Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — Gould’s Ready Money. [ARTICLE]

Gould’s Ready Money.

How much is Jay Gould worth? His contemporaries, associates and critics put him down at about $150,000,000. I suppose it is not much exaggerated. We know, who are brokers and in the banking business here, the influence of his ready money. He has got the best money in the country; it is all liquid money, says Gath in the Cincinnati Enquirer. What do you mean by liquid money? Money which flows like a liquid—like quicksilver, according to the Inclination, upor down. The Astors, for example, do not have liquid money; their money is in real estate, upon which they could not realize in tight times as well as in easy times. But Gould's money is here in time of panic as readily as in flush times. Almost any time he can withdraw from the market $12,000,000 or can keep it loaned. Now, the bank surplus is only $10,000,000. So, you see the prodigious power that money has in the mere ebb and flow of it. When Mr. Gould withdraws it, as he is said to do, though 1 have ho knowledge on the subiect, the times are terribly tight here. Up goes the rate of interest. Men with obligations are ready to pay almost anything. This money comes to him in the nature of his property.

His property is always earning money in cash. If he resolves to purchase some costly piece of property, like the Union Pacific Railroad, he may put his money out to let interest accumulate upon it. He is not, however, a money lender in the sense of Russell Sage, who lends money to earn money. Mr. Gould lends money with an object in view, in the nature of a large merchant. Yet he is without the conditions of such a man—a polite person. A friend of mine not long ago borrowed $1,000,000 from him in the midst of the panic. This man did not conceal his temporary necessity, but said to Mr. Gould, or rather wrote to him, that whatever interest he was minded to ask would be satisfactory. He says that Gould said to

him, “Go along until you get through, and we will see about the rate then.” When they came to settle all that Gould asked him was ordinary interest—six per cent Such things he does quietly without further remark, and hence many persons who are not very intimate with him, but have had exchanges of that kind to take place, think of him with as much* respect as they speak of him. It must be remembered, however, that he has not lived this life and encountered long hostility and abuse to become a mere philanthropist. He is a gigantic merchant in transportation.