Jay Gould

Jason “Jay” Gould was born on May 27, 1836, into a New York family of farmers. By the time he was sixteen, Gould's father had entered the hardware business, and Gould quit formal schooling to work for him. At eighteen, he became a land surveyor. Within two years, he had saved $5,000. He used that money to join forces with a New York politician named Zadock Pratt (1790–1871). The partners opened a tannery in Pennsylvania .

Without Pratt's knowledge, Gould stole small amounts of his partner's business funds and stashed them in an out-of-town bank account. When Pratt discovered Gould's crime, he sold his share of the business to Gould, which made Gould a millionaire. Gould eventually sold the business and entered the leather industry. He married Helen Day Miller in 1863, and the couple had three sons and two daughters.

Enters the railroad industry

Gould's father-in-law appointed him manager of the Rensselaer & Saratoga line, a company that was not doing well. Gould reorganized the line and, encouraged by his success, did the same for the Rutland & Washington Railway. He sold that line and made a major profit. (See Railroad Industry .)

In 1867, Gould joined the board of directors of the Erie Railroad, one of the most profitable railways in the East. As a director, Gould was privileged to information that allowed him to control a greater percentage of the railroad. He and fellow Erie directors Daniel Drew (1797–1879) and James Fisk (1834–1872) joined forces against Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) for complete control of the railway. By means that were not exactly illegal, but which were unethical, the trio managed to dilute Vanderbilt's power in the company. Vanderbilt eventually sold his shares of the Erie line for $9 million. Although this move nearly bankrupted the railway, Gould kept it afloat. But the board of directors had had enough of Gould. They voted him off of the board in 1872.

Black Friday

In 1869, Fisk and Gould once again partnered for financial gain. They set their sights on the U.S. gold market. Through their scheming, they managed to damage the American gold economy so severely that thousands of businesspeople and companies lost their fortunes. September 24, 1869, became known as Black Friday .

Gould continued to invest his money in railroads. By 1880, he owned 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) of railway in the West. This was equal to roughly one-ninth of the country's entire railway mileage, making Gould the owner of more track than any other man in the country.

Great Southwest Strike

Gould had little if any respect for the men he hired to work his railroads. His attitude was that he hired them and they should be grateful. Not surprisingly, Gould was not in favor of labor unions because he believed the workers should have no rights beyond what he already afforded them.

In 1885, Gould fired all the shopmen who belonged to the union known as the Knights of Labor (KOL). In response, workers on Gould's Wabash Railroad walked off the job and went on strike (refused to work until negotiations between workers and management could be agreed upon).

Without the Wabash, trains could not run throughout the Southwest. Gould realized the financial loss he faced, and agreed to stop discriminating against KOL members. But in 1886, he fired another KOL member, this one an employee of his Texas & Pacific Railway company. This time, workers across the region went on strike. Gould hired strikebreakers and security services to dismantle the strike, and he refused to negotiate. In retaliation, workers vandalized railyards and destroyed property. This violence turned the public against them, and collectively, the public decided the strikers were wrong. The Great Southwest Strike was a dismal failure.

Legacy

By the end of his life, Gould had been a director of seventeen major railroad lines and president of five of them. He died of tuberculosis (lung disease) at the age of fifty-seven and left a fortune estimated to be between $72 million and $77 million to his family.