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 CHAPTER XX.

A CHAPTER OF ANECDOTES.

While it is true that Gould loved to envelope his transactions in mystery, and was a master of the art of keeping silence, and though during most of his life he was engaged in financial intrigues and occult speculations, yet the main facts of his life can be found in the official records of law cases and the numerous legislative and congressional investigations that were held on many of his transactions. The facts of this volume are not to be understood as doing Mr. Gould an injustice, for almost the worst things that are said about him are the ones to which he himself testified under oath.

The greatest financial transaction ever consummated in America is believed by many people to have been the creation of the Union Pacific Railway Company by Jay Gould. By a stroke of financial genius at once bold and adroit, he consolidated into that corporation other great railroad companies, assuming control of all. It will be remembered that the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Union Pacific Railway Company are two distinct corporations. The former was the original company.

It was in 1873 that Gould went into Union Pacific. He bought about $10,000,000 of the stock,