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J gold took time off from Counting his money to have lunch at Del Monaco the fanciest restaurant in town while he was eating a lawyer walked over to his table and punched him in the face a series of spectacular Financial triumphs had made
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gold fabulously rich now at age 36 he was the most notorious businessman in the country like others who tried to claw back money from gold the lawyer was getting nowhere in court the laws were too weak enforcement too LAX and the judges too crooked gold had them in his
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pocket this book seeks to explain J gold and his underappreciated and aggressively maligned role in the country's transformative economic expansion of the 19th century but it's just as much an exploration of Wall Street during its Wild West era after
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the Civil War when by the rough means on display at Del Monaco the seeds of our current Financial system were planted Cornelius Vanderbilt John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie are not the focus of this book because they made their money
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in Industry not in finance Vanderbilt toiled in Steam ships and railroads Rockefeller and oil and Carnegie in steel only the Lesser known figure of J gold as rich as any of them was foremost a creature of Wall Street to the extent
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Jay gold is remembered it's for Black Friday the day he blew up the gold market and paralyzed the financial system lawyers swamped him with lawsuits prosecutors hit him with subpoenas and Congress hauled him in for hearings this was as far as things got arrested three
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times J gold never spent a day in jail frustrated opponents turned to vigilante justice one victim tossed gold down a stairwell another one pulled a gun on him his peers were more charitable Vanderbilt told a newspaper that gold was the smartest man in America
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Rockefeller when asked who he thought had the best head for business answered Jay gold they recognized gold as a master of his craft no one disputed that he was an extraordinary Problem Solver an unparalleled negotiator an expert Communicator a lightning fast thinker
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and a masterful tactician with a staggering memory he complemented his natural endowments with nerves of iron and a work ethic even as a teenager so strong that it damaged his health and quite possibly shortened his life with his mix of brains and single-mindedness
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he was suited to make the most of the moment but why does he matter there's an easy answer while he made his money on Wall Street he did as much as anyone through his work with the railroads to build the country railroads changed America in the 19th century much
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as automobiles changed the country in the 20th century and the internet has changed the 21st century and gold knew how to play the game that was an extra from the absolutely fantastic book that I read this week and the one I'm going to talk to you about today which is
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American Rascal how J gold built wall Street's biggest fortune and it was written written by Greg Stein okay so I got to start by reading the inside flaps of this book the inside cover of this book because it's absolutely fantastic gives you an
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absolutely fantastic overview of the life and career of J gold and this is what it says he was richer than Rockefeller and so bare knuckled that even Wall Street had to start making rules had he put his name on a university or Concert Hall he would
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undoubtedly be a household name today the son of a poor farmer whose early life was marked by tragedy J gold saw money as a means to give his family a better life even if to do so he had to pull a fast one on everyone else after entering Wall Street at the age of 24 he
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quickly became notorious when an attempt to Corner the market on gold he paralyzed the economy and nearly toppled president ulysis S Grant the Black Friday Market collapse of 1869 remains among the darkest days in Wall Street history through clever Financial
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Maneuvers he gained control over one of every six miles of the country's rapidly expanding Network for railroad tracks coming close to creating the first truly transcon Transcontinental Railroad and making himself one of the richest men in
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America just going to interrupt this real quick he WS up dying from tuberculosis at 52 years old I think had six kids he was so rich so I use this calculator that's available online that'll that'll try to tell you the value of a dollar in the past in like
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today's terms it only goes back to I think 1913 Jay died 21 years earlier in uh 1892 when he died he left firstborn son $15 million and EV all the rest of his kids I think the five other kids $10 million having $15 million back in 1913 so the value would be even more in 1892
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it' be like giving your firstborn son uh about a half almost $500 million and then giving your other five kids $300 million imagine how much more wealth he would likely build if he actually lived to the same age as like a Rockefeller or
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vanderbelt his illness actually took away maybe another two decades of him constantly building to to as well so it's just it's just a staggering amount of money so back to this it says it made him one of the richest men in America and this one of my favorite paragraphs
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to give you just a description of why we should spend so much time this is my second podcast on on Jay and I'll go into more details on that in a minute but why we should spend so much time just studying just his very unique life and career so it says American Rascal
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shows the complex and quirky character of the 19th Century's greatest Robert Baron he was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying the American Business values by Mark Twain
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he lived a colorful life trading jokes with Thomas Edison figuring in Thomas nass's best sketches paying boss boss Tweeds bail and commuting to work in a 200 foot yacht he thrived in an expanding industrial economy in which authorities
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tolerated inside Trader and stock price manipulation because they believed regulation would stifle progress but by taking these practices to new levels he showed that unbridled capitalism was in fact dangerous for the American economy this eye- openening history explores how
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Gold's audacious exploration or exploitation excuse me of economic freedom triggered the first public demands for financial reform a call that still resonates today so I'm going to go into his early life to give you an idea of how the circumstances and the tragedy
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that he had to endure when he was young uh really turned into this this concept that you and I have talked about over and over again it's this PSD which stands for poor smart determined and after you're done listening to this if you have not already listened to the
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very first episode I did on Jay gold it's episode 258 based on this fantastic book called The Dark Genius of Wall Street there's going to be some overlap in the conversation you and I have today with that episode but I do think of them
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as a two-part series meaning that you if you're interested in Jay you should listen to both of them and so to me there's three traits that influen Jay's early life the most that's poverty early deaths and alcoholism and so it says on a January morning when Jay was four his
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sisters were in school and their teacher dismissed them early Mary Jay's mother was sick and wanted to see see her children Jay went with the girls to Mary's room he pulled himself up to her bed and kissed her lips they were cold Mary was dead at age 35 a victim of
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typhoid fever and this is one of the most chilling sentences in this entire book Jay later said that the only thing he remembered about his mother were her cold lips it is interesting to think about what what's imprinted on us when
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we're really small when we're we're really young children that affects the rest of our lives this book doesn't talk about it as much but in the dark Genius of Wall Street it talks about that Jay had very few habits out aide of family
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and work one of his habits and one of his Hobbies rather was that he loved growing flowers the beautiful home that he had in on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan later in life had a fairly large garden he winds up buying this massive estate I think I think it's uh in Upstate New
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York some side outside of Manhattan that and then he winds up building this this massive greenhouse and would spend a ton of his free time the time that he's not working growing new kinds of flowers and the reason that stuck out to me is
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because his mother spent an unbelievable amount of time developing her garden before she passed away so then after his mother dies his father remarries a number of times it says family tragedy did not end there John gold immediately married his new wife died less than a
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year later he married a third time the woman died within two years Jay's sister Nancy who was only 11 years old also fell ill ill and died that made four deaths in four years so imagine going through that you're 8 years old your mother died your sister died your two
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new stepmoms are dead and to make it worse his father winds up being an alcoholic it gets even worse than that so he locks him in the cellar gets so drunk forgets that he's in there so Jay's older sisters are like well where's like where's Jay what happened
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to him and his father couldn't remember that he put his son in there much later when his sisters finally found him in the Celler and let him out he was just he was in tears completely crying but even in an environment like this we see
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that his traits his personality traits he had they developed young and they stuck with him throughout his entire life he had an unbelievable work ethic and an incredibly long attention span uh later on he meets like a young Thomas Edison because he's going to wind up
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buying Thomas Edison's one of Thomas Edison's first inventions which is a way to send multiple uh messages across Telegraph lines and Thomas Edison thought Jay was just one of the weirdest people we ever met said one time in their meeting Jay pulls out like a map
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this is much later in the book too uh pulls out a map and uh talks without stopping for three hours about his plans to expand his Railroad and I think at the time Thomas Edison's like you know this is way before he was famous he's
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like in his mid 20 like what is going on with this guy so we see a little bit of that here uh Jay worked on math problems as long as it took to get an answer he read whatever he could get his hands on Jay was often nowhere to be found he was
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off hiding somewhere with his books Jay left home when he was 13 explaining that the local school was too easy he goes to try to get gain admit admittance into a school that cost money money he doesn't have so it says to to pay his tuition and board at his new school he taught
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himself basic accounting and kept the books for a blacksmith two years later so I think Jay at this point in the story somewhere around 16 he would wake up at 3 in the morning to study by Fire Light his area of Interest was surveying
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so land surveying this comes this is actually really important to one of his first successful businesses he's going to start Tannery and it's actually his knowledge of surveying that gives him an advantage in that field so keep keep this in mind for later he hated the
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drudgery of farming and believed surveying was his way out I actually went into more detail on this if you haven't listened to episode 266 which is the on the second time I read Henry Ford's autobiography Henry Ford a young Henry Ford hated the drudgery of in and
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he thought that machinery and mechanics was his way out and in Jay's uh case he learned survey and so as a as a result of learning these skills he planned to travel around the county that he lives in and actually create a map use a
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surveying skills to create a map of the county he lives in then travel around the county and selling those maps and this idea works and this is where he makes you know to him the first real money of his life so it says with that Jay was in business he uh walked the
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roads of olster County where he's living and surveyed the whole thing he sold the maps himself he earned a few hundred that was the first money I made in business he said he soon had a modest but thriving business his shortcoming was his inability to slow down again
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he's still young he's a teenager he's going to be like this his entire life uh while other Farm children mended fences and threshed hay he filled his teenage years with deadlines sales calls and per and Personnel decisions he was consumed
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by work he ate poorly and slept little he collapsed into bed with chills and stomach pains the doctor diagnosed typhoid fever so this is the first of many uh illnesses that he had throughout his life I think he had typhoid fever twice he had some kind of like uh bowel
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like infection and bowel disease I think would reoccur as well and then of course winds up getting tuberculosis later on and and dying from that and so there's going to be a few times when he's still teenager that he's relegated to bed we
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see that he's absolutely Relentless so he's bedw written and it says not that he was Idol he took the time to finish another piece of work he wrote a history of his home county of Delaware he sent it to a printer shop in Philadelphia that happened to burn down from his
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notes he rewrote the 426 page book and this is what a young Jay gold is writing to his friend you know this again this is like I think 17 18y old no he's actually 18 years old at this point in story as you know he said to a friend
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I'm not in the habit of backing out of what I Undertake and I shall write night and day until it is completed so in addition to his relentless is and his determination we see that he has a lot of self-belief even at a very early age he toyed with the idea of college he
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visited ruer jail Harvard and brown he concluded College was was an expensive Indulgence why bother with college when he could teach himself from books he said he had told a friend earlier in this that he that he knew that it was his Destiny to become rich we see more
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of a self-belief here in this letter he's writing friend I am determined to use all my best energies to accomplish this life's highest possibility ities so this is really interesting something that you and I have talked about over and over again if you do the best job
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possible on the opportunities right in front of you it's going to unlock an opportunity in the future that you cannot possibly predict he is doing the best job surveying is possible this is going to lead him to meeting zadak Pratt zadak Pratt is one of the richest and
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most successful businessmen in the Northeast at this point that meeting is later on is going to start have them start a Tannery business together even though Pratt is I think 45 years older than Jay gold that in turn is going to lead Jay to realize that there's
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actually more money in the markets for the leather goods that the Tanner is producing than the actual manufacturing of the leather goods himself which then gives him the idea hey I should stop what I'm doing here and go learn the
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secret magic of stocks and bonds on Wall Street so before we get there I need to introduce you to zadak Pratt he is a character and you'll see what I mean here uh everybody knew zic Pratt Pratt was an inspiration he was born in 1790 and he began his career traveling to
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town to toown as a saddlemaker then he ran a country store he worked 14-hour days save money by sleeping under the counter at night he had his first big Commercial Success selling ores to the military for the War of 1812 when he was doing that is when he
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discovered a perfect location for a Tannery from that Mo from the moment he signed the deed for this new piece of land his fortune was Secure why is that uh because leather was a big business the country needed shoes boots machine
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belts leather breaches Etc and this part of the country where zadic sets up shop he winds up owning like I don't know 30 40 of these tanneries so makes a lot of money doing this but he had an advantage he was in the right place at the right
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uh time with the right set of skills the tanneries need this thing called tanic acid tanic acid is found in tree bark uh and the tree that produces the most tanic acid is hemlock and it just so happens that no place in America had more Hemlock than the cat skills which
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is where zadak Pratt is living this is very much a rough almost like Frontier like uh industry there's one sentence I have to read to you here that you're going to need to remember for later when they when Jay literally has a shootout that's not hyperbolic they literally go
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to war over the ownership of this Tannery so it says the Tanners themselves were rough drinking men remember that part about drinking too which gives uh he Jay thought he had a massive advantage in life because he was sober he talks about that over and over
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again uh let's go back to Pratt first if Pratt had a business card it might have said something like data scientist he doubled his leather output by experimenting with different boiling times tanon concentrations and hide size while recording every data point in a
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book he ran for Congress he never missed a day on the house floor he was Ecentric he liked playing soldier with real gunpowder he reenacted famous battles uh Pratt had a weakness Pride calling his little tanning Community prattsville was
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defensible there were plenty of villages named after their Founders nor was it unusual when he started a bank and called it prattsville national it got strange with the bank notes for his bank Pratt used a self-portrait that's like you and I owning a bank being able to to
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distribute our own currency and instead of putting like George Washington Ben Franklin on it we put our own face he's was this actually I think leads to part of why a younger somebody way younger less experienced and had way less access
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to wealth actually winds up beating him uh in this competition because Jay gets the the upper hand which we'll go into in one second uh the idea of being prideful though and that is a weakness uh continues on the next page he commissioned a stone cutter to sculpt
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his likess his likeness on the Rocks overlooking prattsville they call this the Catskills version of Mount Rushmore again instead of putting other people's faces on there he puts his own again he commissioned uh an author to ghost St
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his autobiography in the autobiography we learned that Pratt was the best Marksman the fastest runner and the strongest Horseman around we discover that lesser men have neither the skill nor the summer for big business thus it was Pratt's obligation to assume the
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burden himself so that gives you a background into Jay's very first business partner they wind up building a relationship ship Jay's like hey I want to build a Tannery and uh he asked Pratt to to to back him and so Jay's going to
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do all the work Pratt is actually going to uh invest $120,000 into this business and so the same work ethic and attention to detail that Jay had when he was a teenager now he's applying it to his business the business does fantastically well this
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goes on for a few years but then slowly but surely he's like oh this is where he realizes where the real money in his industry was actually being made uh so it says he had half interest in a profitable aing operation he was just 22 years old he could see the day when he
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would be rich just like he had predicted but he still felt unsatisfied he had not forgotten the mansions in Manhattan he wasn't sure what the people along Fifth Avenue did to afford such luxuries but he knew it wasn't tanning cdes and it's
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just remarkable how how many times in these stories that you and I cover we see something like this a few years earlier he had he had taken his first visit to to Manhattan couldn't believe the amount of wealth walked around uh Fifth Avenue like can you believe that
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like the house is here it's just amazing amazing few years after that he winds up living on and he winds up buying a place on Fifth Avenue and living there for many decades and something he also found in Manhattan was this thing called The
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Swamp the swamp was where they actually traded like Commodities like uh leather goods and he and where Jay's like wait a minute he does this actually really smart let me make sure I have this in here actually you know what what I'm thinking of is a quote I just found it
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it's actually from uh the previous book I covered back on 258 dark genus Genius of Wall Street so I'm going to read that to you in one second it's going to describe What's Happening Here In the book as well so it says he had noticed
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that leather prices were as mural as land prices and that powerful and sometimes hidden forces drove prices this idea of hidden forces driving prices of stocks usually in in the case of Jay up and down um it's something that's repeated throughout the book it
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occurred to Jay that he could make even more money by understanding the forces that move prices and then trading on that knowledge he had taught himself bookkeeping he had taught himself surveying now he would teach him everything about leather about how
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leather was bought and sold and so that's when he starts spending more time down in the swamp he's going to wind up meeting people that that become really important to him buying out uh Pratt later on but I just want to go over why he why he found this appealing right he
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always I'm always curious like okay why did you choose that career over something else and he said what a place he thought no cruise to supervise no steaming Vats of boiling hides no broking broken steam enges engines no odor so vile that it made the eyes water
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the swamp was moneymaking distilled to its Essence that's how he's going to think about Wall Street in the swamp the value came not from making things but by making decisions brains and information won the day this was the place for him and so around this time he writes his
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father a letter about what he's learning remember he's away from home and so this is actually from the dark an excerpt from the dark Genius of Wall Street and the note out of myself when I read it the first time uh that I think will explain this this why this paragraph is
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so important says good question to ask yourself who would you rather be and so Jay says I've come to realize that it is the merchants who command the true power in this industry he means the people on the swamp not the manufacturers the
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Tanner appears to take the greatest share of capital but merely processes that Capital his expenses being extensive he's describing where he's at right now that's exactly what he's doing he's the Tanner I'm bringing a lot of Revenue but I got a ton of expenses his
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risks are real and his labor heavy he's got to manage a lot more people the shippers deal with the next largest sums but again they have extensive expenses and much work to do the Brokers meanwhile take what seems the smallest share but is in fact the largest theirs
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is nearly pure profit made on the backs of the shipper and the Tanner never their hands dirty so he's like oh I'm on the wrong side of this transaction I would much rather be instead of being the Tanner myself I want to be the Brokers and he's going to take that idea
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and extent he's like okay well I'm not just going to trade leather like like let me go learn about stocks and bonds that that market is way larger than this one so there is an entire crazy story about the shootout that happens after
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him and Pratt break up and Jay has a following up with his new partners and they literally have to like shoot around it I'm going to pull out like one I'm not going to like I covered it way more detail in episode 258 but there is an
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idea behind it that I think is really uh valuable for you and I to discuss but before I get there this is so I'm in trouble right now sometimes this happens from time to time when I find a new book and I cannot stop reading it and I cannot put it down um my friend Eric
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Jorgenson who wrote The Almanac and Nal which I think I covered on episode 191 that book is absolutely excellent there's a ton of ideas in that book that I'm using as I build Founders but anyways I discovered this new book I thought I I had like a good idea of all
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the books on Charlie merer and Warren Buffett uh I discovered a new book from my friend Eric about this and it says it's called all I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there Buffett and Monger a study and licity
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and uncommon common sense I started a reading last night I don't I think I'm going to be up late again tonight reading it and I'm glad I started reading it because Charlie Monger specifically and Warren Buffett to also but really Monger is the one the way he
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talks about this sticks out my mind he talks about the dangers of multitasking it's almost a form of arrogance to think that you can do multiple different things at one time that you can compete with other smart driven people that are not multitasking so what does this mean
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there's about to be this giant fight between two partners right you have on one side Jay gold 40 years younger way less experience way less money than zadic Pratt but while zadak Pratt is you know partially retired from business he's got a million different business
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things to think about he's doing these battles in the field he's got kids he's got family he's got all these other interests he's got his bank Jay just has one thing the Tannery so he thinks about it night and day so I was rereading I
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was reading the the Charlie Munger uh the book I just referenced and when Charlie's talking talk about you know it's very arrogant to think that you're going to be able to compete with other smart and driven people and you're he's
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essentially like saying don't multitask me and Warren we focus on what's in front of us we're not trying to do 50 different things at one time and he feels like this next Generation that's like multitasking constantly he's just going to have way less uh way worse
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results than him and warranted it and so when I was reading that and that's not the first time I've been exposed to that idea by Monger but I read that and then I read this part of the book where I'm at I'm like oh that's a great illustration of this Jay should not have
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won this battle with a much more experienced and successful entrepreneur but that entrepreneur is distracted Jay's only thinking about this so again I think Focus an extreme extreme focus is a superpower that is in my opinion almost going extinct in our
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modern world and then after I read this to you I'm going to tie this in with a story from a young John D Rockefeller all right so it says they're fighting over this it says Pratt proposed buying uh Jay out for $110,000 the figure was laughable cuz at this point Pratt had
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already put up 120,000 the business is is successful but it goes up and down with the market of you know hides and so right now it's in a low and so Pratt's like no no you know we're we can resolve this disagreement I'll just buy you for
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$10,000 and so it says uh when the economy recovered leather prices would recover Jay told Pratt to stuff it he would take $660,000 for his stake and not a penny less Pratt turned Jay's logic back to him if Jay really thought that half a share was worth $60,000
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Pratt would be willing to sell his own half share to Jay for that amount this is important right so forget to 10 he's like okay yeah okay I'm not going to buy it out for 10,000 you're saying it's worth 120,000 and that your half is worth 60 okay cool give me 60 why would
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Pratt do that Pratt did that because he's like I know you you don't have that money like I'm going to be able to buy you out for 60 you can't buy me up for 60 this is going to relate to the exact same thing it's spooky how there's so
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many uh similar experiences wait till I I read you this part about Rockefeller in a minute from a different book so it say if Jay thought his share was worth 60 Pratt would be willing to sell his share to Jay for that amount confident that Jay could not con conjure up the
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money Pratt gave him 10 days to decide and what does Jay do Jay doesn't just sit around he goes down to the swamp and he had built relationships with a bunch of these Traders these people have a ton of money and he goes hey we have an you
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have an opportunity you know the value of hides right we have an opportunity to to buy out our partner for $60,000 and so he winds up doing this deal with Lup this guy named Charles liup he's going to wind up going Psych he would like see Visions he'd be having
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dinner and think there's like elephants in the room and he winds up unfortunately shooting himself right in front of his daughter that that story is in the book I'm not going to cover it here so it says uh Jay took Le Up's money and paid Pratt a few years earlier
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Jay had known nothing about tanning manufacturing and trading hides zadak Pratt on the other hand was a seasoned veteran he was one of the richest men in New York but Pratt's Pockets not Jay Golds were the ones pick that day Pratt had invested 120,000 of cash in the
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Tannery gold had had invested nothing but his labor when the market recovered J gold not zadic Pratt stood to clean up okay so I'm going to put this book down for one second I'm going to pick up another book there's an absolutely fantastic book written by Ryan holiday
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it's called conspiracy I covered this book way back on episode 31 I actually should reread it because it g it really gives you an insight into how Peter teal thinks and I hate recommending episodes that far back because I'd only made 31
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podcasts at that point I didn't know you know I didn't have as much practice as I do now but if you can kind of go back and um and listen to that episode I'd also buy the book I own when I really like a book I own the physical copy of
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conspiracy I own the Kindle version and the audible version but I want to pull out this is Ryan holiday writing about this anecdote that comes from Rockefeller I think is like 25 in the story yeah he's 25 years old let me read the whole thing it is exactly to me the
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the parallel is striking to this point in rockefeller's life with I'm about to reach you we where we are in the the American Rascal book it's remarkable there's a story now this is Ryan holiday writing there's a story about a young
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John D Rockefeller who found himself stuck with bullying corrupt business partners he wants to break with them but he can't because they control the votes they are squeezing his business to death they abuse him they talk about forcing him out what is he to do quietly
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Rockefeller lines up financing from another Oil Man and waits see the parallel finally there's a confrontation one of them tries to threaten him you really want to break it up yes he calls their Bluff they go along knowing that the firm's assets will have to go to
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auction they're sure they'll win Rockefeller doesn't have that kind of money he bids they bid he bids they bid Rockefeller wins the auction a few weeks later the papers announce his new partnership revealing who had backed his bid and the news that Rockefeller is at
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25 years old an owner of one of the largest refineries in the world this is like a like a ruthless Relentless quote from Rockefeller here on on that day his Partners quote woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been
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idle while they were talking so big and loud he would say later they were shocked they'd seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed Rockefeller had wanted it more and so when I get to this part in the book I think of Jay
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gold I think of Rockefeller and I think of Charlie Munger saying do not multitask so I'm fast forwarding way in the story after this battle this literal battle for jaay Tannery with some of his new partners what I want to point out is
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an important part that that Jay was like a teer like he he saw the what alcohol did to his father and he didn't want anything to do with it the other side in the war for the Tannery was drunk they were actually paid in whiskey Jay paid his soldiers in cash and he made sure
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they were sober and so later on Jay talks about like he thought that gave him advantage and he said Jay was the son of an alcoholic and he was an advocate advocate for sobriety mean this would not be the last time that he preached sobriety this is something
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repeated over and over and over again it's really important to understanding again the story of the father is embedded in the son that's an idea you and I cover over and over again Jay was convinced the big money wasn't in the Wilds of Pennsylvania it was on a narrow
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Street in New York and so this is where he makes the the best decision of his life he's like I'm getting out of this business and I'm going into the business that he winds up being maybe arguably the best in the world at I am trying to start myself in the Smoky world of
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stocks and bonds he said there are magician skills to be learned on Wall Street and I mean to learn he's 24 years old and so I just want to tell you a little about how he approaches he's going to set himself up as a stock broker and a private investor I'm
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actually going to quote from one of my favorite book so a book I need to reread frankly soon and make another podcast on it is Olie on Advertising written by David olgy it was originally episode 82 of Founders and if you haven't studied up on ogy I'd recommend you do I'm
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actually discovered him because Warren Buffett calls ogy multiple times I think in his in Buffett shareholder letters he said David ogy was a genius and so that line was my first introduction to olgy and then I try to read every book on him
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but ogy has this thing that he he would repeat throughout his career and he says the good ones no more and I think Buffett would agree with that because when you know people would say hey Buffett like how do I become like you he's like read 500 pages a day and so
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we're going to see that gold and ogy and Buffett had this in common going to read from ogave on Advertising real quick before I get into the beginning of how Jay prepared uh for his early career on Wall Street David says set yourself up
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to becoming the best informed person in the agency on the account to which you're assigned ogy buil made his fortune by building one of the most valuable advertising agencies in the world an advertising agency that is still in existence many years after he
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died so he's giving advice for young people that want to do it essentially saying hey David ogy how do I become you right this is what he did and what Buffett did and what Jay gold did nearly almost everybody that you and I have studied set yourself up to become the
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best informed person in the agency on on the account to which you were signed if for example it is a gasoline account read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products read the trade journals in the field spend Saturday mornings in service stations
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talking to motorists visit your clients refineries and Research Laboratories at the end of the first year you will know more about the oil business than your boss and you'll be ready to succeed him and so that's the paragraph that popped
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my mind when I got to this paragraph Jay gold did not invest on hunches he dug deep to discover whatever was Noble separating the nonsensical from the plausible this in in itself didn't make gold special most investors would claim they did the same the difference was
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Gold's diligence he was more methodical more voracious in search of insights and more patient with minutia these qualities served him well in the in the hard labor of surveying and Tanning they served him better in the brain labor of
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Wall Street and so one of his first big breaks comes a few years later later he's going to be 28 years old when he gets out of this investment he realizes that um the book started talking about you know railroads so was just as important as the internet is today our
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automobiles were in the century previous and so he's going to make obviously a lot of money in building up and also trading on railroads he realizes there's this like small little Rutland and Washington Rail line and they had one way to make money and they they would
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haul stone from quaries in Vermont and so the volum of stones taken out of the Quarry thus needing to be transported on railroads went down it would like really drop the price of the railroad bonds and if you bought the bonds when they were
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cheap you can convert to stock and if you convert enough stock you can actually take control of the railroad that's exactly what Jay did and then he decides hey um I'm going to control it and then I'll just run it and so he actually makes himself president of this
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railroad Jay's a weird um person to kind of classify because in some degree he was an operator but he was also an investor and he would go back back and forth between those two and sometimes do them uh those different jobs at the same
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time and this is a perfect example of that CU he starts out as investor he's like oh no I'll just operate it and so then he spends a long time away from his family he's constantly traveling he' just come back to New York I think on the weekends and he starts building this
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up trying to increase the value through his labor and then he's eventually going to sell and have like the first big hit of his life so it says he invested in in his railroad track he cut costs and pitch and pitched customers on the
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railroad Services he also pinched pennies and so he does for 18 months but he realizes hey there's an opportunity cost here there is a a ceiling on how valuable this railroad could be so I need to get out now and find a better opportunity this is eventually going to
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lead him to going to war with Cornelius Vanderbilt so it says uh the Rutland in Washington had Western Vermont to itself once it reached New York it ran into a challenge that gold battled the rest of his career too many railroads and not enough Freight that convinced him that
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this railroad was not a keeper 18 months after buying it he got out earning a bundle his $55,000 invest an investment that others on Wall Street thought was a loser brought him $100,000 which would be equal to $2.5 million in today's dollars and he is 28
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years old and so for the rest of his life he's going to have other businesses he's going to do a million trades uh he's going to get involved in Telegraph industry but the rest of his life he thought railroads was the the greatest outlet for his what he realized was like
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he had essentially un uncontrollable ambition or like B there's no limit to his ambition so he winds up realizing that you know he's got this this Burning Desire this drive inside of him so he winds up writing a letter to his friend
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where he comes to turn turn where it says he confronts his ambition and his drive to succeed and he says now that I'm in this place it is a puzzlement to me how I endured before everything prior seems to been boxing in the dark scrapping without reason now I have my
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railroad or excuse me now I have my road to walk and my reason for walking it now the pieces fit and this thing and ambition is no longer blind but Divine a true and Noble and necessary path I see things very very clearly I feel inspired
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with an artist conception divine inspiration I cannot say but my road is laid out before me in the plainest of ways and so at 28 he does not know that he only has 24 years left that he's going to die at 52 but he does know that he's found his life's work the one that
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he's going to dedicate almost every waking hour to from now until he dies I didn't want to touch on aspects outside of his uh work just real quick his Hobbies were essentially like family he spent a lot of time at home he him and
35:35
his wife were a homebody spend a lot of time with his kids when he wasn't working I obviously told you about he had a love for flowers and then reading and I think the book goes later on into like his he stuck to a pretty strict schedule every day so it says he and
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Ellie his wife preferred Simplicity and domestic Pleasures they were not social Jay stuck to business and minimized his interactions outside the office around this time his father dies and this is what he says his hard drinking father JN
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died Jay rarely spoke about his father maybe he was out of anger over the alcoholism or the childhood punishments including being locked in the cellar which I told you about earlier when asked about his father Jay fell back on trit Expressions as if to say more would
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prove overwhelming he would say he walked A Hard Road he drank from a bitter cup so then the next few chapters go into great detail about this war for the Eerie Railroad that goes on between Jay gold Daniel Drew J fist Cornelius vanderbel it is unbelievably complex I
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think most people still don't understand it to this day but this one sentence I think really highlights why Jay was unusual it says this this story meaning the the the war for the Arie aad uh the story of how Jay seized eie shows his
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Brilliance as a financial strategist his deep understanding of law a surprising grasp of human nature and a Mastery of political reality and so the one thing that jumps out when now I've read about this multiple times I still don't understand it completely but the lesson
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I take away from it more important than the actual like tactics they used was that if he had a goal in mind which in his case is I need to control the area railroad like Rockefeller before him or I guess at the same time because they
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were operating at the same time there would be he wouldn't just attack it from one angle it's almost like they look at the problems and what they're trying to do from like 360° and they're just Relentless by poking any kind of weakness that they feel will get them
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what they want and so even though I can't really understand everything he does I think the value I get from understanding is like oh he the way I think about the the goals I want to accomplish and the problems I want to solve it's unbelievably pedestrian
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compared to the way Jay or Rockefeller approached their own goals and so what I hope to do is learn from their examples like whatever goal you have spend an unbelievable amount of time analyzing all the different ways the possible ways that you can actually achieve what and
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and make a reality what you want to make real and so what's happening there's a bunch of board members and they're all fighting against each other for control Cornelius Vander his idea is like hey I'm just going to buy up he he does uh he bribes a judge
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to make sure that they cannot issue more stocks and so Vanderbilt thinks that the share count is fixed as a result of this injunction so he's just buying up more and more when they mention that that Jay had a deep understanding of Law and a
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Mastery of political reality one of the reasons they said is because his close reading of the law realizes that this injunction only stops the board the Eerie board from issuing more stock but it doesn't stop stop the Erie executive
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committee from issuing more stock and so I going to read this part to you and I just want to really pull out like how confident Jay was in his ability at this point he's in he's in his 30s has a little bit of money but he's literally going up against intentionally the
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richest and most well-known and successful businessman of his day in Vanderbilt Vanderbilt's you know 30 what 40 years older maybe and so it says uh Jay noticed that barner's injunction injunction that's the judge that Vanderbilt paid off against new share
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issuant uh and join the eie board and only the board what if another entity say erie's executive committee issued the stock instead of the board Jay's lawyers like the idea and they followed up by finding a judge who signed an order expressly empowering the executive
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committee to issue shares why is that important vanderbel believed that the share count was was fixed so he kept buying and Vander Bill didn't know that the stocks he's buying were issued by his enemies right the other people on the board and so that money went they
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wind up taking him for like $7 million that goes on for a lot remember this is like I'm telling you stuff that happens over multiple chapters Vanderbilt became suspicious when he noticed that his buying wasn't affecting the share price
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the prices should have skyrocketed then it hit him Erie had thumbed its nose at the judge's order and issued more shares Vanderbilt stopped buying if the supplies of shares was infinite there was no point so Jay gold Jim Fisk and Danel Drew they're over they couldn't
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believe this like this is amazing they don't realize that Vanderbuilt always has a counter move the executive committee had reason to celebrate they had just tricked America's richest man into giving the the treasury $7 million as they toasted a messenger came with
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news judge Barnard had cited them for contempt the sheriff was on his way to Erie headquarters to put them in handcuffs and so this is when Jay and his Partners have to actually Escape it was hilarious at the time like if you had to be on the lamb from New York
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authorities you could just go to New Jersey and there was no extradition requirement between the two states I go over this entire story in uh episode 258 the dark Genius of Wall Street but there's like this standoff between both
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sides between Vanderbilt and Jay and they go to Albany that like there's so many there's like a bunch of uh like the state legisl in New York there's a bunch of like bribe like open bribery bribery that occurs on both sides but eventually Vanderbilt makes them give them back
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every single dollar and it was in the interest of Jay and Daniel and Jim to to settle uh with Vanderbilt because I read this book called Tycoon War the subtitle of the book is how Cornelius Vanderbilt invaded a country to overthrow overthrow
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America's most famous military Adventure the story is remarkable it's unbelievable it's episode 55 I'm actually going to reread the book soon but the the reason that you didn't want to cross Vanderbilt is because he didn't believe in like just using the law like
41:06
he would use that if he had to but he literally would pay if you if you cross him in business he would try to have you killed that's this happens in this book where when they were hiding in in New Jersey vender bill went and put a bounty on Daniel Drew's head so that is not a
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person that you want to be taking $7 million from and so then the book spends several chapters go into detail about what Jay is most notorious for he tried to Corner unsuccessfully the uh the gold market these actions result in this
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gigantic Financial collapse and so I go into more detail on episode 258 again I think of this as like a two-part Series so I don't want to just make the same podcast again there's more detail in episode 258 but I do want to pull out something that was interesting this is
41:47
after dealing with all the Fallout this is something that was new to me what Jay like a tactic that Jay would use and so it says the biggest winner was Jay's lawyer he defended Jay in more than a 100 cases following Jay's order to stall
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his lawyer dragged out the proceedings it took a decade to clear the docket there isn't any secret J1 said I avoid bad luck by being patient whenever I'm obliged to get into a fight I always wait and let the other fellow get tired first and the reason that was
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interesting to me is because that's a litigation after he tried to Corner the gold market the litigation that took place for his Tanner that where they had that shootout that lasted like another five I think 5 to 10 years as well and by the time that he
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winds up settling with his partner who ends up selling his interest in the Tannery for you know a nominal fee he had 10 years five to 10 years of wealth accumulation so by the time that came due he was already so wealthy that it was just an insignificant amount and so
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we see him using the same tactic here maybe a decade later he's like I avoid bad luck by being patient whenever I'm obliged to get into a fight I always wait and let the other fellow get tired first and so there's a series of booms and Buffs and a lot of speculations in
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railroad stocks throughout this book goes on for multiple decades a lot of this was drawn because European investors thought they just heard American railroad and thought Oh this is like a sure bet but what I found so interesting about this paragraph it
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really is talking about the difference between good and bad businesses and the this definitely still applies to this day contrary to what stock Brokers told them it turned out that not all American railroads were winners and it actually
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mattered whether tracks terminated in New York City or Jersey City it mattered whether a railroad had mountains of debt it mattered if the railroad was run by a builder like cornelus Vanderbilt or a speculative director bent on manipulating the stock price robbing the
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corporate Treasury and awarding corporate contracts to himself and his friends that's a the large history of the railroad industry is that second that the latter there it's like oh they're really not trying to build a great product or a great service or a
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great railroad they're speculative directors and they're just essentially raiding their own stock price in fact if you want to learn about the greatest which arguably the greatest uh railroad builder in American history it's this guy named James J Hill I actually
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covered the book his biography back on episode number 96 it's called James J Hill Empire Builder of the Northwest I found that book because that's another book I found from Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger they talked about they always talk about like you know
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operators throughout history that they admire uh and the books they read about them and so uh he was he was actually I think the only person that ever built a profitable railroad without going bankrupt and So eventually Jay is actually going to leave some would say
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get kicked out of the Erie Rod before he gets kicked out though or before he leaves I think this is in the 1870s I got to read something because there's this thing called the Lord Gordon Gordon Affair and it's actually a mistake that
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Jay makes he's trying to gain control of the area and he winds up getting taken advantage of by a scam artist and so the book talks about it but I actually think the entry on Jay Gold's Wikipedia page under Lord golden golden it's only two paragraphs and somebody sent me a
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message they're like oh this would make an amazing movie so let me this is why they said that so it says in 1873 uh J gold attempted to take control of the area Railroad by recruiting foreign investments from Lord Gordon Gordon who was supposedly a cousin of wealthy uh
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who the wealthy Campbell Clan who was buying land for immigrants Jay bribed Gordon Gordon with a million dollars in stock so this is a million dollars in stock I've also read in other books that they said it was 500,000 but still a lot
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of money uh he bribed Gordon Gordon with aill of stock but Gordon Gordon was an impostor and cashed the stock immediately uh Jay gold sued him and the case went to trial in March 1873 in court Gordon Gordon gave the names of the Europeans whom he claimed to
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represent and he was granted bail while the references were checked he immediately fled to Canada where he convinced authorities that the charges were false this is now the second paragraph and this is wild having failed to convince Canadian authorities to hand
45:50
over Gordon Gordon J gold attempted to kidnap Gordon Gordon with the helps of his associates and a future member of Congress uh future members of Congress so you got Lauren Fletcher John G gifan and Eugene Wilson all future members of
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Congress are trying to kidnap this guy the group captured him successfully but they were stopped and arrested by the Mounted Police this is in Canada before they could return to the US Canadian authorities put them in prison and refused the bail and this led to an
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international incident between the United States and Canada Governor of Minnesota Horus Austin demanded their return when he learned that they had been denied bail and he put the local militia on full Readiness thousands of minnesotans volunteered for an invasion
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of Canada after negotiations the Canadian authorities released them on bail Gordon Gordon was eventually ordered to be deported but committed suicide before the order could be carried out so when the author starts the book saying hey this is really a
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book about J but it's also about the Wild Wild West period of Wall Street that is just two paragraphs in you know one of a million different minations and ideas and trades that Jay experienced throughout his entire life in many cases
47:01
these books when you're reading about the like business history in the 1800s and early 1900s it's just that's Stranger Than Fiction and then they spend more time into why even when vanderbel called Jay the smartest person in America he didn't like him and a lot
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of people didn't like Jay and a lot of reason they didn't like Jay is because they actually lost to him so it says it was well known that Jay had out foxed the Commodore Commodore Vanderbilt and it talks about the fights they have with
47:23
the eie but then it says this hilarious sentence there was also a little episode with the cows and so the author does a great job in one paragraph summarizing this war this rate war that going on between the railro that that Jay gold um is currently in control of and the one
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that Vanderbilt was in in control of but the reason I think about this is because sometimes you can get like myopic and really focused on like where you're going or or where you want to go where Jay always actually reacted the less I'm
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taking from this is like Jay always reacted to the game on the field he was in the middle of a rate War right he was trying to bleed the Commodore so instead of continuing a rate War he actually reacts to a change in the game which presented an opportunity for profit and
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I think to me because he couldn't have predicted this change like he it shows the level of intelligence that he had so it says there was a little episode with the cows back when Jay ran the Eerie Railroad Vanderbilt slashed New York
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Central rates and offered to move cattle across New York State for the token amount of a dollar a carload so before that they were both trying to gain business from the other by constantly reducing rates and trying to bleed the other person okay eie was pinched for
48:32
cash Vanderbilt was certain the move would bury the railroad and take Jay gold down with it instead Jay and Fisk that was his partner uh who also gets murdered by uh his ex-lover's new lover uh there's more of that in episode 258 but it says instead jig gold and and
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Fisk made a profit by buying cows in Chicago and shipping them to Market at Vanderbilt's bargain rates when the old Commodore found out that he was carrying the cattle of his enemies at Great expense to himself he nearly lost it so a 21-year-old Thomas Edison
49:09
happened to be at the Gold Exchange the day that J gold tried to Corner the gold market he's actually at the telegraph he was a telegraph operator um what they would do is they would transmit the change in price over the Telegraph and so he sees like this this massive uh
49:24
Financial scandal and panic happened I think in the other book I read the dark Genius of Wall Street he's like hanging out on a telephone pole just observing you know what a one of the most insane days in finance history and he's he's observing
49:37
as a like a almost like a disinterested spectator because he was so poor he didn't have any money to invest and so Edison and J Gold's uh paths are actually going to cross many years later when Edison was 27 years old it says
49:49
Edison was 27 years old the light bulb the photograph and the movie camera camera were years away for now he had event away to pay his mortgage and so at this point in 's career he's just a freelance inventor the inventor the invention that he is working on is
50:02
actually the quadruplex this is the one that Jay's going to uh purchase from him but I really want to get into like Edison's perspective on Jay gold I thought that was interesting before I get there something you and I have talked about over and over again a good
50:13
way to discover future opportunities is you can actually discover opportunities in Industries adjacent to your own up until this point Jay has been focused on the railroad industry so it says Jay was keenly interested in the telegraph business now telegraphs went hand inand
50:28
with railroading Telegraph companies strung their lines alongside the railroad tracks and so he starts looking into the Monopoly of the the telegraph Monopoly of the day Western Union and Jay cannot believe how much money they make Western Union was a money machine
50:43
uh J gold coveted it I'd rather be the president of Western Union than the president of the United States He said however it was simply Western Union was simply too big and powerful but maybe he could shake it down core to this scheme
50:54
was Ed 's latest invention and so the quadruplex allows you to spend up to four messages at once so essentially just increases the amount of communications that existing lines could have and so he's going to buy this invention and the patents from it start
51:08
a company and then eventually build that up with the sole purpose of getting bought out by Western Union which he was successful in doing so but the part I found most interesting is over like the next three or four pages it's Edison just telling us like what it was like to
51:22
know and interact with J gold so says Edison and gold shared some traits both thought about little besides their obsessions inventions for Edison and money for gold both worked all the time both had spent their childhoods reading
51:37
anything that came their way as an employee of Golds Edison came to appreciate what Jim Fisk had later had called previously Gold's peculiarities during one encounter gold unfurled maps and talked about Rail lines gold spoke for 3 hours before exhausting himself so
51:56
Edison found gold strange and unsettling gold Had A peculiar eye Edison later wrote there was a strain of insanity somewhere Edison offered another assessment he certainly had one trait that all men must have who want to succeed he collected every kind of
52:14
information and statistics about his schemes and had all the data Edison said he excused J Gold's greet this is what Edison said about that his conscience seemed to be atrophied but that may be due to the fact that he was contending with men who never had any to be
52:31
atrophied to begin with in that other book The Dark Genius of Wall Street or it might have been the Thomas Edison biography that I covered on episode 267 he called the wars between the robber baron strange Financial Warfare something else that I found interesting
52:46
was something that Jay was working on for a long time in fact he was still working on it when he died was this idea of building and controlling the the country's first Transcontinental Railroad and I thought it was interesting how he compared what he
52:57
wanted to do with what he saw Rockefeller doing in oil uh J gold was aware of how Rockefeller was using coercion to grab every oil refinery he could Jay longed to lead a similar process in railroads cons he said consolidation will proved both essential
53:12
and inevitable what was needed was unchallenged Market domination and then this story is just unbelievable how to turn a $500 kidnapping into $500,000 a storm struck New York and disabled Gold's private Telegraph the blackout forced gold to contract with a messenger service to
53:28
deliver his trading orders by hand this is insane a cabal of crafty Traders sees the moment they grabbed one of the messengers and dressed one of their own to take his place to gather information on Jay's trades for 4 days they saw Jay's every order for Western Union
53:47
shares guessing he was trying to take it over they bought all the Western Union stock they could and paid the kidnapped messenger $500 to stay in a hotel and keep quiet the schemers bought Western Union at 80 and sold it at 120 pocketing
54:06
$500,000 and so then the book talks about how he spent most of his time his schedule the last decade of his life and it said he was a homebody whose routine left no time for diversion he woke up at 7:30 ate breakfast at 88: wrote letters
54:18
until 9:30 he had lunch at noon he ate very little he drank lots of coffee he stayed down town until 4:30 when he came home for dinner to have dinner with his family after dinner he headed to the fifth avenue hotel to talk markets with stock brokers who traded there after
54:34
hours then he read in his Library until it was time for bed at 11:00 he spent Sunday in the office as if it were a regular day when he was at home and needed air he pruned his flowers and so he said I have the disadvantage of not
54:49
being social my tastes lie in a different direction when business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of my day with my wife my children and my books Every Man Has a natural inclination of his own mine are domestic they are not calculated to make
55:05
me particularly popular on Wall Street and I cannot help that and one of the really sad parts about Jay's life is not only he was married for I think 24 26 years his wife unfortunately dies I think she has two strokes and she dies young a few years before he dies young
55:21
and yet even though he's in diminished Health he's still chasing after this lifelong dream he had so it says he declared that he'd combine the Union Pacific Railroad with his other railroads to create the seamless trans transcontinental system that had been
55:33
his dream when the Press asked why at his age he'd wanted to do something so challenging he said he couldn't help it the vision of an end to end Rail Link Between the east coast and California was too beautiful to let go although he
55:45
had once left the Union Pacific out of necessity he never stopped loving it there's nothing strange or mysterious about it he said I knew it very well when I was a child and I have merely returned to my first love I think we will have good times in the future and
55:59
unfortunately his health forbid that his dreams for the Union Pacific were better suited for a young man than one who knew that his time was up in his feeed state it took all his strength to get out of bed the railroad drifted in the absence
56:14
of leadership and so he winds up passing away at 52 years old from tuberculosis and leaving behind his six children and then the book closes with why it's so hard to nail down what J Gold's Legacy should be in a 1986 biography University of Rhode Island professor my Klein
56:31
suggested gold be judged by his entirety rather than on his business activity alone his record as an upstanding family man should be figured into the equation Wharton Professor Julius ginsky who in 1957 completed the first serious
56:43
analysis of J gold took pains to credit Gold's contributions his aggressive track building lowered Freight rates his success as a railroad investor attracted speculative capital into a vital industry when other sources fled the field but after examining every
57:00
transaction of his career pouring over every scrap of Correspondence considering every accusation of victims and compiling spreadsheets to measure his Investments ginsky couldn't pull the trigger on a definitive judgment about his subject his conclusion was
57:15
unsatisfying he had his virtues and he had his faults he wrote the worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and in their work at least so in intelligent you can't hate them properly that's the thing about go he lied he
57:30
cheated he stole but he was so good at what he did so intelligent in the execution and such a clean kind and industrious family man that try as you might you can't hate him properly and that is where I'll leave it there's so many more stories in the book highly
57:48
recommend reading it if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes to your podcast player you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time and if if you want more Founders highly recommend you signing up for Founders premium I'm no longer doing the short
57:59
daily uh episodes anymore but instead I'm doing long form AMA ask me anything questions so subscribers to Founders premium actually are able to ask me questions directly and then I record my answers in these form of these long form
58:12
AMA episodes I published my first AMA episode probably about a week ago with answers to questions like hey if I could only read five books for my life over and over again what would they be who are the best strategists out of the people that I've read about why is the
58:25
show growing so much and if I had any insight into growing a podcast if I'm going to start a new podcast interviewing Founders and practice habits I'm going be doing two of these a month I'm going to probably record the new the next one probably tomorrow so if
58:38
you're interested in listening to them and then contributing by asking questions you can subscribe with the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player it is also available at Founders podcast.com that is 285 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon