Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/17

 the Gould securities, it has been necessary to follow him, not to oppose.

In downright dramatic interest, in its exhibition of results achieved through the exercise of intellectual qualities which were themselves an achievement, and in the examples which it furnishes of the consistent development of traits which can scarcely be considered as the dower of heredity, and yet were already apparent at the outset, the life story of Jay Gould surpasses by far the histories of the great financiers, speculators and railway managers with whom he was either directly or remotely associated in a career which practically embraced the whole modern phase of financial operation. Like Drew, Vanderbilt and Fisk, he was of humble origin and began at an early age to carve out his fortunes on lines which lay far from those to which his youthful surroundings seemed to direct him. But his first exhibitions of independent and original activity were directed toward the acquiring of an intellectual equipment of an entirely different order from that which his great rivals in Wall street boasted. Nothing is plainer than that he was a born money-maker, but it is easily possible that if early success in this direction had not encouraged him to bend his energies solely to the acquisition of wealth, he might have devoted himself not only successfully, but much to his own satisfaction, to higher pursuits. Though he was an absolutely tireless worker in the field of money-getting, one can scarcely study his operations, whether as a mere speculator or as the creator