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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick.

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Speaker 2: No, it's perfect push kit stop you got it.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about the twenty ninth of April

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Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three, beautiful New York day, sixty one degrees.

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Speaker 1: I looked it up. Jay Gould was having lunch in

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Speaker 1: Delmonico's near Old Delmonico's. We don't know his order exactly,

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Speaker 1: but at the time the popular repast Delmonico's was oysters

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Speaker 1: and vogue.

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Speaker 3: Clicko shout out to the widow clicko.

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Speaker 1: Delmonico's at this point, for fifty years is the place

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Speaker 1: to eat near Wall Street in New York City. Really,

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Speaker 1: and it was no surprise to see Jay Gould there

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Speaker 1: because he was a multi millionaire. He was a railroad titan,

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Speaker 1: he was a gold manipulator. But what happened next made

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Speaker 1: the papers. A lawyer Joseph Merron approaches Jay Gould's table,

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Speaker 1: lifts his arm and belts him right in the face. Yes,

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Speaker 1: in the nose, bam. The New York Times wrote about

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Speaker 1: the lawyer Joseph Maron as if he were a hero.

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Speaker 1: Why don't you give me this from the Times.

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Speaker 3: Suppose that his example were to be followed by a

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Speaker 3: small proportion of those who experienced alike wrong by the

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Speaker 3: hands of Gould. It is obvious that the flattening of

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Speaker 3: Gould's nose would be an incident of hourly occurrence.

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Speaker 1: They're essentially saying that everyone wanted to punch Jay Gould.

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Speaker 1: We don't know exactly which dirty deal prompted this beating

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Speaker 1: because there were too many of them. There's this great

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Speaker 1: recent book about Jay Gould called American Rascal. It was

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Speaker 1: written by Greg Steinmetz, and it tells this story and

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Speaker 1: a lot of the stories in this episode. It's fantastic book,

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Speaker 1: and Steinitz points out that Gould's business associates had attacked

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Speaker 1: him before. One threw him down a stairwell, another pulled

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Speaker 1: a gun on him. A lynch mob once assembled outside

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Speaker 1: his office and called for him to be hanged. He

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Speaker 1: was arrested multiple times and dragged before Congress. Of all

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Speaker 1: the robber barons, Jay Gould was the robberyist.

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Speaker 3: Yes, you found it. You found the robberiest baron.

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Speaker 1: Now, there were, of course other robber barons, and we

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Speaker 1: think of them almost a little bit fondly now because

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Speaker 1: they all lived long enough to give their money away

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Speaker 1: and fix their reputations. So John D. Rockefeller, which we

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Speaker 1: did to show about.

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Speaker 3: Got the center.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, University, Rockville University, Rockefeller Foundation, Cornelis Vanderbilt endowed another

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Speaker 1: excellent university, Vanderbilt. There's a statue of Cornelius outside of

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Speaker 1: Grand Central. Andrew Carnegie, come on Carnegie to a library. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Carnegie Libraries. But Gould died early when he was still

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Speaker 1: a hated punchable near do Well. His big legacy, and

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Speaker 1: it was a big one, was that a lot of

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Speaker 1: laws were passed in the United States of America to

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Speaker 1: make sure that no one could ever again do what

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Speaker 1: Jay Gould did.

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Speaker 3: Thanks Jay Gould. I'm Robert Smith, I'm Jacob Goldstein. And

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Speaker 3: this is Business History, a show about the history of business.

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Speaker 1: Other billionaires at the time, they started companies, they built things,

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Speaker 1: They got rich. Sure, sure, Sure. Goule realized early on

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Speaker 1: a lesson that drives Wall Street to this day. What

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Speaker 1: if you can skip the building part, you know, why

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Speaker 1: not just make money from the flow of money itself.

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Speaker 1: And if you combine that with absolutely no moral conscience,

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Speaker 1: you have a villain for the ages.

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Speaker 3: Did he have the mustache?

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Speaker 1: He had a giant beard. It was the age of

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Speaker 1: the beard. That was another gilded age thing.

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Speaker 3: Tell me about Gold's beard.

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Speaker 1: It was big and bushy and it stuck way out.

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Speaker 3: I'm kind of jealously like maybe it was like a

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Speaker 3: defense thing, like if you tried to get it in

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Speaker 3: his face, the beard would keep you away.

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Speaker 1: Harder to punch his nose when you can barely find it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Jay Gould crawled out of the swamp in eighteen sixty.

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Speaker 1: I do mean there was a literal swamp. Northeast of

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Speaker 1: Wall Street in Manhattan. Was this marshy section on the

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Speaker 1: east side. It was known as the swamp, and it

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Speaker 1: was where they used to make leather. If you know

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Speaker 1: anything about the leather making process, it is not pretty.

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Speaker 1: There's rotting cowhides, chemical baths, this stench. The area had

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Speaker 1: a lot of crime and prostitution, and later on it

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Speaker 1: became the trading hub for leather goods that were cooked elsewhere, tanned. Tanned,

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Speaker 1: that's right. And that was Gould's job, which was to

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Speaker 1: trade leather, which was better than the tanning itself, which

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Speaker 1: he had also done in Pennsylvania. Gould was smart, though

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Speaker 1: he was a smart leather trader. He had grown up

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Speaker 1: on a small farm. I guess everyone did back in

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Speaker 1: those days. Alcoholic father classic also not uncommon. So he

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Speaker 1: was a real striver, and he was always looking for

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Speaker 1: a way out, always looking for an angle, and that's

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Speaker 1: how he left the tanning vats to buy and sell

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Speaker 1: the leather itself. In the American Rascal book, Steinmetz quotes

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Speaker 1: a letter that Gould sent to his father. Perhaps you

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Speaker 1: could read it.

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Speaker 3: I've come to realize that it is the merchants who

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Speaker 3: command the true power. The brokers take what seems the

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Speaker 3: smallest share, but is in fact the largest. There's is

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Speaker 3: nearly pure profit made on the backs of the shippers,

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Speaker 3: and the tanners never their hands dirty.

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Speaker 1: He didn't want to get his hands dirty, at least

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Speaker 1: in the in.

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Speaker 3: The literal metaphoric metaphorical dirty hads no problem.

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Speaker 1: So it was not a big jump for him in

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Speaker 1: the swamp doing this trading. To look a few blocks

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Speaker 1: away down to Wall Street and to see another set

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Speaker 1: of people who did not get their hands physically dirty.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's just like one more level of abstraction. Right,

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Speaker 3: if you go from tanning to the business of tanning.

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Speaker 3: What is Wall Street? What is finance? It's the business

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Speaker 3: of business, right, It's one more level of abstraction up

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Speaker 3: where it's just the business of money.

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Speaker 1: Gould moves down to Wall Street, and his timing was

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Speaker 1: really lucky. Number one one, the Civil War was about

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Speaker 1: to start and he was too short to be drafted.

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Speaker 1: He was a little over five feet tall. He was

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Speaker 1: also lucky because he moved to Wall Street just at

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Speaker 1: the beginning of the railroad craze.

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Speaker 3: Aha. I've been waiting for the railroad crave.

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Speaker 1: Which is huge for Wall Street because railroads, and we've

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Speaker 1: talked about this before in other industries, require an immense

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Speaker 1: amount of capital, immense amount of money to start.

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Speaker 3: I mean historical at this time, right, I mean, you know,

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Speaker 3: before the railroads, he had ships, and and in fact,

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Speaker 3: a lot of finance evolved because of shipping. Joint stock

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Speaker 3: companies basically the forerunners of you know, public companies were

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Speaker 3: because of shipping. But the railroads are like a whole

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Speaker 3: order more capital intensive.

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Speaker 1: Sure, you've got to buy the land and the rails

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Speaker 1: and the labor and the rolling stock before you can

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Speaker 1: make a single dollar. You have to complete the whole circuit. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I get the feeling that before the railroads came

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Speaker 1: to Wall Street, Wall Street was this very small clubby place.

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Speaker 1: You know, it was gentlemen trading with gentlemen rules, which

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Speaker 1: may explain why there was not a lot of federal

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Speaker 1: regulation of what went on on.

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Speaker 3: Wall Street because it was like a private club, and

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Speaker 3: like who cares, right, it's not big enough to hurt

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Speaker 3: anybody else. And if some chump wants to go down

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Speaker 3: there and be the dumb money, let him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. But with railroads, trading stocks became more of this

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Speaker 1: popular pastime. People regular people would show up to Wall

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Speaker 1: and Broad streets to gamble on penny stocks outside of

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Speaker 1: the stock exchange. They called them curb brokers. By some

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Speaker 1: estimates the volume was ten times outside the stock exchange,

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Speaker 1: then it was inside the stock exchange.

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Speaker 3: Why didn't it start like under a tree before there

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Speaker 3: was a stock exchange tree?

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Speaker 1: The botton wood tree is how it started. At this

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Speaker 1: point they have a building, but this was the bottom

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Speaker 1: rung of the ladder. For J. Goole, the leather man

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Speaker 1: turned speculator, he bought and sold sheares and eventually he

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Speaker 1: gets a controlling interest in a small railroad that ran

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Speaker 1: from Rutland, Vermont, to Troy, New.

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Speaker 3: Yot What why would you build a like I don't

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Speaker 3: even know where those places are. Respectfully, I'm sure they're great,

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Speaker 3: but like they were moving.

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Speaker 1: Rocks or marble. But here's here's the thing. You don't

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Speaker 1: ask that question why build a railroad?

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Speaker 4: There?

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Speaker 1: You just asked the question can I build a railroad?

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Speaker 1: Because the race was on to connect anything and everything

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Speaker 1: if you saw two dots on a map and you

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Speaker 1: could get the land or or lease the land, or

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Speaker 1: find someone to come in to build a railroad on it. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: because this was the start of the bubble. You thought,

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Speaker 1: you know, some rich guy Cornelia's Vanderbilt is gonna buy

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Speaker 1: my tiny railroad someday.

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Speaker 3: And is it the case that these ordinary people going

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Speaker 3: down to Wall Street will basically give you the money

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Speaker 3: to capitalize your railroad from nowhere to nowhere?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, people will buy the stocks because the word railroad

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Speaker 1: isn't you know, it's.

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Speaker 3: Like adding Ai to your company name now or adding

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Speaker 3: bitcoin to your company name, or blockchain to your company

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Speaker 3: name whatever five years ago.

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Speaker 1: Buy money. So Jay Gould has this little railroad, but

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Speaker 1: his first really big play, his breaking bad moment, was

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Speaker 1: on something called the Erie Railroad. So this one actually

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Speaker 1: makes sense on paper. The Erie Canal connected the Great

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Speaker 1: Lakes with New York City and the Atlantic and.

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Speaker 3: With the Hudson. Right a connected the Great Lakes of

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Speaker 3: the Hudson, which meant you could take anything by boat

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Speaker 3: from the Great Lakes to Europe to anywhere on the Atlantic.

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Speaker 3: Big deal.

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Speaker 1: So if you call something the Erie Railroad, you think, wow,

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Speaker 1: that's even better than an Erie Canal. It's a railroad

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Speaker 1: that goes from the Great Lakes to New York City.

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Speaker 1: Small problem. Erie Railroad a little bit of a stinker.

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Speaker 1: They had built the tracks almost to New York. It

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Speaker 1: was sort of on the other side of the river,

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Speaker 1: twenty five miles north of the city. And that's fine, right,

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Speaker 1: It seems not great, not great. Also, its tracks were

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Speaker 1: six feet apart, which was wider than the tracks of

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Speaker 1: all the other railroads, so that it's rolling stock railroad

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Speaker 1: cars could not connect up to another railroad.

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Speaker 3: Was that just a mistake? Had they not figured out

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Speaker 3: the standard yet when they built it?

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Speaker 1: What did I think? I think they wanted it more stable.

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Speaker 1: There was a debate in the early days they be

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Speaker 1: they bet wrong. It was also plagued by debt and

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Speaker 1: a horrible safety record. But at this point it's the

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Speaker 1: late eighteen sixties, The actual usefulness of any particular railroad

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Speaker 1: didn't matter. It was all about the shares, not the

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Speaker 1: width of the rails. And Erie was notable and interesting

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Speaker 1: to Gould because two very rich and powerful men were

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Speaker 1: fighting over owning it. So on one side was Daniel Drew.

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Speaker 1: He was the treasurer of the Erie Railroad. That was

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Speaker 1: I guess his day job. His his real job was

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Speaker 1: speculating on the railroad he was the treasurer of. He

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Speaker 1: was a master stock manipulator, made a fortune doing it

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Speaker 1: on Erie, and because he controlled the treasury of the

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Speaker 1: Eerie rail world, it was really easy to do so.

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Speaker 1: For instance, he would buy a bunch of his own

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Speaker 1: stock of the Eerie Railroad stock, and then he would

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Speaker 1: declare a dividend, which is giving money back to the

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Speaker 1: stock shareholder, so giving money to himself. But also it

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Speaker 1: makes the share price go up and he can sell

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Speaker 1: the shares for a profit.

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Speaker 3: Okay, uh huh amazing.

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Speaker 1: And then he'd do the same thing, shorting his own stock,

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Speaker 1: betting his stock would go down, and then he would

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Speaker 1: announce some bad news. Oh and it went down.

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Speaker 3: This is like what outside speculators do today, and the

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Speaker 3: people running companies hate it. Right, this is the guy

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Speaker 3: running the company, is the one doing it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he would be the guy on the earnings call,

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Speaker 1: if they had earnings calls.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, he has a famous quote about a stock trading philosophy.

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Speaker 1: Why don't you give it to me, Jacob?

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Speaker 3: Anybody who plays the stock market not as an insider

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Speaker 3: is like a man buying cows in the moonlight. You

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Speaker 3: only know what you bought after the sun comes up.

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Speaker 3: I like it. I like it as a metaphor. But

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Speaker 3: also he's saying, if you are not insider trading, you're

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Speaker 3: a schmuck.

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Speaker 1: Why are you at all? Yeah?

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Speaker 3: And to be clear, this was legal, and basically everything

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Speaker 3: was legal at this point.

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Speaker 1: Almost everything was legal. Definitely, no federal laws. Some states

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Speaker 1: had regulations.

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Speaker 3: Insider trading was and there was nobody to enforce it.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: He was.

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Speaker 1: He was a millionaire. He was doing millionaire things. So

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Speaker 1: that's Daniel Drew. On the other side of the ownership

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Speaker 1: battle over Erie rail Road was Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was

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Speaker 1: already a railroad tycoon and he wanted to buy the

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Speaker 1: Erie Railroad to fix it up and cement his nearer

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Speaker 1: monopoly over railroads in New York States.

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Speaker 3: Also legal at the time.

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Speaker 1: Also legal at the time, So it sort of picked

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Speaker 1: your poison, the manipulator or the monopolist.

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Speaker 3: That's an interesting question.

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Speaker 1: There's no one with clean hands.

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Speaker 3: In and out of the details.

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Speaker 1: And so Jay Gould, ambitious young man who really had

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Speaker 1: a gift for reading the situation and scanning the fine print.

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Speaker 1: He sensed that there would be money to be made

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Speaker 1: when two millionaires are going after a company. So he

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Speaker 1: starts to buy up shares in the Erie Railroad. Sure,

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Speaker 1: and then he spots an interesting fact. A lot of

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Speaker 1: the shares of the railroad were owned by speculators in England.

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Speaker 1: This is how much of a craze railroads. Speculators England

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Speaker 1: were just buying up railroad shares. Now, these English investors

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Speaker 1: aren't paying a lot of attention to the stock, and

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Speaker 1: Jay Gould buys their proxies, which is the right to

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Speaker 1: vote at the shareholders meeting.

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Speaker 3: Well, to be clear, when you buy a sheriff stock

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Speaker 3: in a company typically that comes with voting rights, yes,

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Speaker 3: for each share. And you're saying he wasn't buying the

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Speaker 3: shares from these people, he was just giving them some

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Speaker 3: presumably smaller amount of money, saying you keep the shares,

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Speaker 3: just give me the right to vote your shares.

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Speaker 1: And they would often just park that right to vote

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Speaker 1: with some stockbrokers somewhere they did they didn't.

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Speaker 3: Interesting to strip that up. Presumably you can't do that

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Speaker 3: now either.

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Speaker 1: I don't think you do anything anymore. Yeah, Jay Gould

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Speaker 1: assembles these He has his own shares and the proxies,

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Speaker 1: and he votes himself onto the Board of Directors and

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Speaker 1: to the executive Committee. And now he has to make

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Speaker 1: the decision sitting there on the board, which rich guy.

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Speaker 1: Does he side with cornelis Vanderbilt monopolist but by all accounts,

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Speaker 1: someone who actually knew something about railroads, cared about railroads

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Speaker 1: and getting people and goods from one place to another.

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Speaker 1: Or does he side with the stock manipulator, Daniel Drew,

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Speaker 1: a guy who wanted to ring every last bit of

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Speaker 1: value out of the near worthless, eerie railroad.

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Speaker 3: You're pointing us, Robert Smith.

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Speaker 1: Gould has already done enough hard work in his life.

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Speaker 1: He wants the easy road, and he sides with the

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Speaker 1: manipulator Withdrew. And the battle is on now. Before we

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Speaker 1: go to this battle, and it's really amusing. One thing

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Speaker 1: we need to remind people of is how corrupt politics

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Speaker 1: was in the eighteen sixties eighteen seventies, because like obviously,

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Speaker 1: rich guy's own politicians in the New York City Council

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Speaker 1: and the New York State Assembly. This is the age

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Speaker 1: of Boss Tweed. The political machine.

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Speaker 3: Has tweeted come along.

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Speaker 1: Yet it's like pret twists. Tweed's already there. He's already

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Speaker 1: working in New York City. But judges are also elected.

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Speaker 1: Judges are also part of the political machine, and so

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Speaker 1: rich guys would have judges on their payrolls. Cornelius Vanderbilt

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Speaker 1: makes the first move. He gets one of his judges

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Speaker 1: got a bunch from to rule that the number of

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Speaker 1: shares in the Erie Railroad should be keppt. They should

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Speaker 1: not be allowed to issue any more shares. Because he's

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Speaker 1: about to use his enormous wealth to buy up a

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Speaker 1: majority share of the company. He's going to do it

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Speaker 1: the old fashioned way. He's going to spend money, get

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Speaker 1: the shares, vote everyone out, and merge his companies. But

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Speaker 1: gould spot's a loophole here. The judges ruling that he

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Speaker 1: couldn't print any more shares only applied to the board

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Speaker 1: of directors, but it said nothing about the executive committee.

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Speaker 1: So the Board of Directors meets whatever every few months.

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Speaker 1: The executive committee is running the show day to day.

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Speaker 1: And Gould and Drew and Gould's crony that, so you

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Speaker 1: know they're bad guys. They have crony's.

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Speaker 3: It's not his associate, No, No.

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Speaker 1: Gould's crony Jim Fisk. They're the executive.

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Speaker 3: Colleague, his colleague, Jim Fisk.

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Speaker 1: So Ja Gold has his own judge he's presumably paying

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Speaker 1: on the side, who rules that the executive committee can

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Speaker 1: do anything they want. They can issue convertible bonds and

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Speaker 1: turn them into stocks and essentially print as many shares

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Speaker 1: as they like. And so they do. They literally start

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Speaker 1: printing stock share certificates in the eerie railroad at a

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Speaker 1: printing house. Vanderbilt is is buying shares in the company,

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Speaker 1: spending millions. Unbeknownst to him, tens of thousands of more

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Speaker 1: shares are being printed around the clock. They're just feeding them.

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Speaker 3: Vanderbilt'st giving them money and they're giving him shares. And

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Speaker 3: like back in the back, there's the guy just turn

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Speaker 3: out the crack more more shares.

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Speaker 1: The girl henchman Jim Fisk was later quoted as saying

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Speaker 1: about Vanderbilt, why do you give this to me?

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Speaker 3: If this printing press don't break down, I'll be damned

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Speaker 3: if I don't give the old hog all he wants

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Speaker 3: of eerie, meaning I'll keep printing stock certificates as long

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Speaker 3: as Vanderbilt keeps buying.

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Speaker 1: Vanderbilt gets a little bit suspicious.

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Speaker 3: I mean, you would think that the price would be

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Speaker 3: staying the same, right, this would.

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Speaker 1: Be the main not going out. There's rumors out there

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Speaker 1: that maybe there's more shares than we think of the company. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then he realizes that some of the shares are

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Speaker 1: signed by Jim Fisk, the henchman. Oh, and he's like,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute. By this point he has spent seven

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Speaker 1: million dollars, Wow, seven million dollars trying to buy up

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Speaker 1: a majority of the company. But of course the company

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Speaker 1: shares just keep multiplying. He cannot buy the company.

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Speaker 3: It's so cartoonish, you know, it's such a cartoonish ploy.

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Speaker 1: And you picture Cornelis Vanderbilt with this big mutton chop sideburns,

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Speaker 1: going like dangnamity for me.

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Speaker 3: With just stacks of stock certificates around him.

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Speaker 1: So Vanderbilt is furious, he goes to his judge, the one,

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Speaker 1: the one that issued the initial order. It says, you

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Speaker 1: can't print certificates, and he gets that judge to issue

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Speaker 1: a contempt of court order and Vanderbilt vows to see

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Speaker 1: the executive committee Jay Gould put into jail. But again,

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Speaker 1: Jay Gould, and we'll see this all through the story.

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Speaker 1: He's always one step ahead, so smart. While Vanderbilt is

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Speaker 1: going to court, Gould knows he's going to do this.

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Speaker 1: So they start to pack up the headquarters of the

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Speaker 1: Eerie Railroad, boxes of cash and important documents. They're piling

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Speaker 1: them into the boxes and they haul them out of

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Speaker 1: the office and toward the Hudson River.

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Speaker 3: Really is this true?

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Speaker 1: The New York Herald reported at the time that a

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Speaker 1: police officer spotted the mess and taking the stuff out

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Speaker 1: of the building and asked, like, what's going on, And

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Speaker 1: Gould says, oh, we're relocating our company headquarters to New Jersey.

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Speaker 1: Gould and the rest of the executive committee and a

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Speaker 1: large satchel of cash. No, they get on a boat.

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Speaker 3: Did the cetel have a dollar side on the side?

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Speaker 1: Exactly right. They get on a boat and establish the

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Speaker 1: new headquarters of the Erie Railroad at the Taylor's Hotel

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Speaker 1: in Jersey City.

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Speaker 3: I wanted him to be rowic. I wanted him to

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Speaker 3: be rowing a boat across the Hudson.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty much real. They are now out

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Speaker 1: of the judge's jurisdiction, but apparently they would still order

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Speaker 1: food from Delmonico's delivered across the river. So Gould now

380
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Speaker 1: lives in New Jersey and he sneaks back to New

381
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Speaker 1: York on Sundays to see his family because apparently there

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Speaker 1: was a gentleman's agreement that the Marshalls would not work

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Speaker 1: on Sundays. So I read in another book that he

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Speaker 1: would come in after midnight, you know, on Saturday, and

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Speaker 1: spend the whole day and try and get back to

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Speaker 1: Jersey by Monday morning, so he wouldn't be arrested. But

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Speaker 1: Gould like, can't keep this up. It's just like, I mean,

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Speaker 1: come on, He's a New Yorker and he thinks, Okay,

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Speaker 1: what can I do to get out of this? What

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Speaker 1: if I retroactively make every bad thing I've.

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Speaker 3: Done legal distressingly familiar?

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Speaker 1: Gould goes to Albany, the state capitol of New York,

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Speaker 1: and he encourages them to pass a new law legalizing

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Speaker 1: what he has already done. And part of the.

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Speaker 3: Encourage this is like, you can print all the stock

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Speaker 3: certificates you want of if it judge says you can't.

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Speaker 1: Yes, if you are an executive company.

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Speaker 4: Yes.

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Speaker 1: Part of his encouragement for this very specific law is

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Speaker 1: that he shows up with a literal trunk of cash.

401
00:20:57,080 --> 00:20:59,520
Speaker 1: This is all reported by the New York Herald, and

402
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Speaker 1: one article details the prices that they.

403
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Speaker 3: Were asking for their votes. Jacob, So this is in

404
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Speaker 3: the newspaper. Just to be clear, this isn't some investigation later.

405
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:10,479
Speaker 3: This is just this is just what's happening the way

406
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:12,360
Speaker 3: you would read about like, oh, there's some bill died

407
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Speaker 3: in committee.

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Speaker 1: What the paper Literally, it's not even on the front

409
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Speaker 1: page of the Herald. I had to go back to

410
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Speaker 1: like page seven.

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Speaker 3: Not big news. So they write the prices to be

412
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Speaker 3: demanded occasioned a great deal of debate. Some cheap rated

413
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:27,920
Speaker 3: fellows suggested one thousand dollars ahead, but they were smiled

414
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Speaker 3: at for their lack of boldness and for their unsophistication.

415
00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:34,639
Speaker 3: The rate vibrated between two thousand and three thousand, and

416
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Speaker 3: some were unwilling to say anything less than four thousand

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Speaker 3: good for them.

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Speaker 1: Vanderbilt, of course sends his men to Albany. Two. He

419
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Speaker 1: was paying three thousand dollars for every no vote. Gould

420
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Speaker 1: was matching it. Apparently both men had suites at an

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Speaker 1: Albany hotel filled with cash and champagne and cigars, of course,

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00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: and the legislators would go back and forth between the

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Speaker 1: different suites to.

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Speaker 3: Get their hauls with the cigars.

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00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:04,679
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt eventually realizes, of course, Jigul is not spending his

426
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Speaker 1: own money to get himself out of this fix. He's

427
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:10,200
Speaker 1: spending the Eerie Railroad treasury.

428
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Speaker 3: This is actually a lesson, right like other people's money,

429
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:17,360
Speaker 3: Like a classic finance lesson is, use other people's money.

430
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Speaker 1: And Cornelis Vanderbilt gives up. At this point, the bill passes.

431
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Speaker 1: Gould is not on the run anymore because it's legal now.

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Speaker 1: He moves back to New York City and makes a

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Speaker 1: lifelong sworn enemy in Cornelius Vanderbilt.

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Speaker 3: It's a good enemy to have.

435
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:36,919
Speaker 1: Jay Gould eventually became president of the Eerie Railroad, which

436
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Speaker 1: is still a bad railroad and even more in debt

437
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:44,400
Speaker 1: now it's been mismanaged. I'll just say that. But when

438
00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:47,800
Speaker 1: Jay Gould becomes president, he actually doesn't do the worst

439
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 1: job of running the railroad. He builds new bridges, he

440
00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:55,280
Speaker 1: secures a good coal contract, increases safety by Now though

441
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 1: goul does have that taste for the easy money, so

442
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,679
Speaker 1: he did have a side business to finance those new

443
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 1: bridges that coal contract. Oh yes, he would issue new

444
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:06,800
Speaker 1: shares in the company, which of course he can legally

445
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,879
Speaker 1: do now, but before he announced it, he would short

446
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,439
Speaker 1: his own company. He would bet against his own company,

447
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:15,160
Speaker 1: knowing that all the new shares would lower the price of.

448
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:18,720
Speaker 3: A diluting the shareholders. And again this is legal.

449
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 1: Yeah great, yeah, sure, why not? Even though a lot

450
00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:26,879
Speaker 1: of people were doing this, the other manipulators on Wall Street,

451
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: they started to hate Jay Gould. And maybe it was

452
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:33,919
Speaker 1: that he was not from the upper class, you know,

453
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 1: it was a leather Tannor maybe it's because he never

454
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 1: went to parties, never socialize. He was pretty hard worker

455
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,959
Speaker 1: at cheating his own companies. And it might have been

456
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 1: because he didn't look the part. He was a short man,

457
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, he had this giant, bushy beard and

458
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 1: slightly darker skin. One newspaper called him dark as an Israelite,

459
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 1: not so subtle, not subtle at all. And just to

460
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 1: be clear, Ja cooled. And just to be clear, Jay

461
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 1: Gould was not Jewish. He was Episcopalian, but political cartoons

462
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 1: depicted him with an exaggerated nose and Old Testament ropes.

463
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:12,639
Speaker 1: They were starting to starting to do the anti Semitism

464
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:14,919
Speaker 1: on Jay Gould. Even though he wasn't Jewish, he was

465
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: already a pariah on Wall Street. And he decided his

466
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: next move was going to make him hated, not just

467
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:24,200
Speaker 1: by his contemporaries in New York, but by the entire nation.

468
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:30,679
Speaker 1: He was going to screw with gold, gold, gold, thing very.

469
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 4: Good after the break, Jacob.

470
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: Until I researched this episode, I'd never really thought about

471
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: the term robber baron. And it's kind of weird, like the.

472
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 3: Baron baron, Why baron? Everyone used this, It's not like

473
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:05,639
Speaker 3: Robert Magnate or something.

474
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people were using this routinely to describe Rockefeller

475
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: and Carnegie and eventually Jay Gould. And the term came

476
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:16,400
Speaker 1: from medieval Europe. Ooh, I love that when actual barons

477
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 1: feudal lords would build a castle next to a river,

478
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: like the Rhine, and then they would charge people who

479
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: took boats past the castle.

480
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 3: They would like a troll on a bridge, like a troll.

481
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 1: On a bridge, and they were making money without adding

482
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: anything to the economy. It's just a tax. It in

483
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: fact makes commerce more expensive. It makes things more expensive

484
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 1: for everyone. And so what the metaphor is that these

485
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 1: robber barons were sitting next to the river of Commerce

486
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: in the United States of America in the late eighteen

487
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: hundreds and just extracting their tolls, their taxes from all commerce.

488
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 3: So there's this idea, a poorly chosen phrase, in my

489
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 3: opinion in economics, rent seeking, and I wish they called

490
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,199
Speaker 3: it something other than rent seeking. But rent seeking is

491
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 3: this idea. It's the idea that you're getting money without

492
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 3: providing any value. You have some angle, you have some

493
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 3: way you can do it. Maybe you have a castle

494
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,719
Speaker 3: on the river and cannons or whatever it was. And

495
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 3: it's an important distinction. Right, people can provide value, even

496
00:26:24,520 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 3: finance provides real value to people, and you get some

497
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 3: money for that. That's good. Rent seeking getting money just

498
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 3: because you can when you're not providing any value, that's bad.

499
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: And it's really an important distinction, and that's what I'm

500
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: feeling in Jay Gould. It's hard to know what to

501
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: think of him in an era where everyone's doing bad

502
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: things and there's all these monopolists and just not good people.

503
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: But j Gold in particular, at this point in his life,

504
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: is making millions of dollars without creating anything real, without

505
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: improving people's lives, I would say.

506
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:01,719
Speaker 3: And he's not even like. There's plenty of good finance, right,

507
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,639
Speaker 3: there's useful finance that allows well, it allows people to

508
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,439
Speaker 3: build railroads, and it's good when they build railroads, but

509
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 3: coming into an existing railroad and manipulating the stock is

510
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 3: not helping anyone.

511
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: And maybe the combination of being very smart and having

512
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 1: no laws at this time led someone like Ghoul like

513
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:20,399
Speaker 1: it was just sitting there in front of him to

514
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: come up with these ideas. Here's one, this is an

515
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 1: amazing one. At one point he has ten million dollars

516
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: in the bank for the Eerie Railroad Company. Ten million

517
00:27:28,720 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 1: in the bank, and so he had the bank write

518
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: a ten million dollar certified check and hand it to him.

519
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 3: Okay, now, money in the bank, a lot of money. Yeah.

520
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:40,919
Speaker 1: Now, at the time, if banks wrote a ten million

521
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 1: dollar check. They would have to set aside ten million

522
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: dollars to pay that check. They would have to reserve

523
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: that money. It turns out this was locking up a

524
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:53,920
Speaker 1: big chunk of the available liquidity, the available cash in

525
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:55,120
Speaker 1: the New York banking.

526
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 3: Ten million dollars a lot of money.

527
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: Okay, So what interest rate's gonna go up?

528
00:27:59,080 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 3: What's his play?

529
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: Exactly right. There's less cash in the system, there's less

530
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: money to lend. Interest rates go up, stocks start to

531
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: sell off. The New York Times called it a full panic.

532
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Jay Gold not panicking. He knew this

533
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,360
Speaker 1: was going to happen. He had shorted his own company

534
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: and short at Vanderbilt's companies. He made money off the panic,

535
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: and then just ripped up the cashier's check after he

536
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: had made his money.

537
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 3: Uh huh. That's an incredible play.

538
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: This is why no one invites Jay Gould to the party.

539
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 3: You can't imagine I don't like I'm not pro j Gold,

540
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 3: But you could imagine it being fun and as a

541
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 3: clever game. Right, if you don't care if you're hurting

542
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 3: other people, it's very clever, and people have fun being clever.

543
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: I think no one was laughing or enjoying it alongside

544
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: Jay Gould? Was Jay Gould enjoying it?

545
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 3: Do we know?

546
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 1: It's hard to say. People were amazed at his brilliance,

547
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: and he would come up with ideas that were so nefarious.

548
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:00,719
Speaker 3: This one is pretty clever.

549
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: People would be shocked in the room, but anyone could

550
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: think of it, much less pull it off. So when

551
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: Gould decides to tell his henchman and cronies his that

552
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: he's got a bigger plan, Everyone's like, well, maybe it'll work.

553
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: His plan was he was going to manipulate the gold

554
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 1: market in the United States of America. You think railroads

555
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: and the eerie line is big. The gold market is

556
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: the foundation of the US economy. And Gould had a

557
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: plan and all he had to do to pull this

558
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: off was to either bribe or co opt the President

559
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: of the United States. Yes, Ulysses s Grant big US.

560
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: So at this time, this is eighteen sixty nine, the

561
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: US was not on the gold standard.

562
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 3: Oh right, we'd gone off in the Civil War, like

563
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 3: it was a thing countries did at the time. You

564
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 3: go off because of the war, and then at some

565
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 3: point after the war you go back on.

566
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: The currency they were using was called the greenbacks, and

567
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: so they could sort of be exchanged for gold, but

568
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: the government would buy and sell gold to keep the

569
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: value of the greenbacks. Study so there was a gold

570
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 1: market in New York. So when harvest time came, for instance,

571
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: the price of gold went up because there's much demand

572
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: for hard currency, and the US would then sell the

573
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: gold that they had in their vaults to make the

574
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: price stable. This is this is what they routinely did. J.

575
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: Goule's Great Goalkeeper started in eighteen sixty nine. Again I'm

576
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: getting this from the book American Rascal. That summer Gould

577
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: weaseled his way onto a steamship with the President of

578
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: the United States. At dinner.

579
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 3: Weaseled, he weaseled. This is loaded language. He boarded, He boarded.

580
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: Go okay, okay, I will be more neutral than Gould.

581
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 1: Bottom managed to get an invitation onto a steamship with

582
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: the President of United States, and the plan was to

583
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: get Ulysses Grant drunk and pitching the idea that gold

584
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: should be allowed to increase in value. But Grant, I guess,

585
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: was trying to cut back on the whiskey at this point,

586
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 1: so he was sober, and Gould made the pitch said,

587
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: you know, farmers would really benefit from a weak US

588
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: dollar because foreigners could buy more American weeked.

589
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and it would be inflation, which actually would

590
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 3: be good for farmers. In fact, farmers in the decades

591
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 3: after the Civil War were screwed by deflationary monetary policies,

592
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 3: so he's not wrong.

593
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: He's not wrong. The way to make the currency weaker

594
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: is to increase the gold price. More green backs for

595
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: a yance of gold, and President Grant seemed unimpressed. He

596
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: just changed the subject. So Gould went to Plan B

597
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: B for bribery.

598
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 3: Very good.

599
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 1: He managed to get to the president's brother in law

600
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: and offer him a cut of the plan. Just convince

601
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: the President to increase the price of gold and you

602
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: can make millions. Gouled made the same offer to a

603
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: high ranking official at the Treasury and they start to

604
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: lobby the President and Gould starts buying gold. You know,

605
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: the price moves a bit, not much, so Gould also,

606
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: just for good measure, plants an editorial in the New

607
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 1: York Times that says that the President is going to

608
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: let gold serge. Everyone reads this and the price of

609
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: gold starts to go up.

610
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 3: As because people are buying.

611
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: Everybody's buying. I don't know. Planting pr and giving money

612
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: to relatives of.

613
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 3: The president not entirely unfamiliar.

614
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: Not unfamiliar these days, though, I think his plan would

615
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,240
Speaker 1: be called a pump and dump a rug pull, because

616
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 1: he's unfamiliar. It's not long gold. He bought and bought gold,

617
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 1: and more importantly, let everyone know that he, the brilliant

618
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: and evil Jay Gould, was buying. So everyone in the

619
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: street knows this. They know he's got some plan, so

620
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 1: they start buying. They start buying, gets higher and hire

621
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 1: from one hundred and forty one green backs per ounce

622
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: to one hundred and sixty four greenbacks per ounce, and

623
00:32:55,600 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: then Gould gets the word. Despite the bribery, despite the lobbying,

624
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: President Grant is about to order the government to bring

625
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: the price of gold back down. It's getting too high.

626
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: Gould has a day tops to get out of the market,

627
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: so classic Gould starts secretly selling gold, while of course

628
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: boldly announcing to everyone that he's buying, buying, buying, buying.

629
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: He sends his confederate.

630
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 3: Confederate okay, okay.

631
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: He sends his confederate, Jim Fisk, to the floor of

632
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: the gold mark. And in Fisk is a large man.

633
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: He has a very nice suit, diamonds on his hands,

634
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: and his cane. He has two show girls on his arms,

635
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: so that everyone looks to Jim Fisk and he starts

636
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: talking about gold, saying, oh, gold's got to go to

637
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. Oh gold. He says, here's a quote,

638
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: sell it short and invite me to your funeral.

639
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 3: And he's just lying, to be clear, he is just

640
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 3: he's on the plan.

641
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, because a team of brokers is quietly selling all

642
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: the gold that Gould owns into the rally. And then

643
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: the announcement comes. Treasury official in New York stands outside

644
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,839
Speaker 1: the office declares the government is going to sell four

645
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of gold and bring the price back down,

646
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: flood the market, and people start sprinting from the Treasury

647
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: announcement to the Gold Exchange. And when word gets out,

648
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: it's an absolute blood path.

649
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 3: Reminds me of trading places.

650
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, oh, they call it black Friday? Was this

651
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:36,760
Speaker 1: the first? Was the biggest? It's the biggest Black Friday?

652
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: Not the last price of gold just drops off a

653
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 1: cliff on the floor of the Gold Exchange. Was a

654
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: young telegraph operator helping to send the gold quotes out

655
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: on the wire. Thomas Edison, Young Thomas Edison. Remember we

656
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: were going to start our show called young Thomas Edison.

657
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: Why don't you read this from Thomas Edison.

658
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 3: The excitement was prodigious. New Street as well as Broad Street,

659
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 3: was jammed with excited people.

660
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: Oh.

661
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:04,879
Speaker 3: I sat on the top. I sat on the top

662
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 3: of the Western Union Telegraph bries to watch the surging

663
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 3: crazy crowd. One man came to the booth, grabbed a

664
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 3: pencil and attempted to write a message to Boston. He

665
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 3: was so excited that he had the operator write the

666
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 3: message for him. Amid great excitement, Spire the banker went

667
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 3: crazy and it took five men to hold them, and

668
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:24,480
Speaker 3: everybody lost their head.

669
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 1: Apparently that banker, Albert Spire, took his shirt off and

670
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: was begging people to shoot him in the chest.

671
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I took a turn.

672
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: Edison was twenty two years old, broke at the time,

673
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: certainly didn't have any money invested in gold, so he

674
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:45,879
Speaker 1: just watched amazed, later saying, quote, these occasions are very

675
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: enjoyable to a poor man. Now through all of this,

676
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: Goul's running everything from his office nearby. Somehow people figure

677
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: out we was had. You know, A mob forms outside

678
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 1: his office. They're shouting, lynch him, hang him. The police

679
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: show up. Gould runs through a back door to escape.

680
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: The Next day he does the calculation. He managed to

681
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: sell most of his gold and make a fortune. As

682
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: for every anyone else, nobody seems to know. The gold

683
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: floor was so frantic that the buy and sell orders

684
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: were scrolled out there, indecipherable, barely readable squiggles. The exchange

685
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: says that contracts representing five hundred million dollars in gold

686
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: changed hands, which is like three times the amount of

687
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 1: commercial gold in the US at this time, back and forth.

688
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:41,240
Speaker 1: It will take months to figure out who's on the hook,

689
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: who owes what? Gould he'd already prepared for this. He

690
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 1: bribed a judge to have one of his associates appointed

691
00:36:49,960 --> 00:36:54,720
Speaker 1: as the person who would determine the final settlements. Gould

692
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 1: was going to be fine, except for you know, showing

693
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: your face at Delmonico's. Gould even bankrupted his own broker.

694
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:05,359
Speaker 1: I love this moment from the book American Rascal. Why

695
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 1: don't you read this?

696
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 3: Jacob Henry Smith, The broker said to Gould, I will

697
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 3: live to see the day, sir, when you have to

698
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 3: earn a living by going around this street with a

699
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 3: hand organ and a monkey. And Gould famously retorted, maybe

700
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 3: you will, Henry, Maybe you will. And when I want

701
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 3: a monkey, Henry, I'll send for you.

702
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: Boom the end of j Gould and maybe some monkeys

703
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 1: after the break and we are back from the break.

704
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,800
Speaker 1: Eventually the rest of the board of the Erie Railroad

705
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: came for Jay Gould. He was just too toxic at

706
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:01,279
Speaker 1: this point. They voted him out as president, but they

707
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: couldn't serve him the papers the announcement because he had

708
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 1: barricaded himself in his office with a team of thugs

709
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 1: and lawyers outside.

710
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 3: All a cartoon.

711
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 1: This is show is a cartoon cartoon. Now. Eventually the

712
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: board figured out the one thing that Gouled might care about.

713
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:21,880
Speaker 3: Money. It's money, I know what it is.

714
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:23,759
Speaker 1: They knock on the door and they say, hey, you know,

715
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: if you resign as president, the stock price will probably

716
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:32,440
Speaker 1: go up immediately, And Jay Gould's like, okay, got it.

717
00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:32,879
Speaker 3: I quit.

718
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:36,919
Speaker 1: I know. He bought a bunch of eristock first, then

719
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: he quit, and then he made two million dollars as

720
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 1: the price went ups.

721
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 3: Can I talk about the principal agent problem right now?

722
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: Yes?

723
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 3: Yes, so you know what this is, right, But this

724
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 3: is actually a fear people had when companies started to

725
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 3: get bigger. For most of history, most companies was like,

726
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 3: somebody owned it, maybe it was a family, and those

727
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:58,759
Speaker 3: were the people who worked at the.

728
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: Company, so they cared about the company and the customers

729
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:02,319
Speaker 1: and all those things.

730
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 3: And as companies get bigger, you have the separation of

731
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 3: ownership and control. Right, people who own the stock own

732
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 3: the company, but they don't control if somebody else works.

733
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 3: And the fear is the CEO is not going to

734
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:17,799
Speaker 3: work for the best interests of the owners. The CEO

735
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:19,720
Speaker 3: is going to work for the best interests of the CEO.

736
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 3: And this was obvious to everybody when joint stock companies

737
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 3: first started getting going. And you really see it here plainly,

738
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 3: Jay Gould is not running the company for the benefit

739
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 3: of all the shareholders. He's running it for the benefit

740
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 3: of Jay Gould.

741
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 1: Nowhere in his decision making process is well, how is

742
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: it going to affect the people who put their their

743
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: freight onto my ear? He's like, how do I get

744
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:44,960
Speaker 1: millions of dollars out of manipulating this company.

745
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:48,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, so now he's gone, He's got his extra millions

746
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 3: and he's out.

747
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: Thirty six years old and out of work.

748
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 3: So young still.

749
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: I know he had a ton of money, but no

750
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:58,719
Speaker 1: more inside information that Robert Baron was exiled from the river,

751
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 1: the cows were in the moonlight. All he had now

752
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: was his smarts, and you know what, he kind of

753
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: went straight. No, he started to buy railroads and then

754
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: I know this is going to shock you. He would

755
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 1: operate the railroads. This was the age of the trans

756
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:21,919
Speaker 1: Continental Railroad push, you know, trying to get tracks laid

757
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 1: across the whole country, and Gould was buying up the

758
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: right parts of the system, consolidating his gains until he

759
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: controlled the Union Pacific Railroad itself. Yeah, the biggie. So

760
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:37,320
Speaker 1: in some ways, Gould was so famous at this point

761
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: for being evil that he didn't need to do anything

762
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: evil anymore. He would come into a market and competitors

763
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 1: would immediately be scared. They'd be like, oh, no, Like,

764
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: what's his angle? Is he gotta, you know, get a

765
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,240
Speaker 1: judge to throw me in jail. Is he gonna short

766
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 1: everything and blow up the railways? Is he going to

767
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: sell the rails for scrap metal, and he didn't. He

768
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: would run the railroad, he would fix things up. He

769
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: would ride his tracks every year to take notes on

770
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: the ride and what needed to be fixed, and it

771
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 1: was a lot of work. At one point he owned

772
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:08,839
Speaker 1: one sixth of the rail miles in the United States

773
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: of America. Now, sometimes sometimes he would get his beak

774
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: a little wet, you know. For instance, I love this

775
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,720
Speaker 1: story because involves Western Union, the telegraph company he hated

776
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 1: the Western Union Monopolis.

777
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 3: Where Edison comes in. Yeah, yeah, So.

778
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: He started a competitor to Western Union, and he bought

779
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: the rights to a new technology from from Edison.

780
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 3: Quadruplex, Edison's first, really first big invention that let you

781
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:38,720
Speaker 3: send four messages at a time on one wire.

782
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 1: And Gould paid Edison thirty thousand dollars for this. And

783
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:45,640
Speaker 1: we talked about this in a previous show, But what

784
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about was gould side. Obviously, Thomas Edison

785
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: wanted to improve telegraphy. What Gould wanted to do was

786
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: short the stock of Western Union and then announced that

787
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: he had the quadruplex. So of course the stock dropped.

788
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: Gold made money. Gould even snipped the wires of the

789
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: Western Union. That's the Western ran along his railways, right.

790
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 3: Because then when we got the cartoon villain.

791
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: They would lease out the side of the railroads to lead.

792
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 3: He's leading out a railroad car with the big scissors

793
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 3: and just cutting it as he goes.

794
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: By, exactly snip snip. Eventually, Gould was able to drive

795
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,320
Speaker 1: Western Union into financial trouble and then he bought the company.

796
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: He owned it. But this this seemed like almost nostalgia

797
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:32,719
Speaker 1: for him at this point. You know, he already had

798
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 1: a ton of money.

799
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:36,959
Speaker 3: One villainous deed, one dastardly deed for the good old day.

800
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: One last score. At this point he moved out of

801
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: the city to his summer home, Lyndhurst up on the

802
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: Hudson River, which we have both been to.

803
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:48,480
Speaker 3: It has been outside of I've jogged past it.

804
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 1: I've taken a tour of this mansion, and it's a

805
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: little bit sad. It's built as a castle up above

806
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: the Hudson River, so the views are great, but the

807
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 1: actual rooms are tiny and dark, and it feels are

808
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: you just projecting.

809
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 3: Said, I feel like you're projecting sad onto it? Did

810
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 3: he charge all the boats going by a toll.

811
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: He did not. There was a railroad line that ran

812
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: through well along the river at.

813
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 3: The edge of the spot when you take whatever the

814
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:17,759
Speaker 3: Metro north the train goes right by there.

815
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 1: But the railroad was owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the sworn enemy.

816
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: So when Gould would head to work on Wall Street,

817
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:27,319
Speaker 1: that's what they told me on the tour. When you

818
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: had to work on Wall Street. He had a bridge

819
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:32,759
Speaker 1: that was built over the railroad tracks to a dock,

820
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:35,919
Speaker 1: so he would take all of his stuff and take

821
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: a steamship into the city so he wouldn't have to

822
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: get on Vanderbilt's a railroad line, and he liked to

823
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 1: claim it was faster and better than the rail I didn't.

824
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 3: Want to take that Vanderbilt train anyway. I mean, it's

825
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,120
Speaker 3: also cartoonish, right, I'm just trying to amp up the cartoonish.

826
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true. Well, it's about to get a

827
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: little sad. Gould got sick with tuberculosis in his fifties,

828
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: and around this time Carnegie and Rockefeller are starting to

829
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:03,600
Speaker 1: because they're older, urged the rich to give away their money.

830
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: Easy to say when you have all the money and

831
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:08,680
Speaker 1: Carnagian Rockefeller were doing it in this very showy way,

832
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: and Gould did give away some money. He for instance,

833
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 1: gave money to help preserve George Washington's home at Mount Vernon,

834
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: but he told them to don't put my name on it.

835
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: The New York Tribune had one nice thing to say

836
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:27,399
Speaker 1: about Gould, quote, he never bought a eulogy. He didn't

837
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: put his name on anything. Huh. Going into the story

838
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:35,720
Speaker 1: doing the research, I desperately wanted to end with something

839
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: redeeming about Jay Gould because right, you know, you know

840
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: want the story to be just pure evil. And if

841
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: you squint a little bit and ignore his youthful, criminal

842
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: like behavior, you could say that he matured from a

843
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: speculator into a CEO. You know, he helped consolidate the

844
00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:01,799
Speaker 1: ragtag railroad system into a more streamlined transcontinental behemoth. He

845
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,320
Speaker 1: helped Union, Pacific and Western Union, big names that exist today,

846
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 1: helped them win and become profitable. But I think this

847
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: is the crucial part. You can make an argument that

848
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: he was a good guy, but nobody liked him enough

849
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:23,760
Speaker 1: to even try to make that argument. And one biographer said, quote,

850
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:26,600
Speaker 1: at one time or another in his life, he broke

851
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: almost every man who worked with him.

852
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there. We don't have to redeem him.

853
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 3: He was who he was.

854
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, his legacy is in the congressional hearings and the

855
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 1: new laws that he helped inspire. After the Shenanigans with

856
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: the Eerie Railroad, the first government Railroad Commission was formed. Like,

857
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: never occurred them that we're going to have to need

858
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,839
Speaker 1: to regulate railroads everywhere. And when they saw Jay Gould,

859
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, we're going to need to regulate railroads.

860
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty seven, Interstate Commerce Act was passed to

861
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: combat price fixing on the railroads, which he had engaged in,

862
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 1: and the Sherman Antitrust Act passed eighteen ninety two years

863
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: before Jay Gold's death. I will say that when news

864
00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 1: of his death got out, a crowd formed outside the

865
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: Dock Exchange in Wall Street. Not to mourn him. They

866
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 1: were mourning people gathered expecting the share price of his

867
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 1: companies to drop. They wanted a bargain and easy money.

868
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 3: That's a fitting tribute, I guess, Yeah, Robert, I have

869
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 3: a question that I bet one of our listeners can answer.

870
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:35,319
Speaker 3: Was Jim Fisk from this story the inspiration for Big

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00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 3: Jim in the Bob Dylan song, Lily Rosemary and The

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Speaker 3: Jack of Hearts. Truly, I don't know right to us

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Speaker 3: at Business History at pushkin dot Fm. You can also

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Speaker 3: find me on x or on LinkedIn, or if you'd

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Speaker 3: rather tell Robert Robert, you are Radio Smith in the

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Speaker 3: various Places. Our show today was produced by Gabriel Hunter

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Speaker 3: Chang was engineered by Sarah Brugerer, who if you're watching

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Speaker 3: on YouTube you will see has just built us a

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Speaker 3: beautiful new studio.

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Speaker 1: Love it uh.

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Speaker 3: The video editor is Matt Nielsen. Our showrunner and editor

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Speaker 3: is Ryan Sweaty Dilly and out word. It's thirty I

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Speaker 3: hear in London, which apparently counts for hot there. I'm

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Speaker 3: Jacob Goldstein.

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Speaker 1: Hi, Robert Smith, thanks for listening.