The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-13
woRsHIPING THE GOLDEN CALF.

wORSHIPING THE GOLDEN CALF.
A large gathering of eminent Presbyte-
Ran ministers recently broke into ap-
plause at the voice of Jay Gould when he
announced that latter many years delib-
Grafton he had become convinced that the
Presbyterian church was the best and
truest religious organization in the coun-
try" and then subscribed $4,000 to the
cause of church extension. Rev. DIR.
John Hall told how Mr.. Gould had once
given him free pass for returning mis-
sionary, and one of the clergymen who
spoke on the duty of generosity and the
dangers of selfishness which beset the
rich, closed with an apology for venturing
to treat of such subject in such pres
ence
One of the causes of the decline of re-
spect for the church is the religious sane
ton given by great metropolitan pulpits
to vulgar toadying to ill-gotten wealth.
Of this class of wealthy men, whose ship
is loaded to the gunwale with pirate
spoils, Jay Gould is the most notable liv-
ing representative. Everybody knows,
including Rev. Drs. Paxton, John Hall,
Alexander, Parkhurst, Henry NJ. Field,
and Briggs, that Gould robbed the Erie
railroad; that from adividend-naying road
it ceased to return anything; so that the
poor investors in its stock were frozen out
of it by the combination of the Erie ring
and the Tweed judiciary. Everybody knows
that Gould illegally over-issued thousands
of shares in his fight with Van
derbilt and that after the ring +"
judges were impeached and removed that
Vanderbilt made him disgorge; everybody
knows that Gould came out of the Erie
road with twelve millions of dollars, pure
plumber that this great robber was per-
mitted to carry away by the English stock
holders in order to get him out of his posi-
ton. entrenched as he was behind a venal
Judiciary and corrupt legislature.
Gould has been able, with his twelve
millions stolen from the Erie road, origin
ally owned to a considerable extent by
comparatively poor and humble persons,
to amass an enormous fortune. There are
a number of smaller fry who have done
the same thing with equal success, and
this is perhaps the most danger
Gus class in this country, be-
cause they are corporate rascals
| and pirates who threaten by their banded
millions to capture congress, as they have
more than once state legislatures, and
few years ago that Jay Gould, through
his lawyer, Wager Swayne, persuaded a
United States district judge to appoint
| one of his confederates receiver of the
| Wabash road, that Gould had robbed.
| Judge Gresham, of the United States cir
cult court, promptly reversed the proceed
| ing, throwing Gould's tool out of the
receivership with words of singing de-
nunciation of all the parties to this cor
rupt conspiracy to defeat justice.
When the body of that great scoundrel
| Jim" Fisk was borne to his New England
| home to be buried, it was received with
larger honors than if he had given his
life for his country in its hour of bitter
need and agony. When Fisk's monument
| was dedicated in 1874 IN Memorial day, in
| the presence of thousands of people, a
clergyman holding areputable position de-
| livered an address. And this was the way
| that quiet country town in New England
celebrated day sacred to the memory of
national self-sacrifce, by worshiping the
memory of man who died as the fool
dieth, the victim of long quarrel
| which began in rivalship for the favors of
courtesan, who was fairly described as
the most reckless robber and most daz-
| cling and dangerous example Of success
| full knaye the country has seen; man
who made his name infamous in two
hemispheres. This man Fisk was the
confederate in all Gould's conspiracies to
rob the Erie railroad; was the executive
| hand of all the fraud of which Gould's
brain was the fertile source. Gould and
| Fisk from 1867 until Fisk's murder in
January, 1872, were the Castor and Pollux
of corrupt conspiraces to wreck and rob
railroads and fill Wall street with
| fraudulent issues of stock. The in
fanny of Fisk and Gould is as historically
inseparable as the infamy of Pope Alexan-
der the Sixth and his brother, Caesar
Borgia. There is no more historical doubt
that Jim Fisk ard Jay Gould were the sue
cessful robbers and dismantlers of the
business trusts that they administered
than there is that Benedict Arnold was q
traitor. And yet when Fisk was buried
not local paper protested against the ex-
travagant pulpit honors paid TO life
of social shame and unbroken business
villainy.
Jay Gould should die today he would
be sure to get the same honors paid to his
old partner Fisk, whose death excited a
greater sensation of noisy local regret than
that of Sheridan or sherman.
One day we take off our hats when the
mighty pail of Grant is borne to the
tomb, and the next We are applauding a
Fisk or bewailing = prizefghter and gam
bier. We are queer people, surely. As
rule the real heroes go to their rest I'M
wept, unhonored and unsung, compared
with the coarse-haired, red-necked rutfian
who has raved and fought, or some COOL
plausible, foxy knave who has cheated or
stolen his way through life.
"