REMOVAL TO MICHIGAN--MERCANTILE SUCCESS--BUSINESS INVESTMENTS.
In 1833 Zachariah Chandler, then still a minor, joined the current of
Western emigration from New York and New England which had sprung up
with the completion of the Erie canal, and in the fall of that year
entered into the retail dry-goods business at Detroit. Franklin Moore
(the husband of his sister Annis), who had already visited Michigan,
came with him as a partner in the enterprise, and the original firm
name was Moore & Chandler. At the outset the young merchant had some
assistance from his father, who, the tradition is, offered him $1,000
in cash or the collegiate education which his brothers received, the
money being chosen. Samuel Chandler also subsequently bought a store
for his son's use, but it is understood that all such advances were
speedily and fully repaid. The building in which the future Senator
first laid the foundation of his ample fortune was located where the
Biddle House now stands; it adjoined the mansion of Governor Hull, and
was subsequently transformed into the American House. Upon its shelves
Moore & Chandler displayed a small general stock, representing the
ample assortment usual in frontier stores, and saw a promising business
answer their invitations. In the following spring they removed to a
brick store (on the site now occupied by S. P. Wilcox & Co.), near the
main corner of the town (where Woodward and Jefferson avenues meet).
In the summer of 1834 Detroit was visited by the Asiatic cholera,
which appeared in malignant form, and was attended by an appalling
death rate, and an almost entire suspension of general traffic. Mr.
Chandler did not yield to the prevalent panic, but remained at his
business and was indefatigable in his efforts to relieve the universal
distress. His vigorous constitution and plain habits guarded his own
health, and he cared for the sick and buried the dead without faltering
amid the dreadful scenes of the pestilence. For weeks he and a clerk
(Mr. William N. Carpenter, of Detroit) alternated in watching by sick
beds, and, with others of like strength and courage, brightened with
unassuming heroism the gloomy picture of a season of dreadful mortality.
On August 16, 1836, the firm of Moore & Chandler was dissolved, and the
junior partner retained the established business, and continued its
vigorous prosecution. Those who knew him then describe a fair-haired,
awkward, tall, gaunt and wiry youth, blunt in his ways, simple in
habits, diffident with others, but shrewd, tireless in labor, and of
unlimited energy. He worked day and night, slept in the store, often
on the counter or a bale of goods, acted as proprietor, salesman,
or porter as was needed, lived on $300 a year, avoided society, and
allowed only the Presbyterian church to divide his attention with
business. He kept a good stock, especially strong in the staples,
bought prudently, and there was no better salesman in the West. His
trade became especially large with the farmers who used Detroit as a
market, and the unaffected manners and homely good sense of the rising
merchant soon gave him a popularity with his rural customers that
foreshadowed the strong hold of his later life on the affectionate
confidence of the yeomanry of the State.
The training which this intense application added to native vigor of
judgment early made him a thorough business man, exact in dealings,
strong in an intuitive knowledge of men, sound in his judgment of
values, prudent in ventures, and of an unflagging energy which pushed
his trade wherever an opening could be found. As interior Michigan
developed he added jobbing to his retail department, and became known
as a close and prudent buyer, a shrewd judge of credits, and a most
successful collector. A business established at the commencement of an
era of marvelous growth, pushed with such industry, drawn upon only for
the meagre expenses of a young man living with the closest economy,
and unembarrassed by speculation, meant a fortune, and at twenty-seven
years of age Mr. Chandler found himself with success assured and wealth
only a matter of patience. His nearest approach to financial disaster
was in the ruinous crash which swept "the wild-cat banks" and so many
mercantile enterprises out of existence in Michigan in the year 1838.
Like others he found it almost impossible at that time to obtain money,
and the Bank of Michigan which had promised him accommodations was
compelled by its own straitened condition to decline his paper. Thus
it happened that a note for about $5,000 given to Arthur Tappan & Co.
of New York fell due and went to protest. Mr. Chandler, accustomed to
New England strictness in business and exceedingly sensitive on the
point of meeting all engagements, was inclined to treat the protest as
bankruptcy itself, and called upon his Bedford friend, James F. Joy,
then a young lawyer in Detroit and for years afterwards Mr. Chandler's
counsel, to have a formal assignment drawn up. What followed is given
in Mr. Joy's language: "I looked carefully into his affairs, and found
them in what I believed to be a sound and healthy condition. I then
said: 'I won't draw an assignment for you, Chandler; there is no need
of it.' 'What shall I do?' was his answer, 'I can't pay that note.'
My reply was, 'Write to Tappan & Co. and say that you cannot get the
discounts that have been promised, but that if they will renew the note
you will be able to pay it when it next falls due.' He took my advice
and went through, and never had any trouble with his finances after
that. I reminded Mr. Chandler of that occurrence about two months
before his death, when he said he remembered it perfectly, and added
that if it had not been for that advice he might have been a clerk on a
salary to this day."
Mr. Chandler's was the first business in Detroit whose sales aggregated
$50,000 in a single year, and the reaching of that limit was hailed
by the community as a great mercantile triumph. He showed increasing
commercial sagacity at every stage of his active business life. He
pushed his jobbing trade in all directions and made his interior
customers his personal friends. He invested his surplus profits in
productive real estate which grew rapidly in value. He was never
tempted into speculation, and he was very reluctant to incur debt. As
a result, ten years after he landed at Detroit he had a reputation
throughout the new Northwest as a merchant of ample means, personal
honesty, large connections, and remarkable enterprise.
Between 1840 and 1850 Mr. Chandler reduced his business to a purely
wholesale basis and made himself independently and permanently rich. He
had opportunities and they were improved to the full. [And it may be
here said without exaggeration that every dollar of the fortune with
which he closed his career as an active merchant represented legitimate
business enterprise; it was the product of personal industry and good
judgment put forth in a field wisely selected and with only slight aid
at the outset.] The wiry stripling had become a stalwart man, despite a
family consumptive tendency which at times caused alarm. Prosperity did
not affect the plainness of his manners and speech, nor the simplicity
of his character, and maturity added method to, without impairing, his
powers of personal application. He was a man alive with energy and
thoroughly in earnest. He was active and influential in all public
matters in Detroit. Every year he drove through the State, visited its
cross-roads and its clearings, saw its pioneer merchants at their homes
and in their stores, made up his estimate of men and their means,
studied the growth of the State, and marked the course of the budding
of its resources. He thus kept himself thoroughly informed as to the
material development of Michigan, and acquired that intimate knowledge
of the State and its representative men which formed such an important
part of his equipment for public life. His companion in these numerous
commercial journeys was the man who succeeded him in the Senate, the
Hon. Henry P. Baldwin of Detroit, who came to Michigan largely through
his solicitations, was engaged in business for years by his side,
and remained his intimate associate through life. This part of Mr.
Chandler's career abounded in the making of friendships which endured
until death. While strict in all his dealings, he was considerate and
his sympathy was quick with struggling industry and honesty. He aided
when they needed it many who afterwards rose to position and wealth,
and these men became the most firmly attached of his supporters in his
public career.
[Illustration: THE CHANDLER BLOCK.]
Shortly after 1850 political affairs commenced to receive Mr.
Chandler's attention, and he gradually entrusted more and more of the
actual management of his large business to others, though he still for
some years directed in a general way the operations of the house. He
had been already absent one winter on a trip to the West Indies for his
health, and had made a brief and not wholly satisfactory experiment
(about 1846) at establishing a jobbing fancy-goods trade in New York.
With these exceptions he had made his Detroit dry-goods business his
personal charge. The firm name had generally been Z. Chandler & Co.,
although it was for some time Chandler & Bradford, and some of his
relatives had been and were associated with him in business. From his
second location he had moved his stock to more commodious quarters on
the site now occupied by the Chandler Block, and in 1852 he again moved
to the stores built jointly by himself and Mr. Baldwin on the southwest
corner of Woodward avenue and Woodbridge street. In 1855, as outside
matters commenced to press constantly upon Mr. Chandler's attention,
there came into his employment as a clerk a young man of twenty-three
from Kinderhook, N.Y., Allan Shelden. He showed an aptitude for
business and a capacity for work that recalled to the head of the
house his own earlier days, and Mr. Shelden's rise in his employer's
confidence was rapid and permanent. On Feb. 1, 1857, just before Mr.
Chandler took his seat as the successor of Lewis Cass in the Senate,
the firm name was changed to Orr, Town & Smith, with Mr. Chandler as a
special partner, with an interest of $50,000. In the fall of that year,
it became Town, Smith & Shelden; in the fall of 1859 it was changed to
Town & Shelden; on Feb. 1, 1866, it was again changed to the present
name of Allan Shelden & Co. Three years later Mr. Chandler ceased to
be a special partner, and thus finally sundered his formal connection
with the business he had established. The mercantile pre-eminence in
Michigan of his house in its line of trade has been maintained by his
successors, and it now occupies the magnificent Chandler Block, built
for its accommodation by its founder in 1878 on Jefferson avenue in
Detroit. Mr. Shelden himself continued in confidential relations with
his predecessor, and was entrusted in later years with the management
of a large share of his private affairs.
During his active business life no Northwestern merchant surpassed
Mr. Chandler in credit, in enterprise, or in success, and he left the
counter and office of his store with wealth and with an unsullied
mercantile character. His commercial integrity and sagacity always
remained among his marked characteristics. He made profitable
investments, became interested in remunerative enterprises, and, while
he lived generously after his income warranted it, saw his riches
steadily increase under prudent and shrewd management. At the time of
his death, his estate which was absolutely unincumbered was roughly
estimated as exceeding, at the least, two millions, representing
valuable business property in Detroit, several farms, large tracts of
timbered lands, the marsh farm at Lansing, residences in Washington and
Detroit, bank stock, government and other securities, and investments
in railroad and like enterprises. His business habits remained in full
vigor to the last. He was punctuality itself in all appointments; he
was rigid in his adherence to his engagements; he hated debt, and never
permitted the second presentation of an account; he did business on
business principles and with business exactitude; he spent money freely
but knew where and for what it went; and always his counsel was sought
and prized by men engaged in enterprises of the largest magnitude.
Without being ostentatious or profuse in his charities he was a large
giver, rarely refusing a meritorious application for aid, but he
invariably satisfied himself that the object was worthy, and put a
heartiness into his "no" when a refusal seemed to him to be in order.
His business instincts he never relaxed except for well-considered
reasons. The ditching of the marsh farm he regarded as an experiment
of far-reaching public importance, and he paid its cost cheerfully for
the sake of settling the question of the possibility of reclaiming such
lands. Some of his "imprudences" of this deliberate and well-weighed
sort proved profitable. During the war and when the credit of the
United States was at an alarmingly low ebb as shown in the ruling
prices of its bonds, he visited the city of New York in company
with Representative Rowland E. Trowbridge, of his State. On the way
there he spoke, in private, in a tone of unusual depression of the
financial difficulties of the government, and lamented the absence of
any available remedy. The next day there was a decided improvement in
the rates for "governments" on Wall street, and the firmer feeling
it created never wholly disappeared but was followed by a gradual
appreciation in this class of securities. Mr. Trowbridge called
his attention to the advance on the day following, and the Senator
answered, "I know all about it. I gave my broker orders to buy heavily
and the street, finding that out, said 'Chandler is just over from
Washington and knows something,' and so they followed my lead, and
there was a rush which sent the market up." Years afterwards, Mr.
Chandler was reminded by Mr. Trowbridge of the permanent character
of the improvement in the government's credit which attended his
speculation and of his own profit in the matter. He replied that while
he had sold many of his bonds bought during the war, he still held
those which came into his possession at that time, cherishing them
for their associations with an investment which he made at some risk
to help the treasury in its difficulties and which had proved very
remunerative.
During his public life information legitimately acquired and the
broadening of his judgment by contact with men undoubtedly helped his
investments, and thus added to his wealth, but individual pecuniary
advantage he resolutely ignored in shaping his public career. And his
sturdy incorruptibility as a legislator was proverbial at the capital.
An illustration of this fact was shown in his strenuous resistance to
and emphatic denunciation of the bills to remonetize and coin without
limit the old silver dollar. While these measures were pending he had
considerable investments in silver mining stocks, which would have been
greatly increased in value by the proposed policy, but, showing one
day to a friend a large draft representing a silver-mine dividend, he
said, "I ought for personal reasons to favor these bills, but I can't
consent to make money at the expense of the people." Another incident
exemplifies this phase of his character: In February, 1873, the city
of Manistee, on the shore of Lake Michigan, sent Gen. B. M. Cutcheon
to Washington to secure an increased appropriation for the improvement
of its harbor. Senator Chandler, as the chairman of the Committee on
Commerce and with a reputation for vigilance in caring for Michigan
interests, was naturally relied upon for valuable assistance. He
received General Cutcheon cordially, gave his personal attention to the
matter of introducing the representative of Manistee to influential
Congressmen and to department officials, and then made an appointment
for the consideration of what his own share in the work should be.
At that private meeting he expressed to General Cutcheon his cordial
sympathy with his errand, but added, "My hands are tied; the fact is
that I am interested in large tracts of pine on the Manistee river,
and, if I should take charge of your appropriation, it would be said,
'Chandler is feathering his own nest;' and if I am going to retain my
influence for good here, I must keep clear of even the suspicion of a
job."
The great multitude who knew Mr. Chandler as a public man knew
nothing of this early chapter of business life. It wholly ante-dated
his appearance at Washington, and the channels in which his strong
energies made themselves felt there and in his younger days were widely
distinct. But it is a fact that he was a remarkable man of business and
as thorough a merchant as ever developed in the West a great trade from
small beginnings. His was a doubly successful career. Before he had
reached middle age he had won success in business and a fortune. Then
he entered public life and made himself a leader of men in a historic
era.