THEN V YORK ASTOR, LENOX AND 1902 OUR DAY VOL. XI.—FEBRUARY, 1893.—No. 62. JAY GOULD AS WRECKER AND PIRATE. The press has dealt most thoroughly with Jay Gould from the standpoint of his character, his genius, his career and his greed. We propose to deal with him from an entirely different point of view, with Jay Gould as the natural product of the conditions that have existed in the United States of America from the year of his birth, 1837, to that of his death, 1892. The period between these dates marks the era during which the mechanic through the steam engine, the electric telegraph, and the other products of inventive genius, has been busily at work revolutionizing the world, changing it from a scene of individualism and individual effort, to one of co-operation, or corporations, and of great combinations of individuals working together, and of organizations of corporations misnamed Trusts. The governing power of the world had previous to this time most thoroughly organized their "police" of the land to deal with robbery and all crimes that had developed on the soil under the condition of individualism, and also their "police" of the sea to deal with piracy and with the other crimes upon the waters, but during the period of Jay Gould's career, they had not created, and they did not develop, excepting in connection with the financial corporations, called national banks, the new kind of police supervision that was made indispensable by the changed conditions that the genius of the mechanic had brought into national and international life. No better illustration of the incapacity of the statesman and law-maker of this era to keep up with inventive genius in the march of progress can be found than that which is typified by the career of Jay Gould. He was a rare combination of traits and faculties. Industrious, temperate, crafty, silent, unscrupulous, without conscience, relentless, he had precisely the brain and moral value for the career that he fulfilled. The time was opportune, for not only was the country changing from the stage-coach and the wagon road to the steam engine, from the pony express to the electric telegraph, but it was going through a condition of internal war, and by this, in spite of men changing from a condition when slavery was a fact, to at last becoming a nation of freemen. Statesmen were demoralized by questions beyond their intellectual power to solve. War as a factor with all its destructive and demoralizing influences had been appealed to for the settlement of a question that had proved itself unsolvable by any other method. There was a laxity of law, of judicial honor, of ability to cope with the conditions that were then at hand. Into this order of things came the "Pirate of Wall Street." Wronged friends, impoverished widows and orphans, corrupted judges and debauched legislatures were the meat on which he fattened. It is a shameful reflection on our government, our law-makers, the looseness and corruption of our legal administration upon the moral standard and business principles of the times, upon the condition of public virtue, that Jay Gould's career was never once seriously checked either by the laws that it defied, or the public sentiment that could have arrested it. Nor has it resulted in the creating legally and morally of conditions to-day that, given a like character, would prevent the duplicating of his career. During the most of this period, that is, the time after the passage of the national banking law, we had on our statute books applicable to financial corporations, called national banks, a provision, or statute, that which created the office of the Comptroller of Currency, that not only suggested and marked out the required law for compelling honesty of administration in other corporations, but showed the practical, successful working of such a law. Were the corporations of the United States under such a governmental supervision, whether this supervision was from the state, or the general government, as is exercised over national banks by the Comptroller of Currency, such a career as that of Jay Gould's would have been an impossibility. Had the states and the general government at the time. that they by law assumed supervision over banking and insurance corporations, created the office of Comptroller of Commerce, and given to this officer the same supervision over railroad companies, and all other corporations, to-day these organizations would be like the banks and insurance companies, without watered stock, and the ownership of their securities would be in the men that work for them, and the residents of the community in which they are located, and there would be no more selling "long" or "short" of these securities, nor gambling in them, than there is in the governmentally supervised securities of national banks, or insurance companies, and as we understand it to-day, there would not be before the community a labor question. This generation looks upon itself as the most intelligent, the most advanced and the best able to cope with emergencies, and with the duties of the hour," of any that has preceded it. Future generations will recognize and express the obligations that they owe to the mechanics of this generation, but they will impeach the statesman and theologian, the public teacher, as being less able to, and for having shown small capacity for the duties and the opportunities of the era in which they lived, and they will impeach us, particularly, from the standpoint of the career of Jay Gould. Where was the officer of the law when Gould organized the robbery and added $64,000,000 to the indebtedness of the Erie corporation? Judges were his tools. Lawyers, or in another name, legalized bribe-takers, in the legislatures were his instruments. Eminent lawyers counseled him how to break the law, and business men of repute in his Board of Directors shared with him in his crimes and in his pillage. Where was the hand of the National government when Gould deliberately impaired the national security in the Union Pacific railroad? Where was justice on Black Friday, or the officers of the law in Gould's various railroad wrecking operations? Read the story of the seizing by legal methods of the streets of New York and the watering by illegal methods of the stock of the corporation created to give the necessary rapid transit to four times at least the amount that legally could be issued, and the imposing upon the people of this city of a tax for their transportation sufficient to pay dividends upon this illegally created stock. Think of any nation on earth permitting the control of what necessarily must be open letters (telegraph messages) to continue in the hands of this unscrupulous individual. you realize it, that every telegram passing over the wires, every bit of news gathered for and given to the press, was passed through the hands, and if he wished, was subject to the eye, and colored to the wish of this genius of greed and of power? I saw personally one illustration of this. When called in as arbitrator or peacemaker on the occasion of the great Missouri Pacific strike, Mr. Gould desired some information that possibly might be passing over the wires, and he called in the employé whose sole duty seemed to be to watch for everything passing upon the wires that might be of interest to his master, to secure it. He told this man what he wanted, and in a little while copies of various private and public news messages on the subject were submitted to Mr. Gould. It is because of the incompetency of statesmen and the complacence and co-operation of law-makers and enforcers, and the indifference of the public, that the career of Jay Gould has been possible. No man ever lived who was a greater curse to his country, or the times in which he lived. He was recognized both at home and abroad as the repository and representative of the economic power of his time. Every possible investor in the enterprises that have built up |