but Gould has no time
to do so. He has no time even to write
his instructions to the commander.
The third letter has another terse SEN
tence of instruction written upon it,
and so on through the entire pile.
Then they are handed over to the
clerks who write out the answers.
By this time the visitors begin to
gather. They are halted in an ante
room, and George Gould or some of
the people connected with the office,
ascertain on what business or for what,
purpose they wish to see Mr.. Gould,
and it is decided then and there
whether Mr.. Gould should see them. If
they come to beg, as scores of persons
do every day, they are sent on their
way in a hurry. If their errand seems
legitimate, they ere asked to step inside,
and Mr.. Gould listens to them and dis
misses them and the subject with
wave of the hand, or disposes of their
business through a clerk. If Gould is
trading actively he keeps jumping up
and running to the ticker while talking
with his visitors, and he keeps a very
sharp eye on prices while transacting
other business all day long.
He does everything without the
slightest flourish or theatrical effect,
and as quietly as though it was of no
Importance whatever. In an hour from
his arrival he disposes of everything
demanding attention, and he skips up
Broadway to the Western Union build
ing, where he has another office, and
where a fresh batch of important bust
ness awaits attention. He rattles
through this with the same ease and
rapidity and hurries out to attend a
meeting of the Wabash directors,
which over, he steps back to the lower
Broadway office and finds score of
persons waiting to see him. These are
soon scattered, and it is lunch time, so
over to Delmonico's he. goes for a
brace of chops; then makes trip to the
Mercantile Trust company, where yet
another string of questions must be
decided.
And SO it goes all day long. He
gives orders to buy and sell thousands
of shares of stock, settles questions of
policy connected with the railroads
which he controls, fixes dividends, wa
tiers stocks, and thinks and acts on
thousand different topics. Yet he does
not do any of the routine or manual
labor. He tells others what to do. He
is not a member of the stock-exchange,
and consequently has never been with
in its walls. He keeps from five to fif-
teen men busy all day writing letters
or carrying out his instructions. AT
o'clock he steps out to the elevated
road station and goes back to his home
on Fifth Avenue. Here he has pri-
yate telegraph wire and operator, and
he can yet communicate with the
world.
Whatever of private business he does
is transacted at home before the dinner
hour. After dinner he gives his entire
time TO his family. They do not go out
much, and they do not receive many
callers. But jollier. happier family
is not to be found in the city. There
are three boys and a girl of the chill
dren. and all are as full of finn and