Here in the Nineteenth Century Club was an arena, indeed.  Able men and women discussed the leading topics of the day in due form, addressing the audience one after another.  The gatherings soon became too large for a private room.  The monthly meetings were then held in the American Art Galleries.  I remember the first evening I took part as one of the speakers the subject was “The Aristocracy of the Dollar.”  Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson was the first speaker.  This was my introduction to a New York audience.  Thereafter I spoke now and then.  It was excellent training, for one had to read and study for each appearance.

I had lived long enough in Pittsburgh to acquire the manufacturing, as distinguished from the speculative, spirit.  My knowledge of affairs, derived from my position as telegraph operator, had enabled me to know the few Pittsburgh men or firms which then had dealings upon the New York Stock Exchange, and I watched their careers with deep interest.  To me their operations seemed simply a species of gambling.  I did not then know that the credit of all these men or firms was seriously impaired by the knowledge (which it is almost impossible to conceal) that they were given to speculation.  But the firms were then so few that I could have counted them on the fingers of one hand.  The Oil and Stock Exchanges in Pittsburgh had not as yet been founded and brokers’ offices with wires in connection with the stock exchanges of the East were unnecessary.  Pittsburgh was emphatically a manufacturing town.

I was surprised to find how very different was the state of affairs in New York.  There were few even of the business men who had not their ventures in Wall Street to a greater or less extent.  I was besieged with inquiries from all quarters in regard to the various railway enterprises with which I was connected.  Offers were made to me by persons who were willing to furnish capital for investment and allow me to manage it—­the supposition being that from the inside view which I was enabled to obtain I could invest for them successfully.  Invitations were extended to me to join parties who intended quietly to buy up the control of certain properties.  In fact the whole speculative field was laid out before me in its most seductive guise.

All these allurements I declined.  The most notable offer of this kind I ever received was one morning in the Windsor Hotel soon after my removal to New York.  Jay Gould, then in the height of his career, approached me and said he had heard of me and he would purchase control of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and give me one half of all profits if I would agree to devote myself to its management.  I thanked him and said that, although Mr. Scott and I had parted company in business matters, I would never raise my hand against him.  Subsequently Mr. Scott told me he had heard I had been selected by New York interests to succeed him.  I do not know how he had learned this, as I had never mentioned it.  I was able to reassure him by saying that the only railroad company I would be president of would be one I owned.