ascal, who would not
hesitate to sacrifice his best friends, if need be. His war against
Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie was one of his typical
operations--a war which, when he saw he was losing, he won by issuing
$5,000,000 worth of fraudulent stock. There was never any question about
the criminality of this proceeding, and Gould was forced to flee to New
Jersey, where he spent millions in corrupting courts and
legislatures--millions, not taken from his own pocket, but from the
treasury of the Erie, of which he had control. He was ousted, at last,
but not until he had added $62,000,000 to the indebtedness of the road,
of which amount it was asserted Gould had pocketed $12,000,000.

The culminating feature of his career was his attempt to corner gold,
which brought about the famous Black Friday panic of 1869. The scheme,
one of the most daring ever attempted by any operator, came near
success. Gould is said to have bribed the brother-in-law of President
Grant and to have persuaded the President himself not to release any of
the government supply of gold. He then succeeded in driving the price up
to 1621/2, when suddenly the bubble burst. Gould, himself, had been
warned and succeeded in getting away with his immense profits, covering
himself at the expense of his associates, an act of treachery
unprecedented even in the stock market.

These were only two of the remarkable operations which he engineered,
and which need not be given in detail here. The net result was a fortune
of some seventy million dollars, and a reputation for duplicity such as
perhaps no man in America ever had before. It is only fair to Gould to
say, however, that he accomplished merely what most stock gamblers would
like to accomplish, if they could, and that outside of finance, he seems
to have been an estimable man, faithful to his wife, devoted to his
children, and passionately fond of flowers. He made no gifts of any
consequence to charity during his life, nor did he make a single
benevolent bequest in his will; but one of his children, Helen Miller
Gould, has more than atoned for this by practically devoting her life
and her fortune to charitable work. It is doubtful if there is a
better-loved woman in America to-day than Helen Gould, who has shown so
notably how a life may be consecrated to good works.

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[Illustration: WANAMAKER]

The great marble palace which A. T. Stewart built on Bro