Potassium

original name Jason Gould born May 27, 1836 , Roxbury, N.Y., U.S.
died Dec. 2, 1892 , New York, N.Y.

Jay Gould
By courtesy of the New York Historical Society
American railroad executive, financier, and speculator, an important railroad developer who was one of the most unscrupulous “robber barons” of 19th-century American capitalism.
Gould was educated in local schools and first worked as a surveyor in New York state. He then operated a tannery, and by 1859 he had begun speculating in the securities of small railways. He continued to deal in railroad stocks in New York City during the American Civil War, and in 1863 he became manager of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railway. He bought and reorganized the Rutland and Washington Railway, and in 1867 he became a director of the Erie Railroad . In 1868 he joined Daniel Drew and Jim Fisk in a struggle to keep Cornelius Vanderbilt from wresting away their control of this railroad. To this end, Gould engaged in outrageous ...