ABSTRACT
Delmonico's was the place to be seen. The restaurant had opened its doors in 1827 and was the first establishment in which diners could order whatever they wanted instead of what was prepared that day. For the other America there would be no dining at Delmonico's. Indeed, this was one of side effects of the evolution of US financial markets during the Gilded Age—the somewhat unstructured nature of the stock and bond markets made it relatively easy for strong-willed individuals to operate on their own or in small groups of like-minded allies and raid the market. If Jay Gould had been anything less there would have been no Gould story, and certainly the ups and downs of the stock market during the Gilded Age would have been that much the less. Intelligent and hard-driven, Gould attended school, helped his father run a country store, and for a period struck out on his own as a surveyor.
