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The dispatches state that during the three weeks George Gould waslazing and luxuriating in a foreign land "the business revivaladded at least $15,000,000 to the value of the Gold securities."Gadzooks! how sweet idleness must be when sugared with more than$714,000 per day! I'm willing to loaf for half the lucre. Howrefreshing it is to contemplate our plutocrats lying beside theirnectar like a job lot of Olympian gods—"careless ofmankind"—while
"—they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fierysands,Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and prayinghands."
One of Mr. Gould's employees, who was toiling at risk of lifeand limb for about $2 a day while his imperial master was doingthe dolce far niente act for $714,000 per diem and his board,comments as follows in a letter to the ICONOCLAST:
"W. C. BRANN: It might be pertinent for you to find out how thefestive George, of yacht-racing, Waler-hob-nobbing fame, hasmanaged to reap such pronounced benefits from the revival inbusiness. It is notorious among railroad men that one of thefirst moves of Superintendent Trice, who succeeded Tim Campbellas manager of the I. & G. N., was to inaugurate a series of'reforms,' the chief feature of which was the cutting salaries offrom 20 to 40 per cent, especially among the office men, and atthe same time covering it by swapping the men around as much aspossible. Forces were reduced by compelling the half-starvedemployees to do overtime at less pay, and the poor devils canonly grin and bear it. Suppose you write down, and get the truedata from the various places where the I. & G. N. touches, andthen show the true source, or the real 'revival' that has giventhe festive George such a boost in his cash box."
In the first place, "the business revival" has not "added$15,000,000 to the value of the Gould securities"—it is apolitical falsehood which George can be depended upon to promptlyrepudiate when the tax assessor calls around to tendercongratulations. It is eleven to seven that Georgie assures himthat the Gould estate is in a very bad way, that only by the mostheroic self-sacrifices in this period of business depression canhe succeed in remaining solvent; that there was a slight advanc