The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1893-02-03
THE WIZARD OF WALL srRkET.

49, -
THE WIZARD OF WALL STREET.
Reaped Where He Had Not sowed and
Gathered Where Others Planted.
There never will be another jaw
Gould, says the New York World.
The rare combination of traits and
faculties which made up this wonder
full man are not more impossible of
duplication than are the conditions
which made his career possible.
The boy was father to the man.
The nervous, restless, ambitious,
schefhing lad, dissatisfied with the
hard and poorly requited toll of his
farm and setting out to live by his
i wits, had within his frail frame the
promise and potency Of the future
master of Wall street. He was in
4dustrious, temperate, crafty, silent,
INSCRIPTIONS, relentless. He had
instincts for 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 moral nature for the
predatory career into which he
drifted as naturally as spider goes
| to catching flies or fox seeks his
prey. He had no more conscience
than his own mouse trap.
The epoch awaited the man.
The condition of France and of
Europe at the time of the great revo-
luton did not more entirely lend
itself to the character and
career of Napoleon, and make
success of that bandit the
emperor possible, than did the condi-
ton of this country in the years just
before and during the war, and imme-
diately 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 Corsican genius than
were ruined friends, impoverished
widows, corrupt judges and debauched
legislators to the wizard 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 it's administration. It is a shame
full reflection upon our government,
and upon the moral standard and bus
mess principles of the time, that this
career was never once seriously
checked either by the laws which it
defied or the public sentiment which
could have arrested it.
Where was the law when Gould or
gained robbery in the Erie directory,
added over $64, 100000 to the indebt-
edness of that corporation, with moth
ing to show for it, and carried off as
his share of the olunder nearly
$12,O00,O0O.
The records of the investigation
tell. Judges were his tools. Legis-
latures were his instruments. Emil
nent lawyers we're 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
hesitate to share in his pillage.
Where was justice when Gould
plotted the infamy and precipitated
the disaster, of Black Friday making
victims, with devilish impartiality,
of friends and foes alike, saving him
self alone from the wreck?
Where was the hand of federal au-
thority when Gould deliberately i'm
paired 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 corpora
tions which Gould wrecked after rob-
bing them?
Where was this imperial city when
Gould seized its means of semi-rapid
transit, increased by millions the CAPT.
talization of the roads throu gh his
favorite system of watering, and then
proceeded to run them according to
his own arbitrary will?
Where were the guardians of the
public interest when Gould created
! 11AO oCCOIOu COuUIOl LII d. DrdCUlCtl
monopoly in the telegraphic service
of this country?
1t is because of the compliance 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
mo worse than Others" but gained
eminence by greater success in a
game which thousands are playing,
has been often heard since his death.
Prof. Hadley of Yale, spoke truth
which would be applicable to nearly
every assembly when he told an au-
dlence "Many man among you
would be glad to go into Wall street
and get rich by just such methods as
did Gould" And yet the professor
had just told his hearers that "plain-
" speaking, he used official positions
to defraud those who had especially
trusted him. He robbed not only
the investor but society which made
him the repository of it's economic
power"