Russell Sage

Russell Sage (4 August 1816 - 22 July 1906) was a financier and politician from New York, United States.

Sage was born at Verona in Oneida County, New York. He received a public school education and worked as a farm hand until he was 15, when he became an errand boy in a grocery conducted by his brother, Henry R. Sage, in Troy, New York. He had a part interest in 1837-1839 in a retail grocery in Troy, and in a wholesale store there in 1839-1857. In 1841 he was elected an alderman, and he was re-elected to this office until 1848, also serving for seven years as treasurer of Rensselaer County. He was then elected to Congress as a Whig, and served, with re-election, from 5 December 1853 until 3 March 1857. He served on the Ways and Means Committee. Sage was the first person to advocate, on the floor of Congress, the purchase of Mount Vernon by the government. Subsequently he settled in New York City and engaged in the business of selling puts and calls and privileges [Privileges were options sold over the counter in nineteenth century America, with both puts and calls on shares offered by specialized dealers. Their exercise price was fixed at a rounded-off market price on the day or week that the option was bought, and the expiry date was generally three months after purchase. They were not traded in secondary markets.] on Wall Street.

On 7 May 1867, Sage's first wife died of stomach cancer. This purportedly led to his focus on the accumulation of wealth later in life. In 1869, Sage was involved in a case concerning the usury laws in New York state, accused of being the gang leader in an usury group. He was convicted and fined $500, but his jail sentence was suspended. Later that year, Sage married his second wife, Olivia Slocum.

He bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (1874) and thereafter was known as a financier. At the same time he became interested in railroads, and secured stocks in western roads, notably the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, of which he was president and vice-president for twelve years. By disposing of these investments, as the smaller roads were absorbed by trunk-lines, he became wealthy.

In his later years he was closely associated with Jay Gould in the management of the Wabash Railway, St. Louis and Pacific, Missouri Pacific Railroad, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and the St. Louis - San Francisco Railway, the American cable company, the Western Union telegraph company and the Manhattan consolidated system of elevated rail­roads in New York city, in all of which corporations he was a director. Mr. Sage was for many years closely connected with the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad, of which he was a director. He was a director and vice-president in the Importers and Traders' National Bank for twenty years, and also a director in the Merchants' Trust Company and in the Fifth Avenue Bank of New York City.

In 1891, a man toting a bag concealing dynamite entered Russell Sage's New York office claiming that he had an important matter to discuss with Sage concerning railroad bonds. To further his claim, the man told Sage he held a letter of introduction from John D. Rockefeller. Sage accepted the letter from the man, only to find that it was a demand for $1,200,000. His clerk, not having heard any dialogue between the two men, was unaware that there was a life or death situation being played out in the office. Sage moved himself over to his clerk and placed the clerk in between himself and the man with the dynamite. The man realized then that he was not going to have his demand met and detonated the dynamite killing himself and causing injury to the clerk. Sage was shielded from any injury. Following the event, Sage's clerk sued Sage on battery charges.

In 1906 he died and left his entire fortune of about $70 million to his wife, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (1828-1918), who subsequently devoted a major portion of these funds to philanthropy. Olivia arranged for leading architect Ralph Adams Cram to design a church, the Russell Sage Memorial Church, and for Louis Tiffany to decorate it with stained glass windows. The church is located in Far Rockaway, Queens, where the family had a summer home, and was built in 1908. In 1907 she established the Russell Sage Foundation, and in 1916 she founded Russell Sage College in Troy. In addition she gave extensively to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Emma Willard School.

Rumors

Paul Sarnoff, in his biography of Russell Sage, depicts his second marriage as loveless, having been arranged for appearance's sake after Sage's affairs had become known, and possibly never consummated. [Sarnoff, Paul, "Russell Sage: The Money King", Ivan Obolensky, Inc., New York, 1965.] . Some claim that the founding of Russell Sage College in his name was done out of spite for the man, who purportedly hated the concept of women getting an educationFact|date=February 2007. While there are apparently two buildings named for Russell Sage at RPI, one (Russell Sage Dining Hall) is actually named after Sage's nephew Russell Sage II [http://www.lib.rpi.edu/dept/library/html/Archives/buildings/sage_dining_hall.html] who graduated from RPI in 1859.

External links

*CongBio|S000013
* [http://www.accuracyproject.org/cbe-Sage,Russell.html Russell Sage] profile at Internet Accuracy Project

References

* Gustavus Myers, "History of the Great American Fortunes", volume iii, (Chicago, 1910)
* [http://www.deltos.com/reference/not-handbook/NtRH.html Not the Rensselaer Handbook]
* Paul Sarnoff, "Russell Sage: The Money King," Ivan Obolensky, Inc. (New York, 1965)