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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Jacob Astor, by Elbert Hubbard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Jacob Astor
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Posting Date: July 20, 2008 [EBook #412]
+Release Date: January, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN JACOB ASTOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  LITTLE JOURNEYS
+  TO THE HOMES OF
+  GREAT BUSINESS MEN
+
+BY
+
+ELBERT HUBBARD
+
+
+
+JOHN J. ASTOR
+
+
+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 a result of habit.
+
+--JOHN JACOB ASTOR
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOURNEYS
+
+Victor Hugo says, "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 that 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 great 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 is n'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 the
+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 and 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 sober and cautious men shrank like unwashed
+wool.
+
+One such man--a German, too--lives in East Aurora.  I joined him,
+accidentally, 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 shifted the basket to the other arm.
+
+"What have you in the basket?" I asked.
+
+And here is the answer, "Noddings--but dynamite.  I vas going up on der
+hill, already, to blow me oud some stumps oud."  And I suddenly
+bethought me of an engagement I had 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 and 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 to put back to sea on account of storms when
+within sight of the Chesapeake.  Then a month was spent later 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, was 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
+after 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 for 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
+passed him on with guttural certificates as to character, 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 had n'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 and Eighty-six, John Jacob Astor began business on
+his own account in a little store on Water Street, New York.  There was
+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 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 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 flour-mills 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 and 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 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
+which 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 sacque.
+
+In Seventeen Hundred and Ninety, a ship from the Pacific brought a
+hundred otterskins 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 expeditions, but at first invested no money in
+them, as he considered them "extra hazardous." He was not a speculator.
+
+
+
+Until the year Eighteen Hundred, Astor lived over his store in Water
+Street, but he then moved to the plain and modest house at Two Hundred
+and 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 of 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 to absolutely 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 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 and 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 and 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."
+
+The British troops, we are reliably informed, failed to quell the
+insurrection.
+
+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 having
+been proposed to by George Washington.  It is George himself, tells of
+this in his Journal, and George you 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. She played the harpsichord.
+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 were 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 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 and 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 St.
+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 St. 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, excepting
+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 as
+valueless.  The forest was an impassible 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 Clarke
+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
+miracles unguessed.  But Astor closed his eyes and saw pack-trains,
+mules laden with skins, winding across these mountains, and down to
+tide-water 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 breech.
+
+But the route by the water was feasible.
+
+The town was founded and soon became a centre 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 hindermost--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
+gold mine.  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 million, 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 of 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 woefully 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 moulted 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, side-tracked 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 he worked out his dreams or not, there is no doubt but that
+they added to his peace, happiness and length of days.  Happy is the
+man who escapes the critics by leaving his literary masterpiece in the
+ink.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of John Jacob Astor, by Elbert Hubbard
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