The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield Read Online Free PDF Page A

Josie’s—the abstemious Gould stays home with his wife—they spin a web of reciprocal influence. The Erie circle and the Tweed ring overlap and interlock; what strengthens one strengthens the other, what threatens one threatens both.

By 1869 Jay Gould is a full-blooded railway man. He is rumored to be a full-blooded Jew as well. As his facility with money becomes apparent, his rivals put out that his name was Jacob Gold before he anglicized it. He ignores the rumors as he considers how to boost the Erie’s central business: transporting freight and people. He devises a plan that depends on a financial vestige of the Civil War: the paper dollars that circulate alongside America’s gold dollars. The former, called greenbacks for the color of their ink, rise and fall in value compared with the gold dollars, which are paper too but are backed by the federal Treasury’s promise to redeem them in gold, unlike the nonredeemable greenbacks. The greenbacks, being legal tender but less valuable than the gold dollars, predominate in the domestic American economy; the gold dollars are employed in international trade. A rise in the value of gold relative to greenbacks translates into cheaper American exports, especially of farm products from the West, and hence more of them. More exports mean more traffic on the Erie. Gould therefore favors a rise in gold.
    During the summer of 1869 he talks up gold to private investors, who express interest but lack especial influence, and to government officials, who possess influence but, at first, little interest. He and Fisk make friends with Abel Corbin, the husband of President Grant’s sister. Corbin arranges a meeting with Grant, during which Gould and Fisk point out the benefits to the American people in general and the Erie Railroad in particular of healthy exports. “We have employed on the Erie road some twenty thousand men, all told, and a stock of eight hundred locomotives, with the other equipments of the road on a corresponding scale,” Gould tells Grant. “I am aware of no way in which these men and equipments can be used to advantage unless the crops come forward from the West.” Grant is noncommittal but appears inclined to let the market find its own price for gold, without the government’s getting involved.
    Gould cultivates the assistant federal treasurer in New York, Daniel Butterfield, who oversees the government’s gold trades. Butterfield’s is a critical position, for the federal Treasury contains sufficient gold to move the price substantially up or down, depending on whether the government is buying or selling. Butterfield doesn’t set policy, but he implements it, and he will know before anyone else in New York if Grant changes his mind and orders the government to intervene in the gold market.
    Gould himself begins buying gold, discreetly but decidedly. He uses multiple brokers and keeps his own hand hidden. He hopes to create a broad surge that will feed on itself and move the gold price higher.
    At some point his plans grow larger. From the devious Drew and the daunting Vanderbilt he has learned the concept of a “corner,” a market anomaly in which more of a commodity or stock has been contracted for sale to a purchaser—the cornerer—than exists on the market. The sellers find themselves at the mercy of the cornerer, who can dictate terms of settlement. Corners in wheat, pork bellies, railroad stocks, and other assets have been attempted and occasionally accomplished on Wall Street; Gould now develops a scheme to corner gold. If successful, the operation will make Gould very wealthy. It might also paralyze the financial system, but Gould leaves that problem to others.
    Gould writes the script but remains in the shadows; Jim Fisk takes the production to center stage. In late September Fisk barges into the Gold Room, the special market at New Street and Wall where gold and greenbacks are frenetically traded. Regulars in the Gold Room liken it to a