The New Colossus

by Marshall Goldberg

  And so, given the common thinking of the day, DeKay’s narrative rang true, and it saddened her. In her struggle to enter a man’s world, Nellie had begun to see Emma as a model, a hero. The literary accomplishments, the work with immigrants, the battles against the powerful and the corrupt against staggering odds … if Emma could accomplish so much, then maybe Nellie could as well. That was the hope, the inspiration. But apparently it had proven too much for Emma. She had given up and practically welcomed the cancer because the arsenic provided her a way out.

  Suddenly Nellie’s aspirations seemed futile. With sentries manning the doors at every turn, from thick-headed Flaherty to wily Cockerill, the image of Emma had fortified her in taking them on. Now, no matter how ambitious and combative she was, it all seemed too daunting.

  She would have to tell Pulitzer. She would do more investigating, of course, and not merely take DeKay’s word for it, but she would just be going through the motions. Pulitzer would be furious and confuse the messenger with the message and want nothing more to do with her. It wasn’t fair; she was just telling him the truth, but it would be human nature for him to hold it against her.

  She tried to think of a way out. DeKay and Barker would have a convincing response to anything she managed to get printed. They would say it was a suicide, that Emma had taken her own life because she was overwhelmed with the cancer “and other problems”—code for female frailty—and people would doubtless believe them. DeKay would almost certainly use the Times to tell his story, after which Emma Lazarus would be totally discredited. Pulitzer would be even angrier, and Nellie would be relieved of her duties. If journalism were a true profession, she could simply write the truth as she saw it and let the chips fall where they may, but it didn’t work that way. Newspapers wrote to their audience, gave them what they wanted to read. As a reporter, you delivered to that audience what the publisher wanted delivered, and Pulitzer had no interest in delivering up Emma Lazarus as a suicide.

  Nellie left the Times building feeling sick and shattered. Worse yet, the fears she tried to keep at bay—that she was destined to wind up back in Pittsburg writing gardening and fashion stories the rest of her life—came roaring back.

  Why did people kill themselves? Maybe that could be the story. To most people, suicide was simply the sign of a troubled soul, but there had to be more. She thought of going to see Ingram. He understood these things as well as anyone she knew. But she shied away, afraid of what he might say about women as a weaker sex and self-conscious of seeming helpless in his eyes.

  Suddenly she had a thought, a wild, bizarre thought. Impulsively she went back inside, to the Times sitting room. DeKay had left. The steward was cleaning off the table.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to go to Queens.”

  “What part, miss?”

  “Cypress Hills. The Shearith Israel cemetery.”

  “The Number 14. Right outside.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was an hour train and ferry ride to the cemetery, even though Emma had lived a short walk from Newspaper Row. Burials in Manhattan had been outlawed for forty years; people who had never set foot in Queens or Brooklyn in life now resided there for all eternity in death. Going to the cemetery was a totally irrational act; she knew that as she boarded the train. She should be looking for proof that the death had not been a suicide, not wasting time visiting the gravesite. But maybe staring at Emma’s tombstone would give her an idea or possibly a deeper understanding of the woman. She didn’t exactly expect Emma to make a suggestion from the grave, but she was just desperate enough to be open to that possibility.

  The ride only made her more fretful, she realized, as she finally stepped off the horsecar in a remote part of Queens. It was a small cemetery, no more than 120 plots. Despite the warm June weather, the ground was still a foot deep in snow, seven weeks after the Great Blizzard. A caretaker directed her to the tombstone, which was simple enough: granite, two feet high, inscribed with “In Memory of Emma Lazarus, Daughter of Moses and Esther Lazarus, Born July 22, 1849 – Died November 19, 1887.” No religious markings, no reference to her as poet or champion of the poor. Nearby were the gravestones of Emma’s mother and father, equally simple. Nellie thought of her own father’s gravesite by the mill he had started in Apollo. She had no desire to be buried beside her half-brothers and sisters, who had made life so difficult for her and her mother. Her fantasy was to make enough money to buy the mill outright and keep the rest of the family away from her father. Only she, her mother, and her full siblings would be buried alongside him.

  She stared at Emma’s grave. “What happened to you, Emma?” she mused. “You didn’t kill yourself. I know you didn’t. Tell me what happened.”

  She felt someone watching her. She looked around and saw a man standing by a hansom, staring at her. A big, rough-looking man, he wore clothes several sizes too small for him, which made him look all the larger, and he made no effort to avert his eyes. He was intimidating, especially in this remote cemetery, yet he took no step toward her.

  “No need to be afraid, miss.”

  “What do you want?” she asked. He stood between her and the only way out.

  “I’m supposed to take you back to Manhattan when you’re finished.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “That you’ll find out in due time, miss. I’ll just wait here until you’re done.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to go with you.”

  “Then my employer would be upset, with both of us.” He climbed up the hansom to the driver’s seat. “You take your time, miss.”

  Nellie turned back to the grave and addressed the headstone.

  “Emma,” she entreated in a low voice, “what are you doing? What is happening?”

  No answer. Nellie just shook her head and headed over to the hansom.

  The driver took her to the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street and into the largest theater in New York, Pike’s Opera House, a former burlesque venue made over into the offices of the most feared man in the history of Wall Street.

  If Emma Lazarus represented all that was good in the human condition, Jay Gould represented all that was bad. The press dubbed him Mephistopheles only because they couldn’t think of anything worse. At a time when the only punishable crime on Wall Street was outright fraud—and some would question if even that were the case—Gould made a fortune in stocks using insider information and spreading disinformation to buy low and sell high. At one point, he owned both of the largest transportation and communication companies in the country. But it was his methods more than his power that made him so despised. In 1868, at the age of twenty-eight, he had brought the great Cornelius Vanderbilt to his knees by bribing state court judges into awarding Gould the Erie Railroad, the main route from the Great Lakes to New York City. In 1872, he and his partner James Fisk set off a national panic and five-year depression when they cornered the gold market in the United States after bribing the brother-in-law of President Grant to keep the government’s gold off the market. When the price of gold had tripled from its original level and Grant finally ordered the release of the government’s gold, the brother-in-law tipped off Gould ahead of time, allowing him to sell at the peak while most of Wall Street’s other investors, who had bought in as the price rose, were ruined. If Gould had cornered the gold market simply to become rich, that would have been venal enough, but later testimony before a congressional committee revealed his true intentions: with the price of gold rising and the dollar dropping, Midwestern farmers would want to ship more of their crops to foreign markets, and Gould, who had a virtual monopoly on the nation’s railroads, would jack up freight rates and amass even more wealth.

  While working at the Dispatch, Nellie had met Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, phenomenally wealthy men in their own right, but they were manufacturing geniuses. They made things and managed people. Gould, though, was a financial genius. He bought and sold compani
es and bought and sold stock, with no interest in managing anyone. If one of his companies performed poorly, he was indifferent since it was usually a monopoly and he could already get top dollar for it.

  Although the building at Eighth and Twenty-Third was garish enough, Gould’s offices were modest, almost stately, and bore none of the trappings Nellie associated with robber barons. Nellie noted just two armed guards and a male secretary outside the door to the inner office. When the hansom driver escorted her in, the secretary at the desk merely nodded, rose, and glided into the interior office. A moment later, Jay Gould himself emerged to greet her.

  “Miss Bly. Thank you for coming. My name is Jay Gould.”

  He was a small man in his early fifties, no more than five foot four inches tall. He had tiny, delicate hands; a full, black beard flecked with gray; a low forehead; and piercing, almost fanatical eyes. There was no glad-handing or charming banter. Jay Gould did not mince words.

  “I trust my driver conducted himself properly,” he said, directing her inside to a chair and sitting down behind the desk. Nellie felt the almost hypnotic power of his eyes and his mind. She barely even took in the office.

  “He startled me and has taken me out of my way, but no, he did not mistreat me.”

  “I apologize for the inconvenience. He will, of course, take you home. Or to Dr. Ingram’s. Whichever you prefer.”

  Nellie managed to cover her surprise at the pointed reference. “Why am I here, Mr. Gould?” she asked with irritation.

  “I had hoped to delay our initial meeting, but your conversation with Mr. DeKay this morning forced my hand. I thought we should speak before you did anything rash.”

  How could he have known about her meeting with DeKay? She hadn’t told anyone. Gould, a self-made man, would have no use for a weasel like DeKay, and no one else knew about it. Then she remembered the steward who had poured coffee in the sitting room. He had lingered in the back of the room, straightening up and tending to some editors in another corner. She had asked him which train would take her to the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, and he directed her to the #14. The waiter must have passed along this information to Gould, who then would have dispatched one of his men to the cemetery. She nearly shook her head in admiration. That Gould would have an employee at The New York Times on his payroll impressed her, but only for a moment.

  Given his reputation, she told herself, she should not have been the least bit surprised. “What was it about our conversation that forced your hand?” she asked.

  “You are about to be the victim of a monstrous fraud, Miss Bly. Emma Lazarus would never have taken her own life.”

  For a man who had made an enormous fortune being coldly rational, Gould made his pronouncement with surprising passion.

  “I didn’t realize you were acquainted with Miss Lazarus.”

  “Few people did. We preferred it that way.”

  She studied him closely.

  “There was nothing untoward about it, Miss Bly,” he said. “I admired Miss Lazarus for several years. It was a pleasure to make her acquaintance.”

  Gould did not seem the kind of man to whom admiration came easily. “How exactly did you meet?”

  “I take my daily constitutional every morning at five. It allows me to think in peace, without investors or lawyers pestering me. I began to notice a woman who also took walks in the neighborhood at the same hour. We would nod hello. One morning, I happened to see her emerge from a house three blocks from mine. I knew who lived there—I was aware of her father through common business associates—and when I realized who she was, I introduced myself.”

  “The two of you became walking companions?”

  “You might say that.”

  A flash of almost boyish embarrassment crossed Gould’s face. He was at heart a shy man, and he knew how preposterous it sounded that he and Emma Lazarus—poet, humanitarian, patrician—would be friendly.

  “What was it you had admired about her, Mr. Gould? You don’t strike me as a poetry reader.”

  “No, I don’t have the patience for poetry. My wife is the poetry reader. I admired what Miss Lazarus did after the Union Hotel incident.”

  “I’m not familiar with that.”

  He looked at her with surprise and disapproval.

  “How can you investigate her death if you know nothing about her?”

  “I’m still learning, Mr. Gould. And if you can help in that regard, I would urge you to do so.”

  He stared out the window, recounting his thoughts. “There was a banker named Joseph Seligman,” he said, “a German immigrant and a Jew, who had provided valuable service to this country during the war. At President Lincoln’s behest, he sold millions of dollars in government bonds to Europeans to finance the Union cause. Without him, the President could not have carried on the war, and the country would have dissolved. The President was so grateful that he awarded Seligman a Medal of Merit. Three years later, President Grant asked him to become Secretary of the Treasury, an honor Seligman graciously refused because of family obligations. Grant then received word that Mr. A.T. Stewart sought the position. Have you heard of him at least?”

  A.T. Stewart was a household name. He had founded the first department store in America and gone on to be the largest dry goods retailer in the country. His stores became so successful that during the 1870s he was the richest man in America, richer even than Jay Gould.

  “Of course.”

  “Grant was wise enough to seek Seligman’s counsel on the matter. Seligman recommended against the appointment. He believed the nation’s leading banker required more knowledge than how to sell clothes.”

  Nellie had to smile. Gould’s tongue could cut like a scalpel.

  “Grant heeded Seligman’s advice,” he continued, “and did not offer Stewart the position. Stewart took the decision personally and vowed to bring down Seligman. He died before any revenge could be exacted, but his successors took up the charge for him. Are you familiar with the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Nor, fortunately, am I. I’m told it is the largest hotel in the world, a favored summer spot for New Yorkers who can afford it. Joseph Seligman and his family took holiday there every summer. The Grand Union Hotel was one of many properties owned by A.T. Stewart, and it remained in the estate upon his death. Now, the executor of Stewart’s estate was a small-minded man named Henry Hilton, who had been Stewart’s personal lawyer. One of Boss Tweed’s lackeys who’d bought himself a judgeship, he suddenly found himself a very wealthy man. The summer following Stewart’s death, in 1877, when Seligman arrived with his family at the Grand Union Hotel, as they had for the ten previous summers, they were told that no rooms were available. Seligman protested that he had reserved several rooms, the same ones the family had always stayed in. But the manager said he had his orders: Judge Hilton had directed that no Jews be permitted to stay at the Grand Union Hotel.”

  He said it with such disgust, she wondered for a moment if Gould himself had Jewish blood.

  “There was a great public outcry at such treatment of a man who had done so much for this country, while others said with equal fervor that it was Hilton’s property—albeit inherited—and he could do whatever he pleased with it. Sadly, most of the press sided with Hilton, and the event unleashed a terrible amount of hatred against Jews in this country. ‘Hebrews will knock vainly for admission’ became an all-too-frequent sign at finer hotels.”

  Nellie wondered where exactly Gould, a laissez-faire stock manipulator, stood on this issue. Sensing the question, he answered it for her.

  “My sympathies were with Seligman, for reasons more personal than philosophical. You see, Joseph Seligman was my banker, a man I trusted completely and whom I grew to respect immensely. The outpouring of venom in the press affected him deeply, and within a short time he was dead.”

  Gould’s eyes had narrowed at the circumstances of his friend’s deat
h. He paused ever so slightly before going on.

  “No one,” he said, “knew quite how to respond to Hilton’s pronouncement. Remember, this was a man who now controlled one of the largest fortunes in the country and had most of the newspapers on his side. And Jews, by their nature and history, shunned controversy. That is when Miss Lazarus stepped forward.”

  He leaned forward, sharing a story he clearly relished.

  “She turned Hilton’s argument against him. If he was free to decide who could stay at his hotels, well, then people were free not to shop at the A.T. Stewart department store. Miss Lazarus organized a boycott. No Jews, no immigrants, no Irish, no Italians—no one who had ever been slighted or whose parents had ever been slighted—should shop at A.T. Stewart’s. And, of course, nearly every immigrant to this country had felt the terrible sting of bigotry. She managed to spread the word far and wide, and business at Stewart’s department store began to plummet immediately. Miss Lazarus remained in the background—Hilton shared acquaintances with her father—but she was tireless in assembling her forces. Hilton stubbornly clung to his policy, and in fact with great fanfare organized the American Society for the Suppression of the Jews, urging other hotel owners and restaurateurs to turn away Jews. That only gave strength to the boycott. Within six months—only six months, mind you—the A.T. Stewart department store, the largest in the world, was forced to declare bankruptcy, and the man who had driven Joseph Seligman to an early death was publicly humiliated.”

  She could hear the approval, and even admiration, in his voice.

  “When I realized that the woman on my early morning walks was Emma Lazarus, I introduced myself and told her I was a friend of Joseph Seligman. At that point, we became, as you put it, walking companions.”

  “She was indeed a remarkable woman, that is clear,” said Nellie. “But DeKay said she also suffered from dark moods and seized the opportunity to consume arsenic. Why are you convinced he is lying?”