The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine
o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course, going
to bed does not make him rich--I merely mean that such a man will
in all probability be up early in the morning and do a big day's
work, so his weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues do their work
at night. Honest men work by day. It's all a matter of habit, and
good habits in America make any man rich. Wealth is largely a
result of habit.
--_John Jacob Astor_
[Illustration: JOHN JACOB ASTOR]
It was Victor Hugo who said, "When you open a school, you close a
prison."
This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have in
mind a theological school, nor yet a young-ladies' seminary, nor an
English boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a
parochial institute. What he was thinking of was a school where
people--young and old--were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant
and efficient--to care for themselves, to help bear the burdens of the
world, to assist themselves by adding to the happiness of others.
Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education which serves
is the one that increases human efficiency, not the one that
retards it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles,
position--immunity--may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens
the race, and its gain on the whole is nil.
Men are rich only as they give. He who gives service gets great returns.
Action and reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of the planets
balances their attraction. The love you keep is the love you give away.
A bumptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a
cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a
hardware-store and remarked, "Lemme see your razors."
The clerk smiled pleasantly and asked, "Do you want a razor to shave
with?" "Naw," said the colored person; "for social purposes."
An education for social purposes isn't of any more use than a razor
purchased for a like use. An education which merely fits a person to
prey on society, and occasionally slash it up, is a predatory
preparation for a life of uselessness, and closes no prison. Rather it
opens a prison and takes captive at least one man. The only education
that makes free is the one that tends to human efficiency. Teach
children to work, play, laugh, fletcherize, study, think, and yet again,
work, and we will raze every prison.
There is only one prison, and its name is Inefficiency. Amid the
bastions of this bastile of the brain the guards are Pride, Pretense,
Greed, Gluttony, Selfishness. Increase human efficiency and you set the
captives free. "The Teutonic tribes have captured the world because of
their efficiency," says Lecky the historian. He then adds that he
himself is a Celt.
The two statements taken together reveal Lecky to be a man without
prejudice. When the Irish tell the truth about the Dutch the millennium
approaches. Should the quibbler arise and say that the Dutch are not
Germans, I will reply, true, but the Germans are Dutch--at least they
are of Dutch descent.
The Germans are great simply because they have the homely and
indispensable virtues of prudence, patience and industry. There is no
copyright on these qualities. God can do many things, but so far, He has
never been able to make a strong race of people and leave these
ingredients out of the formula.
As a nation, Holland first developed them so that they became
characteristic of the whole people. It was the slow, steady stream of
Hollanders pushing southward that civilized Germany. Music as a science
was born in Holland. The grandfather of Beethoven was a Dutchman.
Gutenberg's forebears were from Holland. And when the Hollanders had
gone clear through Germany, and then traversed Italy, and came back home
by way of Venice, they struck the rock of spiritual resources and the
waters gushed forth.
Since Rembrandt carried portraiture to the point of perfection, two
hundred fifty years ago, Holland has been a land of artists--and it is
so even unto this day. John Jacob Astor was born of a Dutch family that
had migrated down to Heidelberg from Antwerp.
Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back,
and was more or less of a Stone-Age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by
trade, in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A
butcher's business then was to travel around and kill the pet pig, or
sheep, or cow that the tender-hearted owners dare not harm. The butcher
was a pariah, a sort of unofficial, industrial hangman.
At the same time he was more or less of a genius, for he climbed
steeples, dug wells, and did all kinds of disagreeable jobs that needed
to be done, and from which cautious men shrank like unwashed wool.
One such man--a German, too--lives in East Aurora. I joined him in
walking along a country road, the other day. He carried a big basket on
his arm, and was peacefully smoking a big Dutch pipe. We talked of music
and he was regretting the decline of a taste for Bach, when he happened
to shift the basket to the other arm. "What have you there?" I asked.
And here is the answer: "Oh, noddings--noddings but dynamite. I vas
going up on der hill to blow me some stumps oud." And I suddenly
bethought me of an engagement at the village.
* * * * *
John Jacob Astor was the youngest of four sons, and as many daughters.
The brothers ran away early in life, and went to sea or joined the army.
One of these boys came to America, and followed his father's trade of
butcher.
Jacob Astor, the happy father of John Jacob, used to take the boy with
him on his pig-killing expeditions--this for two reasons: one, so the
lad would learn a trade, and the other to make sure that the boy did not
run away.
Parents who hold their children by force have a very slender claim upon
them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy who
had such disgust for his father's trade, and hired him to work in his
garden and run errands. The intelligence and alertness of the lad made
him look like good timber for a minister.
He learned to read, and was duly confirmed as a member of the church.
Under the kindly care of the village parson John Jacob grew in mind and
body--his estate was to come later. When he was seventeen, his father
came and made a formal demand for his services. The young man must take
up his father's work of butchering. That night John Jacob walked out of
Waldorf by the wan light of the moon, headed for Antwerp. He carried a
big red handkerchief in which his worldly goods were knotted, and in his
heart he had the blessings of the Lutheran clergyman, who walked with
him for half a mile, and said a prayer at parting.
To have youth, high hope, right intent, health and a big red
handkerchief is to be greatly blessed. John Jacob got a job next day as
oarsman on a lumber-raft.
He reached Antwerp in a week. There he got a job on the docks as a
laborer. The next day he was promoted to checker-off. The captain of a
ship asked him to go to London and figure up the manifests on the way.
He went. The captain of the ship recommended him to the company in
London, and the boy was soon piling up wealth at the rate of a guinea a
month. In September, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-three, came the news to
London that George Washington had surrendered. In any event, peace had
been declared: Cornwallis had forced the issue, so the Americans had
stopped fighting. A little later it was given out that England had given
up her American Colonies, and they were free.
Intuitively, John Jacob Astor felt that the "New World" was the place
for him. He bought passage on a sailing-ship bound for Baltimore, at a
cost of five pounds. He then fastened five pounds in a belt around his
waist, and with the rest of his money--after sending two pounds home to
his father, with a letter of love--bought a dozen German flutes.
He had learned to play on this instrument with proficiency, and in
America he thought there would be an opening for musicians and musical
instruments. John Jacob was then nearly twenty years of age.
The ship sailed in November, but did not reach Baltimore until the
middle of March, having had to put back to sea on account of storms when
within sight of the Chesapeake. Then a month more was spent hunting for
the Chesapeake. There was plenty of time for flute-playing and making of
plans. On board ship he met a German, twenty years older than himself,
who was a fur-trader and had been home on a visit.
John Jacob played the flute, and the German friend told stories of
fur-trading among the Indians. Young Astor's curiosity was excited. The
Waldorf-Astoria plan of flute-playing was forgotten. He fed on
fur-trading.
The habits of the animals, the value of their pelts, the curing of the
furs, their final market, were all gone over again and again. The two
extra months at sea gave him an insight into a great business, and he
had the time to fletcherize his ideas. He thought about it--wrote about
it in his diary, for he was at the journal age. Wolves, bears, badgers,
minks and muskrats filled his dreams.
Arriving in Baltimore he was disappointed to learn that there were no
fur-traders there. He started for New York. Here he found work with a
certain Robert Bowne, a Quaker, who bought and sold furs.
Young Astor set himself to learn the business--every part of it. He was
always sitting on the curb at the door before the owner got around in
the morning, carrying a big key to open the warehouse. He was the last
to leave at night. He pounded furs with a stick, salted them, sorted
them, took them to the tanners, brought them home. He worked, and as he
worked, learned.
To secure the absolute confidence of a man, obey him. Only thus do you
get him to lay aside his weapons, be he friend or enemy. Any dullard can
be waited on and served, but to serve requires judgment, skill, tact,
patience and industry.
The qualities that make a youth a good servant are the basic ones for
mastership. Astor's alertness, willingness, loyalty, and ability to
obey, delivered his employer over into his hands. Robert Bowne, the good
old Quaker, insisted that Jacob should call him Robert; and from
boarding the young man with a near-by war widow who took cheap boarders,
Bowne took young Astor to his own house, and raised his pay from two
dollars a week to six.
Bowne had made an annual trip to Montreal for many years. Montreal was
the metropolis for furs. Bowne went to Montreal himself because he did
not know of any one he could trust to carry the message to Garcia. Those
who knew furs and had judgment were not honest, and those who were
honest did not know furs. Honest fools are really no better than rogues,
as far as practical purposes are concerned. Bowne once found a man who
was honest and also knew furs, but alas! he had a passion for drink,
and no prophet could foretell his "periodic," until it occurred.
Young Astor had been with Bowne only a year. He spoke imperfect English,
but he did not drink nor gamble, and he knew furs and was honest. Bowne
started him off for Canada with a belt full of gold; his only weapon was
a German flute that he carried in his hand. Bowne being a Quaker did not
believe in guns. Flutes were a little out of his line, too, but he
preferred them to flintlocks.
John Jacob Astor ascended the Hudson River to Albany, and then with pack
on his back, struck north, alone, through the forest to Lake Champlain.
As he approached an Indian settlement he played his flute. The
aborigines showed no disposition to give him the hook. He hired Indians
to paddle him up to the Canadian border. He reached Montreal.
The fur-traders there knew Bowne as a very sharp buyer, and so had their
quills out on his approach. But young Astor was seemingly indifferent.
His manner was courteous and easy. He got close to his man, and took his
pick of the pelts at fair prices. He expended all of his money, and even
bought on credit, for there are men who always have credit.
Young Astor found Indian nature to be simply human nature. The savage
was a man, and courtesy, gentleness and fairly good flute-playing
soothed his savage breast. Astor had beads and blankets, a flute and a
smile. The Indians carried his goods by relays and then with guttural
certificates as to his character passed him on to other red men, and at
last he reached New York without the loss of a pelt or the dampening of
his ardor.
Bowne was delighted. To young Astor it was nothing. He had in his blood
the success corpuscle. He might have remained with Bowne and become a
partner in the business, but Bowne had business limitations and Astor
hadn't. So after a three years' apprenticeship, Astor knew all that
Bowne did and all he himself could imagine besides. So he resigned.
In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-six, John Jacob Astor began business on his
own account in a little store on Water Street, New York. There were one
room and a basement. He had saved a few hundred dollars: his brother,
the butcher, had loaned him a few hundred more, and Robert Bowne had
contributed a bale of skins to be paid for "at thy own price and thy own
convenience."
Astor had made friends with the Indians up the Hudson clear to Albany,
and they were acting as recruiting-agents for him. He was a bit boastful
of the fact that he had taught an Indian to play the flute, and anyway
he had sold the savage the instrument for a bale of beaver-pelts, with a
bearskin thrown in for good measure. It was a musical achievement as
well as a commercial one.
Having collected several thousand dollars' worth of furs he shipped
them to London and embarked as a passenger in the steerage. The trip
showed him that ability to sell was quite as necessary as the ability to
buy--a point which with all of his shrewdness Bowne had never guessed.
In London furs were becoming a fad. Astor sorted and sifted his buyers,
as he had his skins. He himself dressed in a suit of fur and thus proved
his ability as an advertiser. He picked his men and charged all the
traffic would bear. He took orders, on sample, from the nobility and
sundry of the gentry, and thereby cut the middleman. All of the money he
received for his skins he invested in "Indian Goods"--colored cloth,
beads, blankets, knives, axes, and musical instruments. His was the
first store in New York that carried a stock of musical instruments.
These he sold to the savages, and also he supplied the stolid Dutch the
best of everything in this particular line, from a bazoo to a
Stradivarius violin.
When he got back to New York, he at once struck out through the
wilderness to buy furs of the Indians, or, better still, to interest
them in bringing furs to him.
He knew the value of friendship in trade as no other man of the time
did. He went clear through to Lake Erie, down to Niagara Falls, along
Lake Ontario across to Lake Champlain and then down the Hudson. He
foresaw the great city of Buffalo, and Rochester as well, only he said
that Rochester would probably be situated directly on the lake. But the
water-power of the Genesee Falls proved a stronger drawing power than
the lake front. He prophesied that along the banks of the Niagara Falls
would be built the greatest manufacturing city in the world. There were
flourmills and sawmills there then. The lumber first used in building
the city of Buffalo was brought from the sawmills at "The Falls."
Electric power, of course, was then a thing unguessed, but Astor
prophesied the Erie Canal, and made good guesses as to where prosperous
cities would appear along its line.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, John Jacob Astor married Sarah Todd. Her
mother was a Brevoort, and it was brought about by her coming to Astor
to buy furs with which to make herself a coat. Her ability to judge furs
and make them up won the heart of the dealer. The marriage brought young
Astor into "the best Dutch New York society," a combination that was
quite as exclusive then as now.
This marriage was a business partnership as well as a marital, and
proved a success in every way. Sarah was a worker, with all the good old
Dutch qualities of patience, persistence, industry and economy. When her
husband went on trips she kept store. She was the only partner in whom
he ever had implicit faith. And faith is the first requisite in success.
Captain Cook had skirted the Pacific Coast from Cape Horn to Alaska,
and had brought to the attention of the fur-dealing and fur-wearing
world the sea-otter of the Northern Pacific. He also gave a
psychological prophetic glimpse of the insidious sealskin sack.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, a ship from the Pacific brought a hundred
otter-skins to New York. The skins were quickly sold to London buyers at
exorbitant prices.
The nobility wanted sea-otter, or "Royal American Ermine," as they
called it. The scarcity boomed the price. Ships were quickly fitted out
and dispatched. Boats bound for the whale fisheries were diverted, and
New Bedford had a spasm of jealousy. Astor encouraged these fur-seeking
expeditions, but at first declined to invest any money in them, as he
considered them "extra hazardous." He was not a speculator.
* * * * *
Astor lived over his store in Water Street until the year Eighteen
Hundred when he moved to the plain and modest house at Two Hundred
Twenty-three Broadway, on the site of the old Astor House. Here he lived
for twenty-five years.
The fur business was simple and very profitable. Astor now was confining
himself mostly to beaver-skins. He fixed the price at one dollar, to be
paid to the Indians or trappers. It cost fifty cents to prepare and
transport the skin to London. There it was sold at from five to ten
dollars. All the money received for skins was then invested in English
merchandise, which was sold in New York at a profit. In Eighteen
Hundred, Astor owned three ships which he had bought so as absolutely to
control his trade. Ascertaining that London dealers were reshipping furs
to China, early in the century he dispatched one of his ships directly
to the Orient, loaded with furs, with explicit written instructions to
the captain as to what the cargo should be sold for. The money was to be
invested in teas and silks. The ship sailed away, and had been gone a
year. No tidings had come from her. Suddenly a messenger came with the
news that the ship was in the bay. We can imagine the interest of Mr.
and Mrs. Astor as they locked their store and ran to the Battery. Sure
enough, it was their ship, riding gently on the tide, snug, strong and
safe as when she had left.
The profit on this one voyage was seventy thousand dollars. By Eighteen
Hundred Ten, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to
invest all his surplus money in New York real estate. He bought acreage
property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill,
the estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred sixty acres just
above Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an
acre. People said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots
from the Richmond Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an
acre. Fortunately for his estate he did not sell much of the land at
this price, for it is this particular dirt that makes up that vast
property known as "The Astor Estate."
During the Revolutionary War, Roger Morris, of Putnam County, New York,
made the mistake of siding with the Tories.
A mob collected, and Morris and his family escaped, taking ship to
England. Before leaving, Morris declared his intention of coming back as
soon as "the insurrection was quelled." Roger Morris never came back.
Roger Morris is known in history as the man who married Mary Philipse.
And this lady lives in history because she had the felicity of being
proposed to by George Washington. George himself tells us of this in his
Journal, and George, you will remember, could not tell a lie. George was
twenty-five, he was on his way to Boston, and was entertained at the
Philipse house, the Plaza not having then been built. Mary was twenty,
pink and lissome. Immediately after supper, George, finding himself
alone in the parlor with the girl, proposed. He was an opportunist.
The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country declined to
give. He was a soldier and demanded immediate surrender. A small quarrel
followed, and George saddled his horse and rode on his way to fame and
fortune. Mary thought he would come back, but George never proposed to
the same lady twice. Yet he thought kindly of Mary and excused her
conduct by recording, "I think ye ladye was not in ye moode."
Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General George
Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the
Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled.
Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving
into the mansion, remarked to Colonel Aaron Burr, his aide, "I move in
here for sentimental reasons--I have a small and indirect claim on the
place."
It was Washington who formally confiscated the property, and turned it
over to the State of New York as contraband of war. The Morris estate of
about fifty thousand acres was parceled out and sold by the State of New
York to settlers. It seems, however, that Roger Morris had only a
life-interest in the estate, and this was a legal point so fine that it
was entirely overlooked in the joy of confiscation. Washington was a
great soldier, but an indifferent lawyer.
John Jacob Astor accidentally ascertained the facts. He was convinced
that the heirs could not be robbed of their rights through the acts of a
leaseholder, which legally was the status of Roger Morris. Astor was a
good real-estate lawyer himself, but he referred the point to the best
counsel he could find. They agreed with him. He next hunted up the heirs
and bought their quitclaims for one hundred thousand dollars. He then
notified the parties who had purchased the land, and they in turn made
claim upon the State for protection.
After much legal parleying the case was tried according to stipulation
with the State of New York, directly, as defendant, and Astor and the
occupants, as plaintiffs. Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren appeared
for the State, and an array of lesser legal lights for Astor.
The case was narrowed down to the plain and simple point that Roger
Morris was not the legal owner of the estate, and that the rightful
heirs could not be made to suffer for the "treason, contumacy and
contravention" of another. Astor won, and as a compromise the State
issued him twenty-year bonds bearing six per cent interest, for the neat
sum of five hundred thousand dollars--not that Astor needed the money,
but finance was to him a game, and he had won.
* * * * *
In front of the first A. T. Stewart store there used to be an old woman
who sold apples. Regardless of weather, there she sat and mumbled her
wares at the passer-by. She was a combination beggar and merchant, with
a blundering wit, a ready tongue and a vocabulary unfit for publication.
Her commercial genius is shown in the fact that she secured one
good-paying customer--Alexander T. Stewart. Stewart grew to believe in
her as his spirit of good luck. Once when bargains had been offered at
the Stewart store and the old woman was not at her place on the curb,
the merchant-prince sent his carriage for her in hot haste, "lest
offense be given." And the day was saved.
When the original store was abandoned for the Stewart "Palace," the old
apple-woman, with her box, basket and umbrella, was tenderly taken
along, too.
John Jacob Astor had no such belief in luck-omens, portents, or mascots
as had A. T. Stewart. With him success was a sequence--a result--it was
all cause and effect. A. T. Stewart did not trust entirely to luck, for
he, too, carefully devised and planned. But the difference between the
Celtic and the Teutonic mind is shown in that Stewart hoped to succeed,
while Astor knew that he would. One was a bit anxious; the other
exasperatingly placid.
Astor took a deep interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition. He went
to Washington to see Lewis, and questioned him at great length about the
Northwest. Legend says that he gave the hardy discoverer a thousand
dollars, which was a big amount for him to give away.
Once a committee called on him with a subscription-list for some worthy
charity. Astor subscribed fifty dollars. One of the disappointed
committee remarked, "Oh, Mr. Astor, your son William gave us a hundred
dollars." "Yes," said the old man, "but you must remember that William
has a rich father."
Washington Irving has told the story of Astoria at length. It was the
one financial plunge taken by John Jacob Astor. And in spite of the fact
that it failed, the whole affair does credit to the prophetic brain of
Astor. "This country will see a chain of growing and prosperous cities
straight from New York to Astoria, Oregon," said this man in reply to a
doubting questioner.
He laid his plans before Congress, urging a line of army-posts, forty
miles apart, from the western extremity of Lake Superior to the Pacific.
"These forts or army-posts will evolve into cities," said Astor, when he
called on Thomas Jefferson, who was then President of the United States.
Jefferson was interested, but non-committal. Astor exhibited maps of the
Great Lakes, and the country beyond. He argued with a prescience then
not possessed by any living man that at the western extremity of Lake
Superior would grow up a great city. Yet in Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-six, Duluth was ridiculed by the caustic tongue of Proctor
Knott, who asked, "What will become of Duluth when the lumber-crop is
cut?" Astor proceeded to say that another great city would grow up at
the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. General Dearborn, Secretary of
War under Jefferson, had just established Fort Dearborn on the present
site of Chicago. Astor commended this, and said, "From a fort you get a
trading-post, and from a trading-post you will get a city."
He pointed out to Jefferson the site, on his map, of the Falls of Saint
Anthony. "There you will have a fort some day, for wherever there is
water-power, there will grow up mills for grinding grain, and sawmills
as well. This place of power will have to be protected, and so you will
have there a post which will eventually be replaced by a city." Yet Fort
Snelling was nearly fifty years in the future, and Saint Paul and
Minneapolis were dreams undreamed.
Jefferson took time to think about it and then wrote Astor thus: "Your
beginning of a city on the Western Coast is a great acquisition, and I
look forward to a time when our population will spread itself up and
down along the whole Pacific frontage, unconnected with us, except by
ties of blood and common interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of
self-government."
The Pilgrim Fathers thought land that lay inward from the sea was
valueless. The forest was an impassable barrier. Later, up to the time
of George Washington, the Alleghanies were regarded as a natural
barrier. Patrick Henry likened the Alleghany Mountains to the Alps that
separated Italy from Germany and said, "The mountain-ranges are lines
that God has set to separate one people from another."
Later, statesmen have spoken of the ocean in the same way, as proof that
a union of all countries under an international capital could never
exist.
Great as was Jefferson, he regarded the achievement of Lewis and Clark
as a feat, and not an example. He looked upon the Rocky Mountains as a
natural separation of peoples "bound by ties of blood and mutual
interest, but otherwise unconnected." To pierce these mighty mountains
with tunnels, and whisper across them with the human voice, were of
course miracles as yet unguessed. But Astor closed his eyes and saw
great pack-trains, mules laden with skins, winding across these
mountains, and down to tidewater at Astoria. There his ships would be
lying at the docks, ready to sail for the Far East. James J. Hill was
yet to come.
* * * * *
A company was formed, and two expeditions set out for the mouth of the
Columbia River, one by land and the other by sea.
The land expedition barely got through alive; it was a perilous
undertaking, with accidents by flood and field and in the imminent
deadly breach. But the route by the water was feasible.
The town was founded and soon became a center of commercial activity.
Had Astor been on the ground to take personal charge, a city like
Seattle would have bloomed and blossomed on the Pacific, fifty years
ago. But power at Astoria was subdivided among several little men, who
wore themselves out in a struggle for honors, and to see who would be
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. John Jacob Astor was too far away to
send a current of electricity through the vacuum of their minds, light
up the recesses with reason, and shock them into sanity. Like those
first settlers at Jamestown, the pioneers at Astoria saw only failure
ahead, and that which we fear we bring to pass. To settle a continent
with men is almost as difficult as Nature's attempt to form a soil on a
rocky surface. There came a grand grab at Astoria and it was each for
himself and the devil take the hindmost--it was a stampede.
System and order went by the board. The strongest stole the most, as
usual, but all got a little. And England's gain in citizens was our
loss.
Astor lost a million dollars by the venture. He smiled calmly and said:
"The plan was right, but my men were weak--that is all. The gateway to
China will be from the Northwest. My plans were correct. Time will
vindicate my reasoning."
When the block on Broadway, bounded by Vesey and Barclay Streets, was
cleared of its plain two-story houses preparatory to building the Astor
House, wise men shook their heads and said, "It's too far uptown." But
the free bus that met all boats solved the difficulty, and gave the cue
to hotel-men all over the world. The hotel that runs full is a goldmine.
Hungry men feed, and the beautiful part about the hotel business is that
the customers are hungry the next day--also thirsty. Astor was worth ten
millions, but he took a personal delight in sitting in the lobby of the
Astor House and watching the dollars roll into this palace that his
brain had planned. To have an idea--to watch it grow--to then work it
out, and see it made manifest in concrete substance, this was his joy.
The Astor House was a bigger hostelry in its day than the
Waldorf-Astoria is now.
Astor was tall, thin, and commanding in appearance. He had only one
hallucination, and that was that he spoke the English language. The
accent he possessed at thirty was with him in all its pristine
effulgence at eighty-five. "Nopody vould know I vas a Cherman--aind't
it?" he used to say. He spoke French, a dash of Spanish, and could
parley in Choctaw, Ottawa, Mohawk and Huron. But they who speak several
languages must not be expected to speak any one language well.
Yet when John Jacob wrote, it was English without a flaw. In all his
dealings he was uniquely honorable and upright. He paid and he made
others pay. His word was his bond. He was not charitable in the sense of
indiscriminate giving. "To give something for nothing is to weaken the
giver," was one of his favorite sayings. That this attitude protected a
miserly spirit, it is easy to say, but it is not wholly true. In his
later years he carried with him a book containing a record of his
possessions. This was his breviary. In it he took a very pardonable
delight. He would visit a certain piece of property, and then turn to
his book and see what it had cost him ten or twenty years before. To
realize that his prophetic vision had been correct was to him a great
source of satisfaction.
His habits were of the best. He went to bed at nine o'clock, and was up
before six. At seven he was at his office. He knew enough to eat
sparingly and to walk, so he was never sick.
Millionaires as a rule are wofully ignorant. Up to a certain sum, they
grow with their acquisitions. Then they begin to wither at the heart.
The care of a fortune is a penalty. I advise the gentle reader to think
twice before accumulating ten millions. John Jacob Astor was exceptional
in his combined love of money and love of books. History was at his
tongue's end, and geography was his plaything. Fitz-Greene Halleck was
his private secretary, hired on a basis of literary friendship.
Washington Irving was a close friend, too, and first crossed the
Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked on Washington Irving's genius, and
loaned him money to come and go, and buy a house. Irving was named in
Astor's will as one of the trustees of the Astor Library Fund, and
repaid all favors by writing "Astoria."
Astor died, aged eighty-six. It was a natural death, a thing that very
seldom occurs. The machinery all ran down at once. Realizing his lack of
book advantages, he left by his will four hundred thousand dollars to
found the Astor Library, in order that others might profit where he had
lacked. He also left fifty thousand dollars to his native town of
Waldorf, a part of which money was used to found an Astor Library there.
God is surely good, for if millionaires were immortal, their money would
cause them great misery and the swollen fortunes would crowd mankind,
not only 'gainst the wall, but into the sea. Death is the deliverer, for
Time checks power and equalizes all things, and gives the new generation
a chance.
Astor hated gamblers. He never confused gambling, as a mode of
money-getting, with actual production. He knew that gambling produces
nothing--it merely transfers wealth, changes ownership. And since it
involves loss of time and energy it is a positive waste. Yet to buy
land and hold it, thus betting on its rise in value, is not production,
either. Nevertheless, this was to Astor legitimate and right.
Henry George threw no shadow before, and no economist had ever written
that to secure land and hold it unused, awaiting a rise in value, was a
dog-in-the-manger, unethical and selfish policy. Morality is a matter of
longitude and time.
Astor was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and yet he lived out
his days with a beautiful and perfect disbelief in revealed religion. He
knew enough of biology to know that religions are not "revealed"--they
are evolved. Yet he recognized the value of the Church as a social
factor. To him it was a good police system, and so when rightly
importuned he gave, with becoming moderation, to all faiths and creeds.
A couple of generations back in his ancestry there was a renegade Jew
who loved a Christian girl, and thereby molted his religion. When Cupid
crosses swords with a priest, religion gets a death-stroke. This stream
of free blood was the inheritance of John Jacob Astor.
William B. Astor, the son of John Jacob, was brought up in the financial
way he should go. He was studious, methodical, conservative, and had the
good sense to carry out the wishes of his father. His son, John Jacob
Astor, was very much like him, only of more neutral tint. The time is
now ripe for another genius in the Astor family. If William B. Astor
lacked the courage and initiative of his parent, he had more culture,
and spoke English without an accent. The son of John Jacob Astor second
is William Waldorf Astor, who speaks English with an English accent, you
know.
John Jacob Astor, besides having the first store for the sale of musical
instruments in America, organized the first orchestra of over twelve
players. He brought over a leader from Germany, and did much to foster
the love of music in the New World.
Every worthy Maecenas imagines that he is a great painter, writer,
sculptor or musician, sidetracked by material cares thrust upon him by
unkind Fate. John Jacob Astor once told Washington Irving that it was
only business responsibility that prevented his being a novelist; and at
other times he declared his intent to take up music as a profession as
soon as he had gotten all of his securities properly tied up. And
whether John Jacob worked out his dreams or not, there is no doubt that
they added to his peace, happiness and length of days. Happy indeed is
the man who escapes the critics by leaving his literary masterpiece in
the ink.