CHAPTER X.
GOULD AND THE WESTERN RAILWAY SYSTEMS.
After Mr. Gould was ousted from Erie, he
entered into that career of acquisition which
made him the master of several of the most important
railroads in the United States, of the Yale system
of telegraph and of the chief line of transportation
in New York city. In nearly all his railroad
operations he repeated, to a greater or less extent,
his career in Erie. His scheme was to buy up cheap
and bankrupt roads, reorganize them, issue new stock
and bonds, unload on some other road, or else, by
the payment of dividends, get the public interested
in the property and sell at big profits. Or he would
reverse the operation and take a great property and
squeeze it like a lemon. His career in Union Pacific
comes naturally first in order. For ten years he was
master of this great system which, with the Central
Pacific, constitutes the first and most important of
the lines leading to the Pacific coast. His record in
this road has been a matter of official investigation,
and this part of Mr. Gould's history, as well as that
of the Erie and Black Friday periods, is based on
sworn testimony. But first, it is but fair that Mr.
Gould's own account of his connection with Union
Pacific, as stated in his testimony before the Senate
