Midas-Touch

JAY GOULD--Robert Irving Warshow--Greenberg ($3.50).

Once only, Jay Gould waited in the European anteroom of a Banker Rothschild. He had sent in his card. Presently, it was returned to him with a message. "Europe," observed Banker-Baron Rothschild, "is not for sale."

Europe thereby gained a unique distinction. There was little else that Jay Gould could not buy. On occasion, he found it advisable and practicable to buy railroads, judges, newspapers, city governments, friends, banks. Once, when his mind conceived the extraordinary stroke of cornering Gold, he attempted, and very nearly accomplished, the purchase of the U. S. government.

Author Warshow's book is a faithful ledger of the men and properties Jay Gould bought, and those he sold. It achieves a triumphant balance. It is a record of almost unbroken success. A vast speculator, Jay Gould consistently preserved and increased his fortune, died the richest man of his time. Even a measure of happiness was not denied him. From his last sickbed he could look out at his beloved orchids (8,000) and azaleas (2,000). A devoted family watched over him. And if his stocks soared in relief when his sinister influence finally passed from Wall Street, he did not know it. If he had known, he would not have cared.

It is a tale of triumph. Yet, most curiously, the odor of death hangs over the story of Jay Gould. It is not so much, perhaps, that consumption took its gradual toll of his energies and powers. Nor is it that his chief business intimates died penniless, or insane, or by violence. Gould had the Midas-touch. He transmuted the most unlikely stuff into gold. But in the transmuting he took from it all life and beauty, left it deflowered and pitiful. Said pleasure-loving Jim Fisk: "Gould lets everyone carry out his own corpse." Said pious, ruthless Daniel Drew: "His touch is as death."

The author: Robert Irving Warshow, Cornell graduate, long has been a contributor to economic and financial journals. Jay Gould is his first published book.