Sublime

John Jourdain

The problem with the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy lay in the fact that it was so alluring that it naturally attracted other well-heeled suitors. Indeed, at this very moment it attracted the man who was about to become Jim Hill’s archrival, Edward H. Harriman, of whom it was once said that he feared neither God nor J. P. Morgan.

Pratt hired Gould to survey a tanning site, but was sufficiently impressed that he made him a partner and manager of the projected new tannery. So the pint-sized Gould, barely out of his teens, led fifty workmen into the woods and built virtually a full-scale town, including living and food service quarters, a mule-powered bark crushing plant and c

When Clark died after a short illness in the spring of 1873, his brokers liquidated his UP holdings, causing a sharp price drop. Gould’s broker snapped it up, and Gould unexpectedly found himself in a control position. It was only at that point, he said, that he learned that the road had serious problems, including $5 million in unsecured call debt

By 1883, Gould had become the dominant owner of, or controlling shareholder in, or chief executive of, literally dozens of railroads, some of them only for brief periods of time. The blur of activity sent shock waves of alarm through competitors even as it delighted stock traders, many of whom grew wealthy divining what Gould was up to and followin

In this, as in so many other ways, he was without peer, the preeminent builder of the frontier economy of the Northwest. By controlling the transportation structure of the region—a near-monopoly railroad that, at the time of his death, was only beginning to feel the competition of automobiles and public highways—he exercised more sweeping economic