The Goulds Are Going

Some 90 years ago, a man-child was born into the family of a New York state dairy farmer and christened Jason. As that boy grew, according to popular tales, he acquired an education by hard work, invented a mouse-trap and performed sundry undistinguished feats. "It was in the year 1857 that this same person came into the business world with his first name shortened to Jay, and in possession of the Rutland & Washington R. R. He soon parted with this property at a profit and, in 1860, went down to Manhattan.

In the remaining 32 years of his life he amassed a fortune of some 72,000,000. Two-fisted and far from scrupulous, he turned to speculation in railroad stocks, buying and selling roads on a great scale. At one time, he was credited with controlling every important through railway route west and southwest of St. Louis except the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Atlantic & Pacific. He was credited with control, at one time or another, of the Erie, the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, the Denver Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, the Wabash, the International & Great Northern, the St. Louis Southwestern, the Texas Pacific, the ron Mountain-- together with the Western Union Telegraph Co. He bought arid sold and sometimes he ruined, but he always profited. After a time, he turned to more constructive practice, planned a great ocean-to-ocean railroad system-- the Western Maryland, the Wabash, the St. Louis Southwestern, the Missouri Pacific.

Then, worn out with thunderous living, still in his fifties, he died. He left this system-- under a trust designed to preserve it-- and six children-- George Jay, Edwin, Howard, Helen, Frank J. and Anna. Three of the sons married actresses and one daughter married a foreign nobleman. There have been three divorces in that generation.

George Jay, the eldest son, undertook to complete his father's transcontinental system and "muffed it." He started building the Western Pacific. He fought Harriman, Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He bought an entrance into Pittsburgh for the Wabash at a great price. When the panic of 1907 came, several of the roads were in poor condition, went into bankruptcy and George Jay was obliged to go to his enemies for money. He lost control of the Missouri Pacific, of the Western Union Telegraph Co., of the Denver & Rio Grande. He lost the Western Pacific, the Texas Pacific. Meanwhile, his losses had aroused his brothers and sisters, who succeeded in ousting him from control of his father's estate. The fight is still on, although George Jay died nearly two years ago. His brothers and sisters are trying to recover $30,000,000, which they say he lost from the estate by mismanagement, from his ten children by two marriages. Of the seven older children by his first marriage-- Kingdon, Jay, George Jay Jr., Marjorie, Vivien, Edith, Gloria-- three eloped, one married an English nobleman, and one the daughter of an Hawaiian princess.

The family has spread, but hardly aggrandized itself. All but one of the railroads controlled by Jay has slipped from their grasp. Last week, Edwin, second son of the great Jay, let it be known that even that had gone-- control of the St. Louis Southwestern was sold to the Rock Island.

So has the Gould empire disintegrated. Nearly 30 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, descendants of the great Jay, survive. The royal family multiplies, but the royal domain shatters and divides.

What comes when the old passes? A new type. Charles Hayden, of Hayden, Stone & Co., bankers, Chairman of the Board of the Rock Island R. R. (and a director of nearly 60 other companies), announced the taking over of the last Gould road by the Rock Island. Hayden, another type of business man, son of two generations of prosperous business men, graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sophisticated rather than two-fisted, swift-minded, direct, a bachelor who lives at the Ritz and attends dances, concise of speech, quick of manner-- the names of his kind appear in the chapter which follows the chapter of Goulds, of Harrimans, of Hills; and the piper pipes: "The Goulds are going, the Haydens are coming."