History of the Great American Fortunes Part 8

A PROLIFIC BREEDER OF WEALTH.

Under such a system land was the one great auspicious, facile and durable means of rolling up an overshadowing fortune. Its exclusive possession struck at the very root of human necessity. At a pinch people can do without trade or money, but land they must have, even if only to lie down on and starve. The impoverish, jobless worker, with disaster facing him, must first perforce give up his precious few coins to the landlord and take chances on food and the remainder. Especially is land in demand in a complicated industrial system which causes much of the population to gravitate to centers where industries and trade are concentrated and congest there.

A more formidable system for the foundation and amplification of lasting fortunes has not existed. It is automatically self-perpetuating. And that it is preeminently so is seen in the fact that the large shipping fortunes of a century ago are now generally as completely forgotten as the methods then used are obsolete. But the land has remained land; and the fortunes then incubated have grown into mighty powers of great national, and some of considerable international, importance.

It was by favor of these propitious conditions that many of the great fortunes, based upon land, were founded. According to the successive census returns of the United States, by far the greater part of the wealth of the country as regards real estate was, and is, concentrated in the North Atlantic Division and the North Central Division, the one taking in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, the other Chicago, Cincinnati and other cities.[70] It is in the large cities that the great land fortunes are to be found. The greatest of these fortunes are the Astor, Goelet and Rhinelander estates in the East and, in the West, the Longworth and Field estates are notable examples. To deal with all the conspicuous fortunes based upon land would necessitate an interminable narrative. Suffice it for the purposes of this work to take up a few of the superlatively great fortunes as representatives of those based upon land.

VAST FORTUNES FROM LAND.

The foremost of all American fortunes derived from land is the Astor fortune. Its present bulk, embracing all the collateral family branches, is estimated by some authorities at about $300,000,000. This, it is generally believed, is an underestimate. As long ago as 1889, when the population of New York City was much less than now, Thomas G. Shearman, a keen student of land conditions, placed the collective wealth of the Astors at $250,000,000.[71] The stupendous magnitude of this fortune alone may at once be seen in its relation to the condition of the ma.s.ses of the people. An a.n.a.lysis of the United States census of 1900, compiled by Lucien Sanial, shows that while the total wealth of the country was estimated at about $95,000,000,000, the proletarian cla.s.s, composed chiefly of wage workers and a small proportion of those in professional cla.s.ses, and numbering 20,393,137 persons, owned only about $4,000,000,000. It is by such a contrast, bringing out how one family alone, the Astors, own more than many millions of workers, that we begin to get an idea of the overreaching, colossal power of a single fortune.

The Goelet fortune is likewise vast; it is variously estimated at from $200,000,000 to $225,000,000, although what its exact proportions are is a matter of some obscurity.

In the case of these great fortunes it is well nigh impossible to get an accurate idea of just how much they reach. All of them are based primarily upon ownership of land, but they also include many other forms such as shares in banks, coal and other mines, railroads, city transportation systems, gas plants, industrial corporations. Even the most indefatigable tax a.s.sessors find it such a fruitless and elusive task in attempting to discover what personal property is held by these multimillionaires, that the a.s.sessment is usually a conjectural or haphazard performance. The extent of their land holdings is known; these cannot be hid in a safe deposit vault. But their other varieties of property are carefully concealed from public and official knowledge.

Since this is so, it is entirely probable that the fortunes of these families are considerably greater than is commonly estimated. The case of Marshall Field, a Chicago Croesus, who left a fortune valued at about $100,000,000, is a strong ill.u.s.tration. This man owned $30,000,000 worth of real estate in Chicago alone. There was no telling, however, what his whole estate amounted to, for he refused year after year to pay taxes on more than a valuation of $2,500,000 of personal property. Yet, after his death in 1906, an inventory of his estate filed in January, 1907, disclosed a clear taxable personal property of $49,977,270. He was far richer than he would have it appear.

Let us investigate the careers of some of these powerful landed men, the founders of great fortunes, and inquire into their methods and into the conditions under which they succeeded in heaping up their immense acc.u.mulations.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] In 1847 and 1849 the Anti-Renters demonstrated a voting strength in New York State of about 5,000. Livingston's t.i.tle to his estate being called into question, a suit was brought. The court decision favored him. The Livingstons, it may be again remarked, were long powerful in politics, and had had their members on the bench.--"Life of Silas Wright," 179-226; "Last Leaves of American History":16-18, etc.

[69] The debates in this convention showed that the feudal conditions described in this chapter prevailed down to 1846.--New York Const.i.tution; Debates in Convention, 1846; 1052-1056. This is an extract from the official convention report: "Mr. Jordan [a delegate] said that it was from such things that relief was asked: which although the moral sense of the community will not admit to be enforced, are still actually in existence."

[70] Of a total of $39,544,333,000, representing wealth in real estate and improvements, the census of 1890 attributed $13,905,274,364 to the North Atlantic Division and a trifle more than $15,000,000,000 to the North Central Division.

[71] The Forum (Magazine), November, 1889.

CHAPTER II

THE INCEPTION OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE

The founder of the Astor fortune was John Jacob Astor, a butcher's son.

He was born in Waldorf, Germany, on July 17, 1763. At the age of eighteen, according to traditional accounts, he went to London, where a brother, George Peter, was in the business of selling musical instruments. Two years later with "one good suit of Sunday clothes, seven flutes and five pounds sterling of money"[72] he emigrated to America. Landing at Baltimore he proceeded to New York City.

Here he became an apprentice to George Dieterich, a baker at No. 351 Pearl street, for whom he peddled cakes, as was the custom. Walter Barrett insists that this was Astor's first occupation in New York.

Later, Astor went into business for himself. "For a long time," says Barrett, "he peddled [fur] skins, and bought them where he could; and bartered cheap jewelry, etc., from the pack he carried on his back."[73]

Another story is that he got a job beating furs for $2 a week and board in the store of Robert Bowne, a New York merchant; that while in this place he showed great zest in quizzing the trappers who came in to sell furs, and that in this fashion he gained considerable knowledge of the fur animals. The story proceeds that as Bowne grew older he entrusted to Astor the task of making long and fatiguing journeys to the Indian tribes in the Adirondacks and Canada and bargaining with them for furs.

ASTOR'S EARLY CAREER.

Astor got together enough money to start in the fur business for himself in 1786 in a small store on Water street. It is not unreasonable to suppose that at this time he, in common with all the fur dealers of the time, partic.i.p.ated in the current methods of defrauding the Indians. It is certain that he contrived to get their most valuable furs for a jug of rum or for a few toys or notions. Returning from these strokes of trade, he would ship large quant.i.ties of the furs to London where they were sold at great profit.

His marriage to Sarah Todd, a cousin of Henry Brevoort, brought him a good wife, who had the shining quality of being economical, and an accession of some means and considerable family connections. Remarkably close-fisted, he weighed over every penny. As fast as his means increased he used them in extending his business. By 1794 he was somewhat of an expansive merchant. Scores of trappers and agents ravaged the wilderness at his command. Periodically he shipped large quant.i.ties of furs to Europe. His modest, even n.i.g.g.ardly, ways of living in rooms over his store were not calculated to create the impression that he was a rich man. It was his invariable practice habitually to deceive others as to his possessions and plans. But when, in 1800, he removed to No.

223 Broadway, at the corner of Vesey street, then a fashionable neighborhood, he was rated, perforce, as a man of no inconsiderable means. He was, in fact, as nearly as can be gathered, worth at this time a quarter of a million dollars--a monumental fortune at a period when a man who had $50,000 was thought rich; when a good house could be rented for $350 a year and when $750 or $800 would fully defray the annual expenses of the average well-living family.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN JACOB ASTOR.

The Founder of the Colossal Astor Fortune.

(From an Engraving.)]

The great profits from the fur trade naturally led him into the business of being his own shipowner and shipper, for he was a highly efficient organizer and well understood the needlessness of middlemen. A beaver skin bought for one dollar from the Indian or white trappers in Western New York could be sold in London for six dollars and a quarter. On all other furs there were the same large profits. But, in addition to these, Astor saw that his profits could be still further increased by investing the money that he received from the sale of his furs in England, in English goods and importing them to the United States. By this process, the profit from a single beaver skin could be made to reach ten dollars.

At that time the United States depended upon British manufactures for many articles, especially certain grades of woolen goods and cutlery.

These were sold at exorbitant profit to the American people. This trade Astor carried on in his own ships.

HIS METHODS IN BUSINESS.

It is of the greatest importance to ascertain Astor's methods in his fur trade, for it was fundamentally from this trade that he reaped the enormous sums that enabled him to become a large landowner. What these methods were in his earlier years is obscure. Nothing definite is embodied in any doc.u.mentary evidence. Not so, however, regarding the methods of the greatest and most successful of his fur gathering enterprises, the American Fur Company. The "popular writer" referred to before says that the circ.u.mstances of Astor's fur and shipping activities are well known. On the contrary, they are distinctly not well known nor have they ever been set forth. None of Astor's biographers have brought them out, if, indeed, they knew of them. And yet these facts are of the most absolute significance in that they reveal the whole foundation of the colossal fortune of the Astor family.

The pursuit and slaughter of fur animals were carried on with such indefatigable vigor in the East that in time that territory became virtually exhausted. It became imperative to push out into the fairly virgin regions of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and of the Rocky Mountains. The Northwest Company, a corporation running under British auspices, was then scouring the wilds west and northwest of the Great Lakes. Its yearly shipments of furs were enormous.[74] Astor realized the inconceivably vaster profits which would be his in extending his scope to the domains of the far West, so prolific in opportunities for furs.

In 1808 he incorporated the American Fur Company. Although this was a corporation, he was, in fact, the Company. He personally supplied its initial capital of $500,000 and dictated every phase of its policy. His first ambitious design was to found the settlement of Astoria in Oregon, but the war of 1812 frustrated plans well under way, and the expedition that he sent out there had to depart.[75] Had this plan succeeded, Astor would have been, as he rightly boasted, the richest man in the world; and the present wealth of his descendants instead of being $450,000,000 would be manifold more.

MONOPOLY BASED ON FORCE.

Thwarted in his project to get a monopoly of the incalculable riches of furs in the extreme Northwest, he concentrated his efforts on that vast region extending along the Missouri River, far north to the Great Lakes, west to the Rocky Mountains and into the Southwest. It was a region abounding in immense numbers of fur animals and, at that time, was inhabited by the Indian tribes, with here and there a settlement of whites. By means of Government favoritism and the unconcealed exercise of both fraud and force, he obtained a complete monopoly, as complete and arbitrary as ever feudal baron held over seignorial estates.

Nominally, the United States Government ruled this great sweep of territory and made the laws and professed to execute them. In reality, Astor's company was a law unto itself. That it employed both force and fraud and entirely ignored all laws enacted by Congress, is as clear as daylight from the Government reports of that period.

The American Fur Company maintained three princ.i.p.al posts or depots of receiving and distribution--one at St. Louis, one at Detroit, the third at Mackinac. In response to an order from Lewis Ca.s.s, Secretary of War, to send in complete reports of the fur trade, Joshua Pilcher reported from St. Louis, December 1, 1831:

About this time [1823] the American Fur Company had turned their attention to the Missouri trade, and, as might have been expected, soon put an end to all opposition. Backed, as it was, by any amount of capital, and with skillful agents to conduct its affairs at _every point_, it succeeded by the year 1827, in monopolizing the trade of the Indians on the Missouri, and I have but little doubt will continue to do so for years to come, as it would be rather a hazardous business for small adventurers to rise in opposition to it.[76]

In that wild country where the Government, at best, had an insufficient force of troops, and where the agents of the company went heavily armed, it was distinctly recognized, and accepted as a fact, that no possible compet.i.tor's men, or individual trader, dare intrude. To do it was to invite the severest reprisals, not stopping short of outright murder.

The American Fur Company overawed and dominated everything; it defied the Government's representatives and acknowledged no authority superior to itself and no law other than what its own interests demanded. The exploitation that ensued was one of the most deliberate, cruel and appalling that has ever taken place in any country.

THE DEBAUCHING OF INDIANS.

If there was any one serious crime at that time it was the supplying of the Indians with whisky. The Government fully recognized the baneful effects of debauching the Indians, and enacted strict laws with harsh penalties. Astor's company brazenly violated this law, as well as all other laws conflicting with its profit interests. It smuggled in prodigious quant.i.ties of rum. The trader's ancient trick of getting the Indians drunk and then swindling them of their furs and land was carried on by Astor on an unprecedented scale. To say that Astor knew nothing of what his agents were doing is a palliation not worthy of consideration; he was a man who knew and attended to even the pettiest details of his varied business. Moreover, the liquor was despatched by his orders direct by ship to New Orleans and from thence up the Mississippi to St.

Louis and to other frontier points. The horrible effects of this traffic and the consequent spoliation were set forth by a number of Government officers.

Col. J. Snelling, commanding the garrison at Detroit, sent an indignant protest to James Barbour, Secretary of War, under date of August 23, 1825. "He who has the most whisky, generally carries off the most furs,"

wrote Col. Snelling, and then continued:

The neighborhood of the trading houses where whisky is sold, presents a disgusting scene of drunkenness, debauchery and misery; it is the fruitful source of all our difficulties, and of nearly all the murders committed in the Indian country.... For the accommodation of my family I have taken a house three miles from town, and in pa.s.sing to and from it, I have daily opportunities of seeing the road strewed with the bodies of men, women and children, in the last stages of brutal intoxication. It is true there are laws in this territory to restrain the sale of whisky, but they are not regarded....[77]

Col. Snelling added that during that year there had been delivered by contract to an agent of the North American Fur Company, at Mackinac (he meant the American Fur Company which, as we have seen, had one of its princ.i.p.al headquarters at that post and maintained a monopoly there), 3,300 gallons of whisky and 2,500 gallons of high wines. This latter liquor was preferred by the agents, he pointed out, as it could be "increased at pleasure." Col. Snelling went on: "I will venture to add that an inquiry into the manner in which the Indian trade is conducted, especially by the North American Fur Company, is a matter of no small importance to the tranquillity of the borders."[78]

VIOLATION OF LAWS.

A similar report was made the next winter by Thomas L. McKenney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to the Secretary of War. In a communication dated Feb. 14, 1826, McKenney wrote that "the forbidden and destructive article, whisky, is considered so essential to a lucrative commerce, as not only to still those feelings [of repugnance]