The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-12-03

of Toledo & Wabash, as set forth in the
hearing before United States District
Judge Gresham, who threw Gould and
his rascally confederates out of court.
His talons have been fixed into every
great enterprise in the country, and he
has generally picked the bird clean of
meat down to the bone, so long as God
gave him health and strength to continue
his predatory career.
While sometimes Gould may have
seemed like an organizer and executive
of legitimate business enterprises con-
Quoted by legitimate and upright business
methods. careful examination always re-
veals the fact that Gould grows richer
while the properties grow really poorer
and more heavily burdened with debt.
The man was a robber, but a creature of
rare genius for successful piracy in BUSH
ness; he reaped where other men had
sown, watered and cultivated; he spent
his whole life jumping the prop
erty of bis fellow men, and his enor-
nous wealth enabled him through his
great railroad lawyers to weary out
by litigation everybody who tried to bring
him to justice for his railroad wreckage
and robberies. He had genius for piracy
in business, but he had luck that is not
always associated with the operations Of
able scoundrels and swindlers. His early
swindles. executed with the aid of Jim
Fisk, between 1867 and 1871, would have
utterly failed of success had it not been for
he of ho nrta
the Erie Ring JUDGES" who ratified every
act of fraud committed by this brace of
scoundrels. When the Tammany judges
fell, Gould was able to make peace and re-
tire with several stolen millions.
The great fire of Chicago and the great
fire of Bos ton and the crash of 1873 were
happy events for fellow like Gould. with
twelve millions of dollars in stolen cash to
step into the market with. In that day of
financial wrath and tribulation Gould
made enormous profits, and he has never
since lost an opportunity to fasten upon
corporate property OF value and feast upon
it, like the gorging turkey buzzard on the
track of trade and finance that he has
been all his days. Gould of late years has
been trying to buy masses for his soul by
giving few thousands of his stolen
money to the churches. and some of the
churches have been mean enough to pre-
tend ignorance of his scoundrelly career,
'Erie, !" Wabash" "Black Friday" etc.,
and to whitewash his reputation by dwell
ing upon his domestic virtues. This Is all
rot; a tigrsss loves her young and plays
tenderly with her cubs, but that fact does
not make the tigress the 'friend of hu-
mainly" or other than q beast of prey of
extraordinary strength. agility, cruelty
and cunning.
Gould deserved to die in the peniten-
tiary; thousands of better men, far less
guilty. far less dangerous men have died
in a convict's cell. Worse yet the spectacle
of his success, as master thief, swindler
and business pirate; his escape unwhipt
of justice. has corrupted thousands Of
bright American boys who have ventured
to take the same desperate leap. and lack
ing Gould's agility. have tumbled into the
bottomiess pit of the penitentiary. His
success is the most frightful thing about
him.. his success will be quoted for the
next fifty years and will serve as q false
beacon light to turn many a fair ship of
promising business manhood from the
open sea of honest work and upright effort
to the rocks and shoals of moral ruin and
social infamy.
The evil that men do lives after them,
and the potency of the evil example of Jay
Gould lies in the fact that he was a yerv
great scoundrel. sober scoundrel and
successful scoundrel in the sense that he
kept his swag and escaped the peniten-
riary.