Jason Gould (/ɡuːld/; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and
financial speculator who founded the
Gould business dynasty. He is generally identified as one of the
robber barons of the
Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.[2][3][4]
Early life and education
Gould was born in
Roxbury, New York, to Mary More (1798–1841) and John Burr Gould (1792–1866). His maternal grandfather Alexander T. More was a businessman, and his great-grandfather John More was a Scottish immigrant who founded the town of
Moresville, New York. Gould studied at the Hobart Academy in
Hobart, New York,[5] paying his way by bookkeeping.[6] As a young boy, he decided that he wanted nothing to do with farming, his father's occupation, so his father dropped him off at a nearby school with fifty cents and a sack of clothes.[7]
Early career
Gould's school principal was credited with getting him a job as a bookkeeper for a blacksmith.[8] A year later, the blacksmith offered him half interest in the blacksmith shop, which he sold to his father during the early part of 1854. Gould devoted himself to private study, emphasizing surveying and mathematics. In 1854, he surveyed and created maps of the
Ulster County, New York, area. In 1856, he published History of Delaware County, and Border Wars of New York, which he had spent several years writing.[9] While engaged in surveying he started a side activity financing operators making woodash for
tannin used in
tanning leather.
In 1856, Gould entered a partnership with
Zadock Pratt[8] to create a tanning business in Pennsylvania in an area that was later named
Gouldsboro. He eventually bought out Pratt, who retired. In 1856, Gould entered a partnership with Charles Mortimer Leupp, a son-in-law of
Gideon Lee and one of the leading leather merchants in the United States. The partnership was successful, until the
Panic of 1857. Leupp lost all his money in that financial crisis, but Gould took advantage of the depreciation in property value and bought up former partnership properties.[8]
Gould also started an ice harvesting industry on the large Gouldsboro lake. In the winter, ice was harvested and stored in large ice houses at the side of the lake. He had a railroad line installed next to the lake and he supplied New York City with ice during the summer months.
The Gouldsboro Tannery became a disputed property after Leupp's death. Leupp's brother-in-law David W. Lee was also a partner in Leupp and Gould, and he took armed control of the tannery. He believed that Gould had cheated the Leupp and Lee families in the collapse of the business. Gould eventually took physical possession, but he was later forced to sell his shares in the company to Lee's brother.[10]
Railroad investing
In 1859, Gould began speculative investing by buying stock in small railways. His father-in-law Daniel S. Miller introduced him to the railroad industry by suggesting that Gould help him save his investment in the
Rutland and Washington Railroad in the
Panic of 1857. Gould purchased stock for 10 cents on the dollar, which left him in control of the company.[11] He engaged in more speculation on railroad stocks in New York City throughout the Civil War, and he was appointed manager of the
Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad in 1863.
The
Erie Railroad encountered financial troubles in the 1850s, despite receiving loans from financiers
Cornelius Vanderbilt and
Daniel Drew. It entered receivership in 1859 and was reorganized as the Erie Railway. Gould, Drew, and
James Fisk engaged in stock manipulations known as the
Erie War, and Drew, Fisk, and Vanderbilt lost control of the Erie in the summer of 1868, while Gould became its president.[12]
Tammany Hall
It was during the same period that Gould and Fisk became involved with
Tammany Hall, the
Democratic Partypolitical machine that largely ran New York City at the time. They made its boss, notorious
William M. "Boss" Tweed, a director of the Erie Railroad, and Tweed arranged favorable legislation. Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by
Thomas Nast in 1869. Gould was the chief bondsman in October 1871 when Tweed was held on $1 million bail. Tweed was eventually convicted of corruption and died in jail.[13]
In August 1869, Gould and his partner
James Fisk conspired to begin to buy gold in an attempt to illegally
corner the market. During this time, Gould used contacts with President
Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law
Abel Corbin to influence the president and his Secretary General
Horace Porter.[14][15] These speculations culminated in the panic of
Black Friday on September 24, 1869, when the greenback (cash) premium over face value fell on a gold
double eagle from 62 percent to 35 percent. Gould made a small profit from this operation by hedging against his own attempted corner as it was about to collapse, but he lost it in subsequent lawsuits. The gold corner established Gould's reputation in the press as an all-powerful figure who could drive the market up and down at will.[16] Favored by
Tweed Ring judges, the conspiratorial partners escaped prosecution, but the months of economic turmoil that rocked the nation following the failed corner proved both ruinous to farmers and bankrupting of some of Wall Street's most venerable financial institutions.
More railroads
Erie Railroad
In 1873, Gould attempted to take control of the
Erie Railroad by recruiting foreign investments from
Lord Gordon-Gordon, supposedly a cousin of the wealthy
Campbell clan who was buying land for immigrants. He bribed Gordon-Gordon with a million dollars in stock, but Gordon-Gordon was an impostor and cashed the stock immediately. Gould sued him, and the case went to trial in March 1873. In court, Gordon-Gordon gave the names of the Europeans whom he claimed to represent, and he was granted bail while the references were checked. He immediately fled to Canada, where he convinced authorities that the charges were false.[17][18]
Having failed to convince Canadian authorities to hand over Gordon-Gordon, Gould attempted to kidnap Gordon-Gordon with the help of his associates and future members of Congress
Loren Fletcher,
John Gilfillan, and
Eugene McLanahan Wilson. The group captured him successfully, but they were stopped and arrested by the
North-West Mounted Police before they could return to the US. Canadian authorities put them in prison and refused them bail,[17][18] and this led to an international incident between the United States and Canada. Governor
Horace Austin of Minnesota demanded their return when he learned that they had been denied bail, and he put the local militia on full readiness, and thousands of Minnesotans volunteered for an invasion of Canada. After negotiations, the Canadian authorities released them on bail. Gordon-Gordon was eventually ordered to be deported but committed suicide before the order could be carried out.[17][18]
Western railroads
After being forced out of the Erie Railroad, Gould started to build up a system of railroads in the Midwest and west. He took control of the
Union Pacific in 1873 when its stock was depressed by the
Panic of 1873, and he built a viable railroad that depended on shipments from farmers and ranchers. He immersed himself in every operational and financial detail of the Union Pacific system, building an encyclopedic knowledge and acting decisively to shape its destiny. Biographer Maury Klein states that "he revised its financial structure, waged its competitive struggles, captained its political battles, revamped its administration, formulated its rate policies, and promoted the development of resources along its lines."[19][20]
By 1879, Gould gained control of two important western railroads, including the
Missouri Pacific Railroad and the
Denver and Rio Grande Railway. He controlled 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of railway, about one-ninth of the rail in the United States at that time. He obtained a controlling interest in the
Western Union telegraph company and in the elevated railways in New York City after 1881, and he had controlling interest in 15 percent of the country's railway tracks by 1882. The railroads were making profits and set their own rates, and his wealth increased dramatically. He withdrew from management of the Union Pacific in 1883 amid political controversy over its debts to the federal government, but he realized a large profit for himself.
In 1889, he organized the
Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis which acquired a bottleneck in east–west railroad traffic at St. Louis, but the government brought an antitrust suit to eliminate the bottleneck control after Gould died.[21]
Criticism and appraisal
Gould was extensively criticized in his lifetime, on the basis of being a trader rather than a builder of businesses, and of being unscrupulous. More recent appraisal has suggested that his business ethics were not unusual for the time.[22]
Some historians have proposed the idea that Gould's business practices were unfairly maligned, as he was one of the only railroad financiers who consistently betrayed the railroad cartels' proposed rate fixing by starting new railroad lines, thus driving rates down for consumers. [23]
Gould died of
tuberculosis, then referred to as "consumption" on December 2, 1892, and was interred in the
Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York. His fortune was conservatively estimated for tax purposes at $72 million (equivalent to $2.44 billion in 2024[27]), which he willed in its entirety to his family.[5]
^"Mrs. Edwin Gould Dies in Hospital; Widow of Financier's Son Was Daughter of Surgeon Who Attended President Grant". The New York Times. October 15, 1951. p. 25.
^"Duchesse de Talleyrand Is Dead. Youngest daughter of Jay Gould". The New York Times. November 30, 1961. p. 37. Retrieved August 6, 2008. The Duchesse de Talleyrand-Périgord, daughter of the late Jay Gould, American railroad financier, died today in Paris where she passed most of her life.
^"Son of Ann Gould succumbs in Paris". The New York Times. February 8, 1946. p. 18. Marquis De Castellane Held French Embassy Posts in London During 1940. Paris, Feb. 7, 1946. The death of Marquis de Castellane, son of the late Count Boni de Castellane and the former Anna Gould of New York, who eventually became Duchess de Talleyrand-Périgord, was announced today.
Grodinsky, Julius (1981). Jay Gould, His Business Career, 1867–1892. Arno Press. p. 627.
ISBN978-1258168681.
Hilferding, Rudolf (1981). Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
ISBN978-0415436649.
Josephson, Matthew (1962). The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Klein, Maury (1997). The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
ISBN978-0801857713.