AMERICAN MILLIONAIRES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1398, 4 November 1886, Page 2

AMERICAN MILLIONAIRES.

JAY GOULD. The wealth of Jay Gould has passed into a proverb His yearly income is esti mated by some as high as £4,000,000, and byothers as low as £1.000,000 sterling His brokers assert that he keeps £4,000 000 on deposit, so as to be ready for any emergency that may arise. When he purchased the Missouri Pacific line of railway he drew a cheque for upwards of £6)0,000, which is believed to be the largest ever drawn. When ha was examined, three years ago, before a Committee of Congress, on education and labor, he jam the following account of his early life:— “ I was born at Boxbury. Delaware County, In this State, May 27, 1836. My father was a small farmer and k spt » dairy of twenty cows. I was the only boy in the family ; so I helped my s sters in milking the cows both morning and night, and drove them to and from the pastures. As I was obliged to go barefoot during the summer, and often had ray feet pricked by he thistles about the fields and pasture, I concluded ! didn't like farming, and so I one day asked my father to allow meta go to a school which was situated about 15 miles distant from home. Ha replied that, as I wasn’t worth much about the farm, he would give me my time. I f.und a blacksmith near the school who would board me if I would write up his books at night. I was then about 14 years of age. I attended school for a year, and then obtained a clerk-ship In a country store, where 1 was obliged to work from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m By this time I had acquired a taste for mathematics, especially surveying. By getting up in the morning at 3 o’clock and studying until 6, 1 obtained a good knowledge of the latter branch, and at length started out to find employment as a surveyor. He succeeded, but met with such difficulties and discouragements as would have daunted most men. Eventually, however, ha accumulated, by dint of great frugality, the sum of £IOOO, and when the panic of 1857 occurred, he in vested the whole of it in certain railway stock, which at that time was l )0 per cent, below par. When the re-aotion oc curred the foundations of his fortune were laid. A cool, cautious, and calculating speculator, ha thinks while he acts, and ads while he thinks. His powers of mental arithmetic are extraordinary ; and it has been said that ‘ by the time he has gone over a railway, he hai figured out to a nicety, what the entire establishment is worth, and rarely is an error found in his rapid calculations ' The ‘‘corner” in gold which he effected in 1869 was one of the most gigantic and daring schemes on record, and has been thus described ; ‘ His theory was, that the business interests of the country required an advance in the price of gold ; and if this advance were made, the Erie cars would be overcrowded with freight, and a foreign market would be secured for the full crop rf grain. He took Fisk into his confidence, and worked secretly like a mole out of sight. He circulated the rumor that every official in Washington was in league with him, from the President to the door keeper of Congress. He made Ocrbin, who had married the sister of the President, his fiiend; he placed General Butterfield under obligations to him by means of a private loan ; he left no means untried to gain his desired end. From 131 to 162£, with alternate jumps and bad-sets, the price of gold went up, but the reflation being too great for even su.h a wealthy combination as Gou'd represented, to maintain, a swift and terrible re-action came about, 1 1 the apace of 15 minutes on Black Friday, the price dropped (tom 160 to 133, and the wildest excitement all over the country prevailed. It was then that business was prostrated, that Wall street was strewn with the wrecks of broken fortunes and blasted hopes, that gambling in gold was anathematised in the pulpit and public press. ’ Jay fJouid has always acted on the advice which the Quaker is said to have bestowed upon his s>u : —“ Make money —honestly if you can ; but make money.” He has succeeded, and whether at home or abroad, he is followed by a vigilant private detective as a measure of precaution ; for such numbers of men have been rained by his operations In Wall street, that the great speculator lives in constant dread of bteoming the victim of “ the wild justice of revenge."