Jay Gould: Ruthless Railroad Tycoon

by Daniel Alef

Overview

Biographical profile of Jay Gould, railroad tycoon and baron of Wall Street. Jay Gould, one of the richest and most hated men in America in the 1880s, was an elusive, slippery character, difficult to assess and more difficult to understand. The secretive tycoon was brilliant and ruthless, perhaps the quintessential "robber baron." In a fiery sermon delivered a week after Gould's death, the Rev. G. Inglehart said: "Gould, with his 70 millions, was one of the colossal failures of our time. He was a purely selfish man. His greed consumed his charity. He was like death and hell -- gathering in all, giving back nothing." Honed by a frenzied media to despise Gould, most Americans shared this view. These views were overly simplistic. Coming from strong Yankee roots, he was not the Shylock portrayed in the papers, nor the "complex Jew," as Henry Adams called him. On the contrary, he was a descendant of New England puritans, a brilliant man who valued time with his family as much as the financial wars in which he was engaged with Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew and others to wrestle control of the Erie Railroad, to corner the American gold market and to ultimately end with control of more than 15% of the nation's rails including Union Pacific. Award-winning author and syndicated columnist Daniel Alef, who has written more than 300 biographical profiles of America's greatest tycoons, brings out the story of Gould and his remarkable life of ups, downs and achievements. [5,071-word Titans of Fortune article].

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608043064
Publisher:	Titans of Fortune Publishing
Publication date:	12/27/2010
Series:	Titans of Fortune
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	867 KB

About the Author

Daniel Alef has written many articles, one law book, one historical anthology, Centennial Stories, and authored the award-winning historical novel, Pale Truth (MaxIt Publishing, 2000). Foreword Magazine named Pale Truth book of the year for general fiction in 2001 and the novel received many outstanding reviews including ones from Publishers Weekly and the American Library Association's Booklist. A sequel to Pale Truth, currently entitled Measured Swords, has just been completed. Titans of Fortune, biographical profiles of America's great moguls, men and women who had a profound impact on America and the World, began in April 2003. He is also a contributor to the recently released reference work: Gender and Women's Leadership pubished by Sage Publishing. Mr. Alef's experience as a lawyer, CEO of a public company, a rancher, and author, combined with his academic background-UCLA (B.S.), UCLA Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics and Political Science (LL.M.), and Cambridge University (post-graduate studies)-gave him the perception to analyze the powerful titans and their achievements, and to place their lives and triumphs in a larger perspective. The Titans of Fortune series of articles appeared in several newspapers including the Lee Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, and became a weekly column in the Santa Barbara News Press. Mr. Alef also had a one-hour weekly radio show based on the Titans of Fortune column. He has appeared as a guest speaker and lecturer at various university, Rotary, and Kiwanis clubs, public libraries including San Francisco and Chicago, cruise ships, and at numerous historical societies across the nation. Mr. Alef serves on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum and on the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Activities League. He is a black belt in judo and one of the head instructors of the University of California at Santa Barbara Judo Club. He currently lives with his family in Santa Barbara.

Read an Excerpt

Kelly Johnson was a brilliant airplane designer and possibly the most innovative aviation pioneer since the Wright brothers. I have fond memories of flying overseas on Kelly-designed TWA Constellations. Years later, my son and I built models of the alien-like SR-71 Blackbird, another Kelly innovation. And I remember sitting in the stands in front of the runway at Edwards Air Force Base near Mojave, California, during Armed Forces Day, and having the privilege of seeing a top-secret Kelly-designed craft.
It was a strange looking plane, flying low and slow, and the people in the crowd murmured its name softly as if they were afraid of divulging a military secret. It had unusually long wings, resembling those of a glider, but as it neared the middle of the runway it suddenly turned its nose skyward and with a menacing and throbbing roar of its J57 turbojet engine, headed straight up until it was out of sight, a breathtaking display of power. It was the U-2.
Kelly, head of Lockheed's top-secret "Skunk Works," designed the world's highest-performance aircraft, planes capable of feats many engineers deemed impossible; unknown to those naysayers, in some cases the secret planes were already operational.
The superiority of his designs is irrefutable. After more than 45 years, Kelly's 2,000 mph Blackbird remains the fastest piloted jet ever built. In 1974 it flew from New York to London in a record-breaking 1 hr. 55 min! And returned non-stop London to Los Angeles in 3 hr. 48 min, outracing the sun and landing four hours before it had taken off. It covered its final flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. in slightly more than an hour. And this is declassified information. Its real performance limits remain classified.
As a result of his work, Kelly garnered every conceivable award and medal issued to aircraft pioneers, including the Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science and the
National Security Medal. He is also ensconced in the Aviation Hall of Fame for helping achieve supersonic flight and spaceflight.
Above all, Kelly loved what he did during his 44-year career at Lockheed Aircraft Co. Three times he turned down offers to assume Lockheed's presidency, a position most executives could only dream of attaining. His mantra was simple: Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.
Kelly was born Clarence L. Johnson in Ishpeming, Mich., in 1910. His father, a Swedish immigrant, was a bricklayer and his mother a washerwoman. We were very poor," Kelly recalled, "we had to help earn what we needed." The family gathered coal for the cooking stove by picking up pieces dropped by trains along the tracks. Sometimes sympathetic engineers would hurl a sack of coal from the locomotives for them. Wood for the heating stove came from the surrounding forests.
His nickname, Kelly, was a badge of courage. A bully in the second grade took to calling him "Clara," and other kids joined in the chorus. A fight ensued and the bully earned a broken leg-accidentally they said-in the fracas. The name "Clara" vanished with the vanquished and a new name emerged, "Kelly," from the popular song of the time, "Kelly from the Emerald Isle," and the moniker stuck.
Kelly was family oriented, best reflected in a seemingly minor anecdote of his childhood. He spent one summer picking wild blueberries, earning $1 a day, and aggregating $31 in total. He gave all the money to his mother. She was so touched her eyes welled up. "No contribution I have ever made since," he wrote, "has made me feel happier; none has been more important to me."
This close family kinship may have also led to Kelly's interest in mechanical things. His father was very mechanically inclined and built many of Kelly's toys, including a rocking horse and a wagon with brakes. And Kelly regarded his father as one of the two most important men in his early years.
The other man was Andrew Carnegie because he donated a library to Ishpeming