“The fate of the conspirators was not severe. Mr. Corbin went to Washington, where he was snubbed by the President, and at once disappeared from public view, only coming to light again before the congressional committee. General Butterfield, whose share in the transaction is least understood, was permitted to resign his office without any investigation. Speculation for the next six months was at an end. Every person involved in the affair seemed to have lost money, and dozens of brokers were swept from the street. But Mr. Jay Gould and Mr. James Fisk, Jr., continued to reign over Erie, and no one can say that their power or their credit was sensibly diminished by a shock which, for the time, prostrated all the interests of the country.” 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 Committee on Labor and Education, should be given. Having omitted all mention of Erie Mr. Gould said: [Illustration: GOULD BEFORE THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE.]