Gould not only gambled in Wall street, but he defended the operation. “People,” he told a State Senate Committee which was investigating into stock and grain corners, “will deal in chance. Your minister, doctor and barber all have the same interest in speculation. Would you not, if you stopped it, promote gambling?” Jay Gould was twenty-three years old when he went into Wall street as a broker. In addition to whatever amount of money he had, he had the confidence of two or three large capitalists, which is the best capital of all for beginning a business of speculation. He started on his Wall street career in a small office and frequently took his stand with the “curb-stone” brokers. He made money right along. In 1860 he became intimately acquainted with Henry N. Smith, who was then one of the big men in Wall street. Soon the firm of Smith, Gould & Martin was formed and it was prosperous from the start. Gould made a careful study of the railroad situation and became an expert in the manipulation of railroad securities in the speculative market. He paid the closest attention to business, allowing himself few of the social pleasures of which young men are usually fond. He had no small vices, being a teetotaler. During the war of the rebellion, the firm did a large business in railway securities, and also made a great deal of money speculating in gold. Gould had private sources of information in the field, and he was able to turn almost every success or defeat of the Union army to profitable account. At last Gould had found his exact niche, the corner in which the railroads were put away. That “corner” was ever after the one in which he found both his labor and his recreation, his fortune bad and good. He was a natural railroad magnate. Almost always he won, and when he did not, it was simply because he attempted schemes that would have seemed to any other man entirely beyond possibility. From this time his history never loses its intense dramatic interest and never goes back to the humdrum life that he had abandoned. From this time, there could be no night in which Jay Gould could sleep in dreamless rest, with no thought of the morrow. From this time, there could be never a day of freedom from the intensest strain of business anxiety. He had chosen speculation for a life work, and its cares must sit upon him. His could not be the experience of the man in mercantile life, or of the man of smaller affairs, who finishes his work in the evening and goes to his home with never a thought of the cares to-morrow will bring. Great enterprises make great responsibilities. From this time the enormous weight of the responsibilities upon Jay Gould’s shoulders could never again lessen.