Word: sagely
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...first speculative leap. For the first time in living memory the Hudson River froze from bank to bank in the month of November. Ships were icebound at their moorings, and tons of perishable produce piled up on the docks. Even the most seasoned local merchants panicked. Not canny Russell Sage. At giveaway prices he snapped up three of the crippled, empty sloops, stacked them with cargoes, then settled back to wait. Sure enough, the freeze was a fluke. The ice melted overnight, and Sage sailed off for New York where he made a $50,000 killing. At 24, he operated...
Soon he promoted himself to railroads. A typical operation was the La Crosse & Milwaukie Railroad, which he built in 1852. Sage gave away some $1,000,000 in La Crosse bonds as bribes to state officials, legislators, newsmen in an effort to have awarded to the railroad a major part of the Wisconsin land grant. When the bribery was exposed, he arranged to put the La Crosse into receivership (Sage men were of course the receivers), then created the new Milwaukee & Minnesota Railroad Co., which succeeded to the assets, but not the liabilities, of the La Crosse road. His personal...
Front Man. Richer pickings were to come. Sage expanded his moneylending business (sometimes extracting interest as high as 80%), barely escaped serving a jail term for usury, supplied money to both Vanderbiit and Gould in their battle for control of the Erie Railroad, netted $10 million in ten days during the Panic of 1873, and most important, acquired the brilliant, heaviIy indebted Gould as front man and junior partner...
...more money Sage accumulated, the more he wanted. But he dressed like a man who had just come from a rummage sale: shiny serge jacket, frayed grey vest, floppy black trousers, and square-toed brogans. One day a demented broker marched into Sage's office. In one hand he held a note demanding that Sage give him $1,200,000; in the other hand he held a bag of dynamite. Sage eased a visitor between himself and the dynamite, dashed for the exit. When the smoke cleared away, the broker was dead, the visitor was badly mangled, Sage...
...worshiped his first wife Marie-Henrie blindly, and when she died he blundered into marriage with Olivia Slocum, a blueblooded schoolmistress whose father he had ruined. He spent the rest of his life taunting Olivia with memories of Marie-Henrie. Olivia liked dogs; Sage acquired cats (which Marie-Henrie loved and he detested). Olivia wanted Sage to decorate their house with works of art; Sage hung photographs of locomotives and maps of his railroad holdings. Olivia liked Oriental rugs and bric-a-brac; Sage littered the parlor with buffalo robes. But Olivia got even. When Sage died in 1906, leaving...