Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/168

 his career, before the Senate committee, was as follows:

"The next great enterprise, if I may call it great, that I engaged in was the Missouri Pacific. I bought it one day of Commodore Garrison, or rather the control of it. I had a very short negotiation with him; he gave me his price, just as we are talking here, and I said: 'All right; I will take it,' and I gave him a check for it that day. At that time I did not care about the money made; it was a mere plaything to see what I could do. I had passed the point where I cared about the mere making of money. It was more to show that I could make a combination and make it a success. I took this road and began developing it, bringing in other lines which should be tributary to it. I developed new parts of the country—opened up coal mines, etc., and continued until, I think, we have now 10,000 miles of road.

"When I took the property it was earning $70,000 a week. I have just got the gross earnings for the last month, and they amount to $5,100,000, and we have accomplished that result by developing the country; and while we have been doing this we have made the country rich, developing coal mines and cattle-raising, as well as the production of cotton. We have created this earning power by developing the system. All this 10,000 miles is fully built. The roads pass through the states of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas,