Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/152

 CHAPTER X.

GOULD AND THE WESTERN RAILWAY SYSTEMS.

After Mr. Gould was ousted from Erie, he entered into that career of acquisition which made him the master of several of the most important railroads in the United States, of the Yale system of telegraph and of the chief line of transportation in New York city. In nearly all his railroad operations he repeated, to a greater or less extent, his career in Erie. His scheme was to buy up cheap and bankrupt roads, reorganize them, issue new stock and bonds, unload on some other road, or else, by the payment of dividends, get the public interested in the property and sell at big profits. Or he would reverse the operation and take a great property and squeeze it like a lemon. His career in Union Pacific comes naturally first in order. For ten years he was master of this great system which, with the Central Pacific, constitutes the first and most important of the lines leading to the Pacific coast. His record in this road has been a matter of official investigation, and this part of Mr. Gould's history, as well as that of the Erie and Black Friday periods, is based on sworn testimony. But first, it is but fair that Mr. Gould's own account of his connection with Union Pacific, as stated in his testimony before the Senate