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For several years he conducted a pyrotechnic campaign , surveying the territory in question , organizing great railway-construction corps , building hundreds of miles of track under most trying conditions , and selling great blocks of his stock , on which interest of a certain percentage was guaranteed . If it had not been that he knew little of railroad-building , personally , and that the project was so vast that it could not well be encompassed by one man , even so great a man it might have proved successful , as under subsequent management it did . However , hard times , the war between France and Germany , which tied up European capital for the time being and made it indifferent to American projects , envy , calumny , a certain percentage of mismanagement , all conspired to wreck it . On September 18 , 1873 , at twelve-fifteen noon , Jay Cooke & Co. failed for approximately eight million dollars and the Northern Pacific for all that had been invested in it -- some fifty million dollars more . One can imagine what the result was -- the most important financier and the most distinguished railway enterprise collapsing at one and the same time . `` A financial thunderclap in a clear sky , '' said the Philadelphia Press . `` No one could have been more surprised , '' said the Philadelphia Inquirer , `` if snow had fallen amid the sunshine of a summer noon . ''