Many of them thought they could do as well as he, if they only had his
luck. But the great volumes of his letters and papers, preserved in a
room of the Girard College, show that his success in business was not
due, in any degree whatever, to good fortune. Let a money-making
generation take note, that Girard principles inevitably produce Girard
results. The grand, the fundamental secret of his success, as of all
success, was that _he understood his business_. He had a personal,
familiar knowledge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities
in which he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the
dangers to which they were liable, and the various kinds of men
through whom he acted. He observed everything, and forgot nothing. He
had done everything himself which he had occasion to require others to
do. His directions to his captains and supercargoes, full, minute,
exact, peremptory, show the hand of a master. Every possible
contingency was foreseen and provided for; and he demanded the most
literal obedience to the maxim, "Obey orders, though you break
owners." He would dismiss a captain from his service forever, if he
saved the whole profits of a voyage by departing from his
instructions. He did so on one occasion. Add to this perfect knowledge
of his craft, that he had a self-control which never permitted him to
anticipate his gains or spread too wide his sails; that his industry
knew no pause; that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word
to the letter, but exacting his rights to the letter; that he had no
vices and no vanities; that he had no toleration for those calamities
which result from vices and vanities; that his charities, though
frequent, were bestowed only upon unquestionably legitimate objects,
and were never profuse; that he was as wise in investing as skilful in
gaining money; that he made his very pleasures profitable to himself
in money gained, to his neighborhood in improved fruits and
vegetables; that he had no family to maintain and indulge; that he
held in utter aversion and contempt the costly and burdensome
ostentation of a great establishment, fine equipages, and a retinue of
servants; that he reduced himself to a money-making machine, run at
the minimum of expense;--and we have an explanation of his rapidly
acquired wealth, He used to boast, after he was a millionaire, of
wearing the same overcoat for fourteen winters; and one of his clerks,
who saw him every day for twenty years, declares that he never
remembered having seen him wear a new-looking garment but once. Let us
note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men to serve him
with devotion. He paid small salaries, and was never known in his life
to bestow a gratuity upon one who served him; but he knew how to make
his humblest clerk feel that the master's eye was upon him always.
Violent in his outbreaks of anger, his business letters are singularly
polite, and show consideration for the health and happiness of his
subordinates.
Legitimate commerce makes many men rich; but in Girard's day no man
gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war of 1812, which
suspended commerce, that made this merchant so enormously rich. In
1811, the charter of the old United States Bank expired; and the
casting-vote of Vice-President George Clinton negatived the bill for
rechartering it. When war was imminent, Girard had a million dollars
in the bank of Baring Brothers in London. This large sum, useless then
for purposes of commerce,--in peril, too, from the disturbed condition
of English finance,--he invested in United States stock and in stock
of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in England. Being
thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the charter having
expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he bought out the
entire concern; and, merely changing the name to Girard's Bank,
continued it in being as a private institution, in the same building,
with the same coin in its vaults, the same bank-notes, the same
cashier and clerks. The banking-house and the house of the cashier,
which cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he bought for one
hundred and twenty thousand. The stock, which he bought at four
hundred and twenty, proved to be worth, on the winding up of the old
bank, four hundred and thirty-four. Thus, by this operation, he
extricated his property in England, invested it wisely in America,
established a new business in place of one that could no longer be
carried on, and saved the mercantile community from a considerable
part of the loss and embarrassment which the total annihilation of the
bank would have occasioned.
His management of the bank perfectly illustrates his singular and
apparently contradictory character. Hamilton used to say of Burr, that
he was great in little things, and little in great things. Girard in
little things frequently seemed little, but in great things he was
often magnificently great. For example: the old bank had been
accustomed to present an overcoat to its watchman every Christmas;
Girard forbade the practice as extravagant;--the old bank had supplied
penknives gratis to its clerks; Girard made them buy their own;--the
old bank had paid salaries which were higher than those given in other
banks; Girard cut them down to the average rate. To the watchman and
the clerks this conduct, doubtless, seemed little. Without pausing to
argue the question with them, let us contemplate the new banker in his
great actions. He was the very sheet-anchor of the government credit
during the whole of that disastrous war. If advances were required at
a critical moment, it was Girard who was promptest to make them. When
all other banks and houses were contracting, it was Girard who stayed
the panic by a timely and liberal expansion. When all other paper was
depreciated, Girard's notes, and his alone, were as good as gold. In
1814, when the credit of the government was at its lowest ebb, when a
loan of five millions, at seven per cent interest and twenty dollars
bonus, was up for weeks, and only procured twenty thousand dollars, it
was "old Girard" who boldly subscribed for the whole amount; which at
once gave it market value, and infused life into the paralyzed credit
of the nation. Again, in 1816, when the subscriptions lagged for the
new United States Bank, Girard waited until the last day for receiving
subscriptions, and then quietly subscribed for the whole amount not
taken, which was three million one hundred thousand dollars. And yet
again, in 1829, when the enormous expenditures of Pennsylvania upon
her canals had exhausted her treasury and impaired her credit, it was
Girard who prevented the total suspension of the public works by a
loan to the Governor, which the assembling Legislature might or might
not reimburse.
Once, during the war, the control of the coin in the bank procured him
a signal advantage. In the spring of 1813, his fine ship, the
Montesquieu, crammed with tea and fabrics from China, was captured by
a British shallop when she was almost within Delaware Bay. News of the
disaster reaching Girard, he sent orders to his supercargo to treat
for a ransom. The British admiral gave up the vessel for one hundred
and eighty thousand dollars in coin; and, despite this costly ransom,
the cargo yielded a larger profit than that of any ship of Girard's
during the whole of his mercantile career. Tea was then selling at war
prices. Much of it brought, at auction, two dollars and fourteen cents
a pound, more than four times its cost in China. He appears to have
gained about half a million of dollars.
From the close of the war to the end of his life, a period of sixteen
years, Girard pursued the even tenor of his way, as keen and steady in
the pursuit of wealth, and as careful in preserving it, as though his
fortune were still insecure. Why was this? We should answer the
question thus: Because his defective education left him no other
resource. We frequently hear the "success" of such men as Astor and
Girard adduced as evidence of the uselessness of early education. On
the contrary, it is precisely such men who prove its necessity; since,
when they have conquered fortune, they know not how to avail
themselves of its advantages. When Franklin had, at the age of
forty-two, won a moderate competence, he could turn from business to
science, and from science to the public service, using money as a
means to the noblest ends. Strong-minded but unlettered men, like
Girard, who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding
superfluous millions to their estates. In Girard's case, too, there
was another cause of this entire devotion to business. His domestic
sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him into himself.
Mr. Henry W. Arey, the very able and high-minded Secretary of Girard
College, in whose custody are Girard's papers, is convinced that it
was not the love of money which kept him at work early and late to the
last days of his life.
"No one," he remarks,
"who has had access to his private papers, can fail to
become impressed with the belief that these early
disappointments furnish the true key to his entire
character. Originally of warm and generous impulses, the
belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of
the love and kindness which were extended to others changed
the natural current of his feelings, and, acting on a warm
and passionate temperament, alienated him from his home, his
parents, and his friends. And when in after time there were
super-added the years of bitter anguish resulting from his
unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more
poignant by the necessity of concealment, and the consequent
injustice of public sentiment, and marring all his cherished
expectations, it may be readily understood why constant
occupation became a necessity, and labor a pleasure."
Girard himself confirms this opinion. In one of his letters of 1820,
to a friend in New Orleans, he says:--
"I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family,
that you are happy and in the possession of an honest
fortune. This is all that a wise man has the right to wish
for. As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly
occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping. I am
wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with
care. I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my
highest ambition. You perceive that your situation is a
thousand times preferable to mine."
In his lifetime, as we have remarked, few men loved Girard, still
fewer understood him. He was considered mean, hard, avaricious. If a
rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of cloth, no one expects that
he will give five dollars for it when the price is four. But there is
a universal impression that it is "handsome" in him to give higher
wages than other people to those who serve him, to bestow gratuities
upon them, and, especially, to give away endless sums in charity. The
truth is, however, that one of the duties which a rich man owes to
society is to be careful _not_ to disturb the law of supply and demand
by giving more money for anything than a fair price, and _not_ to
encourage improvidence and servility by inconsiderate and profuse
gifts. Girard rescued his poor relations in France from want, and
educated nieces and nephews in his own house; but his gifts to them
were not proportioned to his own wealth, but to their circumstances.
His design evidently was to help them as much as would do them good,
but not so much as to injure them as self-sustaining members of
society. And surely it was well for every clerk in his bank to know
that all he had to expect from the rich Girard was only what he would
have received if he had served another bank. The money which in loose
hands might have relaxed the arm of industry and the spirit of
independence, which might have pampered and debased a retinue of
menials, and drawn around the dispenser a crowd of cringing beggars
and expectants, was invested in solid houses, which Girard's books
show yielded him a profit of three per cent, but which furnished to
many families comfortable abodes at moderate rents. To the most
passionate entreaties of failing merchants for a loan to help them
over a crisis, he was inflexibly deaf. They thought it meanness. But
we can safely infer from Girard's letters and conversation that he
thought it an injury to the community to avert from a man of business
the consequences of extravagance and folly, which, in his view, were
the sole causes of failure. If there was anything that Girard utterly
despised and detested, it was that vicious mode of doing business
which, together with extravagant living, causes seven business men in
ten to fail every ten years. We are enabled to state, however, on the
best authority, that he was substantially just to those whom he
employed, and considerately kind to his own kindred. At least he meant
to be kind; he did for them what he really thought was for their good.
To little children, and to them only, he was gracious and affectionate
in manner. He was never so happy as when he had a child to caress and
play with.
After the peace of 1815, Girard began to consider what he should do
with his millions after his death. He was then sixty-five, but he
expected and meant to live to a good age. "The Russians," he would
say, when he was mixing his _olla podrida_ of a Russian salad,
"understand best how to eat and drink; and I am going to see how long,
by following their customs, I can live." He kept an excellent table;
but he became abstemious as he grew older, and lived chiefly on his
salad and his good claret. En-joying perfect health, it was not until
about the year 1828, when he was seventy-eight years of age, that he
entered upon the serious consideration of a plan for the final
disposal of his immense estate. Upon one point his mind had been long
made up. "No man," said he, "shall be a gentleman on _my_ money." He
often, said that, even if he had had a son, he should have been
brought up to labor, and should not, by a great legacy, be exempted
from the necessity of labor. "If I should leave him twenty thousand
dollars," he said, "he would be lazy or turn gambler." Very likely.
The son of a man like Girard, who was virtuous without being able to
make virtue engaging, whose mind was strong but rigid and
ill-furnished, commanding but uninstructive, is likely to have a
barren mind and rampant desires, the twin causes of debauchery. His
decided inclination was to leave the bulk of his property for the
endowment of an institution of some kind for the benefit of
Philadelphia. The only question was, what kind of institution it
should be.
William J. Duane[1] was his legal adviser then,--that honest and
intrepid William J. Duane who, a few years later, stood calmly his
ground on the question of the removal of the deposits against the
infuriate Jackson, the Kitchen Cabinet, and the Democratic party.
Girard felt all the worth of this able and honorable lawyer. With him
alone he conversed upon the projected institution; and Mr. Duane,
without revealing his purpose, made inquiries among his travelled
friends respecting the endowed establishments of foreign countries.
For several months before sitting clown to prepare the will, they
never met without conversing upon this topic, which was also the chief
subject of discourse between them on Sunday afternoons, when Mr. Duane
invariably dined at Mr. Girard's country-house. A home for the
education of orphans was at length decided upon, and then the will was
drawn. For three weeks the lawyer and his client were closeted,
toiling at the multifarious details of that curious document.
The minor bequests were speedily arranged, though they were numerous
and well considered. He left to the Pennsylvania Hospital, thirty
thousand dollars; to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, twenty thousand; to the
Orphan Asylum, ten thousand; to the Lancaster public schools, the same
sum; the same for providing fuel for the poor in Philadelphia; the
same to the Society for the Relief of Distressed Sea-Captains and
their families; to the Freemasons of Pennsylvania, for the relief of
poor members twenty thousand; six thousand for the establishment of a
free school in Passyunk, near Philadelphia; to his surviving brother,
and to his eleven nieces, he left sums varying from five thousand
dollars to twenty thousand; but to one of his nieces, who had a very
large family, he left sixty thousand dollars. To each of the captains
who had made two voyages in his service, and who should bring his ship
safely into port, he gave fifteen hundred dollars; and to each of his
apprentices, five hundred. To his old servants, he left annuities of
three hundred and five hundred dollars each. A portion of his valuable
estates in Louisiana he bequeathed to the corporation of New Orleans,
for the improvement of that city. Half a million he left for certain
improvements in the city of Philadelphia; and to Pennsylvania, three
hundred thousand dollars for her canals. The whole of the residue of
his property, worth then about six millions of dollars, he devoted to
the construction and endowment of a College for Orphans.
Accustomed all his life to give minute directions to those whom he
selected to execute his designs, he followed the same system in that
part of his will which related to the College. The whole will was
written out three times, and some parts of it more than three. He
strove most earnestly, and so did Mr. Duane, to make every paragraph
so clear that no one could misunderstand it. No candid person,
sincerely desirous to understand his intentions, has ever found it
difficult to do so. He directed that the buildings should be
constructed of the most durable materials, "avoiding useless ornament,
attending chiefly to the strength, convenience, and neatness of the
whole." _That_, at least, is plain. He then proceeded to direct
precisely what materials should be used, and how they should be used;
prescribing the number of buildings, their size, the number and size
of the apartments in each, the thickness of each wall, giving every
detail of construction, as he would have given it to a builder. He
then gave briefer directions as to the management of the institution.
The orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and
lodged; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural
philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else might
be deemed suitable and beneficial to them. "I would have them," says
the will, "taught facts and things, rather than words or signs." At
the conclusion of the course, the pupils were to be apprenticed to
"suitable occupations, as those of agriculture, navigation, arts,
mechanical trades, and manufactures."
The most remarkable passage of the will is the following. The Italics
are those of the original document.
"I enjoin and require that _no ecclesiastic, missionary, or
minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise
any station or duty whatever in the said College; nor shall
any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a
visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of
the said College_. In making this restriction, I do not mean
to cast any reflection upon any sect or person whatsoever;
but as there is such a multitude of sects, and such a
diversity of opinion amongst them, I desire to keep the
tender minds of the orphans, who are to derive advantage
from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing
doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce;
my desire is, that all the instructors and teachers in the
College shall take pains to instil into the minds of the
scholars _the purest principles of morality_, so that, on
their entrance into active life, they may, _from inclination
and habit_, evince _benevolence toward their
fellow-creatures_, and _a love of truth, sobriety, and
industry_, adopting at the same time such religious tenets
as their _matured reason_ may enable them to prefer."
When Mr. Duane had written this passage at Girard's dictation, a
conversation occurred between them, which revealed, perhaps, one of
the old gentleman's reasons for inserting it. "What do you think of
that?" asked Girard. Mr. Duane, being unprepared to comment upon such
an unexpected injunction, replied, after a long pause, "I can only say
now, Mr. Girard, that I think it will make a great sensation." Girard
then said, "I can tell you something else it will do,--it will please
the Quakers." He gave another proof of his regard for the Quakers by
naming three of them as the executors of his will; the whole number of
the executors being five.
In February, 1830, the will was executed, and deposited in Mr.
Girard's iron safe. None but the two men who had drawn the will, and
the three men who witnessed the signing of it, were aware of its
existence; and none but Girard and Mr. Duane had the least knowledge
of its contents. There never was such a keeper of his own secrets as
Girard, and never a more faithful keeper of other men's secrets than
Mr. Duane. And here we have another illustration of the old man's
character. He had just signed a will of unexampled liberality to the
public; and the sum which he gave the able and devoted lawyer for his
three weeks' labor in drawing it was three hundred dollars!
Girard lived nearly two years longer, always devoted to business, and
still investing his gains with care. An accident in the street gave a
shock to his constitution, from which he never fully recovered; and in
December, 1831, when he was nearly eighty-two years of age, an attack
of influenza terminated his life. True to his principles, he refused
to be cupped, or to take drugs into his system, though both were
prescribed by a physician whom he respected.
Death having dissolved the powerful spell of a presence which few men
had been able to resist, it was to be seen how far his will would be
obeyed, now that he was no longer able personally to enforce it. The
old man lay dead in his house in Water Street. While the public out of
doors were curious enough to learn what he had done with his money,
there was a smaller number within the house, the kindred of the
deceased, in whom this curiosity raged like a mania. They invaded the
cellars of the house, and, bringing up bottles of the old man's choice
wine, kept up a continual carouse. Surrounding Mr. Duane, who had been
present at Mr. Girard's death, and remained to direct his funeral,
they demanded to know if there was a will. To silence their indecent
clamor, he told them there was, and that he was one of the executors.
On hearing this, their desire to learn its contents rose to fury. In
vain the executors reminded them that decency required that the will
should not be opened till after the funeral. They even threatened
legal proceedings if the will were not immediately produced; and at
length, to avoid a public scandal, the executors consented to have it
read. These affectionate relatives being assembled in a parlor of the
house in which the body of their benefactor lay, the will was taken
from the iron safe by one of the executors.[2]