Jay Gould

"The ultimate result will be to annihilate the Indians & open up the Big Horn & Black Hills to development & settlement & in this way greatly benefit us."

"I sometimes think I should like to give up business entirely. The care and worriment attending large business interests are very great, but besides that fact the manner in which motives are impugned and characters assailed is most unpleasant"

"It was the custom when men received nominations to come to me for contributions, and I made them and considered them good paying investments for the company. In a Republican district I was a strong Republican; in a Democratic district I was Democratic, and in doubtful districts I was doubtful. In politics I was an Erie Railroad man all the time."

"I judge property myself by its net earning power; that is the only rule I have been able to get.… This whole island Manhattan] was once bought for a few strings of beads. But now you will find this property valued by its earning power, by its rent power, and that is the way to value a railroad or telegraph."

"My idea is, that if capital and labor are left alone they will mutually regulate each other. People who think they can regulate all mankind and get wrong ideas which they believe to be panaceas for every ill cause much trouble to both employers and employees by their interference."

"Corporations are going, we are told, to destroy the country. But what would this country be but for corporations? Who have developed it? Corporations. Who transact the most marvelous business the world has ever seen? Corporations."

"No man can control Wall Street. Wall Street is like the ocean. No man can govern it. It is too vast. Wall Street is full of eddies and currents. The thing to do is to watch them, to exercise a little common sense, and … to come out on top."

"I never notice what is said about me. I am credited with things I have never done, and abused for them. It would be idle to attempt to contradict newspaper talk and street rumors."

"I have the disadvantage of not being sociable. Wall Street men are fond of company and sport. A man makes one hundred thousand dollars there and immediately buys a yacht, begins to race fast horses, and becomes a sport generally. My tastes lie in a different direction. When business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of the day with my wife, my children, and books of my library. Every man has natural inclinations of his own. Mine are domestic. They are not calculated to make me particularly popular in Wall Street, and I cannot help that."

"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

"I have always found, even to the most trivial detail, that Mr. Gould lived up to the whole nature of his obligations. Of course he was always careful and reticent about what he promised, but that promise was invariably fulfilled."

"He was never a stock gambler. He had no more to do with Black Friday than you had."

"During the war of the rebellion Gould's firm did a large business in railway securities, and also made a great deal of money speculating in gold. Gould had private sources of information in the field, and he was able to turn almost every success or defeat of the Union army to profitable account."

"Gould, with his seventy millions, was one of the colossal failures of our time. He was a purely selfish man. His greed consumed his charity. He was like death and hell - gathering in all, giving back nothing. To build up an immense fortune for one's self by fraud is a disgrace to the age, a mockery to virtue, a menace to public welfare. The love of money was the root of all evil in him. The motive that softens the footsteps of the burglar, that nerves the arm of the highwayman, was the same that prompted Gould to break his neighbor up to build himself up."

"I do not believe that since man was in the habit of living on this planet anyone has ever lived possessed of the impudence of Jay Gould."

"One of the most sinister figures that ever flitted, bat-like, across the vision of the American people"

"All his gold speculations, his stock speculations—I speak of those which were purely speculative as brokers use the term—generally resulted in losses.… He did not make money … out of those crises of 1869, 1873 and the Erie manipulations of 1868, which have been most strongly condemned."

"One of the most important factors in his execution of a deal was concealing from others even the intimation of what he was going to do. In these accomplishments he never professed a regard for truthfulness. He was quite indifferent to the moral question of misleading people."

"Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of power and possession, launch selfish schemes-Carnegies, Rockefellers, Goulds…Each generation has had its Henry George, its Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the way, could lead men to the good life. In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision-war or cooperation."

"My name has been associated with that of Mr. Jay Gould and others in connection with the speculation, and gross injustice has been done me thereby.… You have my authority for stating that I consider Mr. Jay Gould a damned villain."