The lessons to be learned from this early period of the life of the one who was in future time to be the “Wizard of Wall Street,” are not in anything obscure. Unceasing vigilance and unflagging energy were the qualities that were most prominently developed in him from his very youth. These qualities properly directed and controlled, are in this age bound to win success for any young man. Gould never lost an opportunity to make more money by increased efforts. He was not afraid to assume any amount of extra work if he saw in it a just amount of remuneration. From the time when he left his father’s house and started out into the world to take care of himself and make his own living, there was never a man with whom he came in contact who did not consider the young fellow a valuable person to have attached to his business. Gould always made it a point to prove himself valuable. He made his employer’s interests his own, and was always ready for whatever appeared necessary to be done. In all of this, his example is most worthy of emulation. And while it is not to be expected that the same efforts will bring to every one equal results, one may rest assured that they will amply repay for their adoption. [Illustration: THE TANNERY WAR IN PENNSYLVANIA.] CHAPTER IV. GOULD AND THE TANNERY WAR. From the mildly humdrum life of school boy, tinker, surveyor and bookseller, Gould’s career now changes to an intensely dramatic period. While pursuing his avocation as a surveyor, he made the acquaintance of Zadock Pratt, a local celebrity who lived at Prattsville not far from Roxbury, for whom he had done some surveying. Pratt is described as an ignorant man who had amassed what at that time and in that section was considered an immense fortune. He was worth a hundred thousand dollars, and had the largest tannery in the country. He had also been to Congress, and, as is usual with such district nabobs, he was a very vain man. How he happened to become attached to Jay Gould does not appear. Mr. Gould himself once said: “While I was carrying on these surveys, I met a gentleman who seemed to take a fancy to me.” Zadock Pratt was a famous man in his days. He was not only the biggest tanner in the country, but he was also a power in the politics in the state. During his ten years’ service in Congress, at least one of his speeches attracted widespread attention. He was one of the earliest advocates of cheap postage, and he moved the establishment of the Bureau of Statistics, which has since developed into the Department of the Interior. He also moved the first survey of the Pacific railroad line. When he ceased his Prattsville tannery in 1845 he estimated that in twenty years he had used one hundred and fifty thousand cords of bark and wood, had employed thirty thousand men, had cleared twelve thousand acres of land and tanned over one million sides of sole leather. He was, however, nearly seventy years old when he interested himself in Gould.