“Of all financial operations, cornering gold is the most brilliant and the most dangerous, and possibly the very hazard and splendor of the attempt were the reasons of its fascination to Mr. Jay Gould’s fancy. He dwelt upon it for months and played with it like a pet toy. His fertile mind even went so far as to discover that it would prove a blessing to the community, and on this ingenious theory, half honest and half fraudulent, he stretched the widely extended fabric of the web in which all mankind was to be caught. This theory was in itself partially sound. Starting from the principle that the price of grain in New York is regulated by the price in London, and is not effected by currency fluctuations, Mr. Gould argued that if it were possible to raise the premium on gold from 30 to 40 cents at harvest time, the farmer’s grain would be worth $1.40 instead of $1.30, and as a consequence the farmer would hasten to send all his crop to New-York for export over the Erie railway, which was sorely in need of freight. With the assistance of another gentleman, Mr. Gould calculated the exact premium at which the western farmer would consent to dispose of his grain, and thus distance the three hundred sail which were hastening from the Danube to supply the English market. Gold, which was then heavy at 34, must be raised to 45. “This clever idea, like all the other ideas of these gentlemen of Erie, seems to have had the single fault of requiring that some one somewhere should be swindled. The scheme was probably feasible; but sooner or later the reaction from such an artificial stimulant must have come, and whenever it came, some one must suffer. Nevertheless, Mr. Gould probably argued that so long as the farmer got his money, the Erie railway its freights, and he himself his small profits on the gold he bought, it was of little consequence who else might be injured; and indeed by the time the reaction came, and gold was ready to fall as he expected, Mr. Gould would probably have been ready to assist the process by speculative sales in order to enable the Western farmer to buy his spring goods cheap, as he had sold his autumn crops dear. He himself was equally ready to buy gold cheap and sell it dear on his private account, and as he proposed to bleed New York merchants for the benefit of the Western farmer, so he was willing to bleed Broad street for his own. The patriotic object was, however, the one which, for obvious reasons, Mr. Gould preferred to put forward most prominently and on the strength of which he hoped to rest his ambitious structure of intrigue.”