Jay Gould's Way of Business

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Jay Gould was titled “Most Hated Man in America”, yeah that’s right he was that type of Robber Baron. He had his ups and downs but in the end he turned out on top. A Robber Baron is defined as one of the American industrialists who became wealthy by “cheating” or using the stock market operation and unfair selfish treatment of labor. Jay Gould was a selfish Baron who owned railroads. He was named “Most Hated Man in America” most likely for his selfish treatment of labor and his “cheating” from early on. This Jay Gould guy owned 15% of all railroads at the time when he was on top, including the big one, “The Union Pacific.”
Before Jays golden days, his past was quite normal and non-rude. Jay Gould was born in Roxburg, NY on May 27th, 1836. He had obtained education at a local academy and also learned surveying. Gould had moved to New York City where he set up as a leather merchant in 1860. Between the ages 18 and 21 he had helped prepare maps of New York’s southern countries. Now it gets bad. Gould had found his forte in Wall Street. In that period of unregulated finance he mastered the intricacies of corporate management and security trading manipulation. He traded in the securities of his own companies, manipulating banks. From 1867 to 1872 he was a power and terror in Wall Street. That was his background of before he went for the big stuff.
Gould had a series of ways to get his wealth and some failed but in the end everything went his way. Jay wanted to make a huge profit by buying gold cheaply and selling it when the price rose. When the price of gold was good, Gould started to quietly buy up gold. On 24th of September 1869, the government’s gold hit the market and price of gold went way down and Gould lost money. Gould once ...

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...arely did. When he would die, all the money would go to his family and nothing outside of that. All of that money was 70,000,000 went to his heirs. To the few charities that he did donate to was the Vanderbilt Union Navy. He also donated $10,000 to a Presbyterian building fund because that was his religion. So with all the money he had earned, he had never donated one cent to public charities or works of beneficence with exceptions of religion and Vanderbilt.
To sum everything up, Jay Gould was a selfish Robber Baron that never spent or donated money outside of his family and business. He owned several railroads which was 15 percent of all roads in America. He was a terrible sport when it came to his workers. I would say that I believe that Jay Gould did earn that title of “Most Hated Man in America” and probably the worst Robber Baron there was at that time.

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