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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Russell Sage Biography Russell
Sage
(1816-1906). An American capitalist, born at Shenandoah, Oneida Co., N.
Y. He had a public-school education and for several years was an errand boy and
clerk in grocery stores. In 1837 he gained an interest in a retail grocery
business in Troy and from 1839 to 1857 was connected with a similar wholesale
firm. From 1841 to 1848 he was an alderman in Troy and from 1845 to 1849 county
treasurer. While a Whig member of Congress (1853-56) he served on the Ways and
Means Committee. Nine years after his removal to New York Sage bought a seat on
the Stock Exchange (1874) and thenceforth was known as a financier, closely
associated with Jay Gould (q.v.) in the control of the
Wabash, the St. Louis and Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, and other western
railroads, and prominent in the Western Union Telegraph Company and the
Manhattan Elevated Railroad System (New York City). Especially did his railroad
operations in Wisconsin, and most of all in connection with the La Crosse and
Milwaukee, bring him notoriety. For a full but rather hostile account of Sage's
rise in the financial world, consult Gustavus Myers, History
of the Great American Fortunes, vol. iii (Chicago, 1910). In 1891 a dynamite
bomb was exploded in Sage's office by a man who had demanded and been refused a
large sum of money; the fanatic and Sage's secretary were killed. Upon her
husband's death, July 22, 1906, Mrs. Russell Sage, (Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage,
q.v.) received unconditionally a fortune estimated at more than $50,000,000, to
be used as she saw fit. |