People's party paper. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1891-1898, 1892-12-16
A Closed Career.

New York World.
The funeral Of Jay Gould yester-
day marked not only the close of an
extraordinary career, but the end of
a remarkable man.
There will never be another Jay
Gould.
The rare combinations of traits
and faculties which made up this
wonderful man are not more impos-
sible of duplication than are the con-
ditions which made his career pos
sible.
The boy was father to the man.
The nervous, restless, ambitious,
scheming lad, dissatisfied with the
hard and poorly requited toll of his
fathers farm, and setting out to live
by his wits, had within his frail frame
the promise and potency of the future
master Of Wall street. He was in
dustrious, temperate, crafty, silent,
INSCRIPTIONS, relentless. He mad
the ''instinctfor accumulation" " which
has been well said to be worth all the
rules that ever were written for the
gaining of wealth. He had precisely
the brain and the moral nature for the
predatory career into which he drift
ed as naturally as spider goes to
catching flies or fox seeks his prey.
He had no more conscience than his
own mousetrap.
The epoch waited the man.
The condition of France and of
Europe at the time of the great rev.
olution did not more entirely lend
itself to the character and career Of
Napoleon, and make the success of
that bandit Emperor possible, than
did the condition of this country in
the years just before and during the
war, and Immediately following that
disturbing and demoralizing conflict,
lend itself to the ambition and the
success of Jay Gould. Dead soldiers,
impoverished States and tottering
thrones were no more to the Cors1can
genius than were ruined friends, i'm
poverished widows, corrupted judges
and debauched legislators to the
'sWizard of Wall Street"
The community and the times in
which Jay Gould lived are response
BILE for the career that they invited
and palliated. His success, as it is
called, was due to lack Of public
virtue, to the laxity Of the law itself
and TO the looseness and corruption
of the administration. 1t is a shame
full reflection upon our government,
and upon the moral standard and
business principles of the time, that
this career was never once seriously
checked either by the laws which it
defed or the public sentiment which
could have arrested it.
Where was the Law when Gould
organized robbery in the Erie direc-
tory, added over $54,000,000 to the
Indebtedness of that corporation,
with nothing to show for it, and car
ried off as his share of the plumber
nearly $12,000,000?
The records of the investigation
tell. Judges were his tools. Legis-
latures were his instruments. EN-
inent lawyers were retained to devise
safe ways in which to break the law.
Business men of repute did not feel
disgraced to sit in his boards nor
share in his pillage.
Where was Justice when Gould
plotted the infamy and precipitated
the disaster of Black Friday-mak-
ing victims, with devilish imp artiality,
Of friends and foes alike, saving HIM
self clone from the wreck?
Where was the hand Of Federal
authority when Gould deliberately
impaired the national securities in the
Union Pacific Railroad to the extent
of millions of dollars to make money
for himself and his associates?
Where were the States that created
and should have guarded the cor
porations which Gould wrecked after
robbing them?
Where was this imperial city when
Gould seized its means of semi-rapid
transit, increased by millions the
capitalization of the roads through
his favorite system of watering, and
then proceed to run them according
to his own arbitrary will?
Where were the guardians of the
public interest when Gould created
and secured control of and practi-
cal monopoly in the telegraphic SER
vice of this country?
1t IS because of the complaisance
or the corruption of lawmakers and
law enforcers and the indifference Of
the public that these things have not
been prevented or punished. The
easy-going judgment that Gould was
''no worse than Others" but gained
eminence by greater success in a
game which thousands are playing,
has been often heard since his death.
Professor Hadley, of Yale, spoke a
truth which would be applicable to