GOULD, JAY (1836-1892), American financier, was born in Roxbury, Delaware county (N.Y.), on May 27, 1836. Though he left school in his 16th year, he devoted himself assiduously thereafter to private study, chiefly of mathematics and survey ing. In 1852-56 he worked as a surveyor in preparing maps of Ulster, Albany and Delaware counties in New York, of Lake and Geauga counties in Ohio, and of Oakland county in Michigan, and of a projected railway line between Newburgh and Syracuse, in New York state. In 1863 he was appointed manager of the Rensselaer and Saratoga railway. He bought and reorganized the Rutland and Washington railway.
In 1859 he removed to New York city, where he became a broker in railway stocks, and in 1868 he was elected president of the Erie railway, of which he and James Fisk, Jr., (q.v.), had gained control. The management of the road under his control, and especially the sale of $5,000,000 of fraudulent stock in 1868 70, led to litigation, and Gould was forced out of the company in March 1872 and compelled to make restitution. It was during his control of the Erie that he and Fisk admitted Tweed to the directorate of the Erie, and Tweed in turn arranged favourable legislation for them at Albany. With Fisk in Aug. 1869 he be gan to buy gold, his hope being that, with the advance in price of gold, wheat would advance to such a price that western farmers would sell, and there would be a consequent great movement of bread-stuffs from west to east, which would result in increased freight business for the Erie road. His speculations in gold cul minated in the panic of "Black Friday," on Sept. 24, 1869, when the price of gold fell from 162 to 135.
Gould gained control of the Union Pacific, from which in 1883 he withdrew after realizing a large profit. Buying up the stock of the Missouri Pacific, he built up the "Gould System" of rail ways in the South-western States. In 188o he was in virtual con trol of Io,0o0m. of railway. He obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union Telegraph Company, and after 1881, in the elevated railways in New York city. He died on Dec. 2, 1892.
His eldest son, GEORGE JAY GOULD (born 1864), was prominent also as an owner and manager of railways, and became president of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railway (1888), the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern railway (1893), the International and Great Northern railway (1893), the Missouri Pacific rail way (1893), The Texas and Pacific railway (1893), and the Manhattan Railway Company (1892) ; he was also vice president and director of the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was under his control that the Wabash system became transcontinental.
The eldest daughter, HELEN MILLER GOULD SHEPARD (1868 1938), became widely known as a philanthropist, and for her gifts to American Army hospitals in the war with Spain.