The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1892-12-03
A Y GOULD.

OS< Va 30 OOaAA Rao
lie attention simply on account of his
great wealth. Aside from this there
was nothing in his character or career
to distinguish him from thousands of
others. 1t was his great wealth and his
methods of acquiring it that made him
n Of the most widely known and, in
the opinion of very many. n of the
most infamous men of the times. If he
had become immensely wealthy by
other means than those he used, or if he
had used those means un~successfully
and failed to acquire wealth, he would
have attracted no more notice than
thousands of others who have tried, aud
are still trying, with poor success, to ac-
complish the same results. 1t vas his
~stupendous success that made him con
spicuous and notorious.
Mr.. Gould was q remarkable persona
fcation of the money-making spirit of
the century. There are millions of
Americans just as anxious to be rich as
he was, and who would not hesitate a
moment to use the same mean and
methods to accomplish the same results
if they knew how. He differed from the
mass of those who are in pursuit of
wealth mainly in that he knew how. He
was a real Napoleon Finance. He was
he lived. His business career began
just before the war and embraced a
period which, of all others in our his
tory, afforded a great field for money
making investments and speculations.
1t was a period of great undertakings,
great progress, rapid development, large
enterprises and big profits. Gould was
thoroughly imbued with the mercantile
spirit of the age, and, having the ability
to utilize the conditions that surrounded
him, he achieved phenomenal success.
If he had lived in other times he might
have been imbued with a different
spirit. The latter half of the nineteenth
century is a material, mercenary, money
making age, and Jay Gould was it's
most illustrious example. His greatest
vice was the vice of the age-insatiable
greed for wealth with very little regard
as 10 how it is obtained. His desire
for wealth was, apparently, un-
limited, and his methods were ut
terly INSCRIPTIONS. In the pursuit of
his ends he stopped at nothing. He
purchased courts and judges, bribed
legislatures, wrecked railroads, subsi-
died newspapers, precipitated panics,
manipulated the stock market, and did
many other things that showed an utter
terests and private rights. His crimes
we're all great ones. He had no time
for the practice of small vices. His
schemes were toe great TO take accoun
of individual rights or individual suffer-
ings, and he did not seem to recognize
the existence of such O thing as public
morals. His offenses were against soci-
ETY. and mankind. Either he never
stopped to consider how much wrong
and injustice he was doing and what a
demoralizing influence his methods had.
or else he smothered all such considera-
tons with the reflection that everything
was fair in business and that it was
necessary for him to succeed. In the
pursuit of his great schemes for the ac-
QUESTION of wealth he was without con-
science or remorse. In business trans
| actions he was as devoid of moral sense
as a bronze statue. In short, he was the
very incarnation Of the money-making
spirit of the age.
Xof This man Uho Uac In anna no
spects one of the greatest criminals of
the age, was a model of private and
domestic virtue. Though a debaucher
of justice, he was q devoted husband
and father. A %poisoner of public NOR
ais, his own were without a blemish. A
professional railroad-wrecker, his family
life was as placid as q summer sky. He
could cheat the public out of millions,
but he never cheated a tradesman out of
O cent. Though his greed for wealth
was Unsuitable. he found time for self
improvement, for collecting books,
paintings and flowers, and for ~cultivat-
ing the spiritual side of life. He took
great pride in his children. and espe-
cially in his oldest son, and one of his
best exhibitions of character was in the
way he received and treated his daugh-
ter-in-law, who had neither wealth nor
social position before his son married
her. Jay Gould took her at once into
his affections and from the moment she
entered the family treated her with
every mark Of consideration. These
are the redeeming traits in a character
of which perhaps the public has seen
chiefly the worst side.