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JAY GOULD (1836-1892)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 285 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JAY GOULD (1836-1892)  ,
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American financier, was born in
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Roxbury,
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Delaware county, New York, on the 27th of May 1836 . He was brought up on his
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father's
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farm, studied at Hobart Academy, and though he
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left school in his sixteenth
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year, devoted himself assiduously thereafter to private study, chiefly of mathematics and
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surveying, at the same time keeping books for a blacksmith for his board . For a short time he worked for his father in the hardware business; in 1852-1856 he worked as a surveyor in preparing maps of Ulster, Albany and Delaware counties in New York, of Lake and Geauga counties in
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Ohio, and of
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Oakland county in Michigan, and of a projected railway
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line between Newburgh and Syracuse, N.Y . An ardent anti-renter in his boyhood and youth, he wrote A'
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History of Delaware County and the Border
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Wars of New York, containing a Sketch of the Early Settlements in the County, and A History of the
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Late Anti-
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Rent Difficulties in Delaware (Roxbury, 1856) . He then engaged in the
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lumber and tanning business in western New York, and in banking at Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania . In 1863 he married
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Miss
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Helen Day Miller, and through her father, Daniel S . Miller, he was appointed manager of the
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Rensselaer & Saratoga railway, which he bought up when it was in a very
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bad condition, and skilfully reorganized; in the same way he bought and reorganized the Rutland & Washington railway, from which he ultimately realized a large profit . In 1859 he removed to New York City, where he became a broker in railway
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stocks, and in 1868 he was elected president of the
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Erie railway, of which by shrewd
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strategy he and James Fisk, Jr.(q.v.), had gained control in
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July of that year . The management of the road under his control, and especially the sale of $5,000,000 of fraudulent stock in 1868-187o, led to litigation begun by
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English bond-holders, and Gould was forced out of the
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company in March 1872 and compelled to restore securities valued at about $7,500,000 . It was during his control of the Erie that he and Fisk entered into a
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league with the
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Tweed Ring, they admitted Tweed to the directorate of the Erie, and Tweed in turn arranged favourable legislation for them at Albany . With Tweed, Gould was cartooned by Nast in 1869 . In
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October 1871 Gould was the chief bondsman of Tweed when the latter was held in $I,000,000
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bail .

With Fisk in

August 1869 he began to buy gold in a daring attempt to " corner " the market, his hope being that, with the advance in price of gold, wheat would advance to such a price that western farmers would sell, and there would be a consequent
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great
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movement of breadstuffs from West to East, which would result in increased freight business for the Erie road . His speculations in gold, during which he attempted through President Grant's
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brother-in-law, A . H . Corbin, to influence the president and his secretary General Horace Porter, culminated in the panic of " Black Friday," on the 24th of September 1869, when the price of gold fell from 162 to 135 . Gould gained control of the Union Pacific, from which in 1883 he withdrew after realizing a large profit . Buying up the stock of the
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Missouri Pacific he built up, by means of consolidations, reorganizations, and the construction of branch lines, the " Gould
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System " of
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railways in the south-western states . In r88o he was in virtual control of Io,000,miles of railway, about one-ninth of the railway mileage of the
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United States at that time . Besides, he obtained a controlling
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interest in the Western . Union Telegraph Company, and after 1881 in the elevated railways in New York City, and was intimately connected with many of the largest railway
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financial operations in the United States for the twenty years following r868 . He died of consumption and of
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mental strain on the 2nd of December 1892, his fortune at that time being estimated at $72,000,000; all of this he left to his own
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family . His eldest son, GEORGE JAY GOULD (b . 1864), was prominent also as an owner and manager of railways, and became president of the Little Rock & Fort Smith railway (1888), the St Louis, Iron Mountain &
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Southern railway (1893), the International & Great
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Northern railway (1893), the Missouri Pacific railway (1893), the
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Texas & Pacific railway (1893), and the Manhattan Railway Company (1892); he was also
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vice-president and director of the Western Union Telegraph Company .

It was under his control that the

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Wabash system became transcontinental and secured an
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Atlantic
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port at Baltimore; and it was he who brought about a friendly
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alliance between the Gould and the Rockefeller interests . The eldest daughter, HELEN MILLER Gouw (b . 1868), became widely known as a philanthropist, and particularly for her generous gifts to American army hospitals in the war with Spain in 1898 and for her many contributions to New York University, to which she gave $250,000 for a library in 1895 and $1oo,000 for a Hall of Fame in 1900 .

End of Article: JAY GOULD (1836-1892)
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why dont they say where or how he died
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