Part 8 (1/2)
A PROLIFIC BREEDER OF WEALTH.
Under such a system land was the one great auspicious, facile and durable means of rolling up an overshadowing fortune. Its exclusive possession struck at the very root of human necessity. At a pinch people can do without trade or money, but land they must have, even if only to lie down on and starve. The impoverish, jobless worker, with disaster facing him, must first perforce give up his precious few coins to the landlord and take chances on food and the remainder. Especially is land in demand in a complicated industrial system which causes much of the population to gravitate to centers where industries and trade are concentrated and congest there.
A more formidable system for the foundation and amplification of lasting fortunes has not existed. It is automatically self-perpetuating. And that it is preeminently so is seen in the fact that the large s.h.i.+pping fortunes of a century ago are now generally as completely forgotten as the methods then used are obsolete. But the land has remained land; and the fortunes then incubated have grown into mighty powers of great national, and some of considerable international, importance.
It was by favor of these propitious conditions that many of the great fortunes, based upon land, were founded. According to the successive census returns of the United States, by far the greater part of the wealth of the country as regards real estate was, and is, concentrated in the North Atlantic Division and the North Central Division, the one taking in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, the other Chicago, Cincinnati and other cities.[70] It is in the large cities that the great land fortunes are to be found. The greatest of these fortunes are the Astor, Goelet and Rhinelander estates in the East and, in the West, the Longworth and Field estates are notable examples. To deal with all the conspicuous fortunes based upon land would necessitate an interminable narrative. Suffice it for the purposes of this work to take up a few of the superlatively great fortunes as representatives of those based upon land.
VAST FORTUNES FROM LAND.
The foremost of all American fortunes derived from land is the Astor fortune. Its present bulk, embracing all the collateral family branches, is estimated by some authorities at about $300,000,000. This, it is generally believed, is an underestimate. As long ago as 1889, when the population of New York City was much less than now, Thomas G. Shearman, a keen student of land conditions, placed the collective wealth of the Astors at $250,000,000.[71] The stupendous magnitude of this fortune alone may at once be seen in its relation to the condition of the ma.s.ses of the people. An a.n.a.lysis of the United States census of 1900, compiled by Lucien Sanial, shows that while the total wealth of the country was estimated at about $95,000,000,000, the proletarian cla.s.s, composed chiefly of wage workers and a small proportion of those in professional cla.s.ses, and numbering 20,393,137 persons, owned only about $4,000,000,000. It is by such a contrast, bringing out how one family alone, the Astors, own more than many millions of workers, that we begin to get an idea of the overreaching, colossal power of a single fortune.
The Goelet fortune is likewise vast; it is variously estimated at from $200,000,000 to $225,000,000, although what its exact proportions are is a matter of some obscurity.
In the case of these great fortunes it is well nigh impossible to get an accurate idea of just how much they reach. All of them are based primarily upon owners.h.i.+p of land, but they also include many other forms such as shares in banks, coal and other mines, railroads, city transportation systems, gas plants, industrial corporations. Even the most indefatigable tax a.s.sessors find it such a fruitless and elusive task in attempting to discover what personal property is held by these multimillionaires, that the a.s.sessment is usually a conjectural or haphazard performance. The extent of their land holdings is known; these cannot be hid in a safe deposit vault. But their other varieties of property are carefully concealed from public and official knowledge.
Since this is so, it is entirely probable that the fortunes of these families are considerably greater than is commonly estimated. The case of Marshall Field, a Chicago Croesus, who left a fortune valued at about $100,000,000, is a strong ill.u.s.tration. This man owned $30,000,000 worth of real estate in Chicago alone. There was no telling, however, what his whole estate amounted to, for he refused year after year to pay taxes on more than a valuation of $2,500,000 of personal property. Yet, after his death in 1906, an inventory of his estate filed in January, 1907, disclosed a clear taxable personal property of $49,977,270. He was far richer than he would have it appear.
Let us investigate the careers of some of these powerful landed men, the founders of great fortunes, and inquire into their methods and into the conditions under which they succeeded in heaping up their immense acc.u.mulations.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] In 1847 and 1849 the Anti-Renters demonstrated a voting strength in New York State of about 5,000. Livingston's t.i.tle to his estate being called into question, a suit was brought. The court decision favored him. The Livingstons, it may be again remarked, were long powerful in politics, and had had their members on the bench.--”Life of Silas Wright,” 179-226; ”Last Leaves of American History”:16-18, etc.
[69] The debates in this convention showed that the feudal conditions described in this chapter prevailed down to 1846.--New York Const.i.tution; Debates in Convention, 1846; 1052-1056. This is an extract from the official convention report: ”Mr. Jordan [a delegate] said that it was from such things that relief was asked: which although the moral sense of the community will not admit to be enforced, are still actually in existence.”
[70] Of a total of $39,544,333,000, representing wealth in real estate and improvements, the census of 1890 attributed $13,905,274,364 to the North Atlantic Division and a trifle more than $15,000,000,000 to the North Central Division.
[71] The Forum (Magazine), November, 1889.
CHAPTER II
THE INCEPTION OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
The founder of the Astor fortune was John Jacob Astor, a butcher's son.
He was born in Waldorf, Germany, on July 17, 1763. At the age of eighteen, according to traditional accounts, he went to London, where a brother, George Peter, was in the business of selling musical instruments. Two years later with ”one good suit of Sunday clothes, seven flutes and five pounds sterling of money”[72] he emigrated to America. Landing at Baltimore he proceeded to New York City.
Here he became an apprentice to George Dieterich, a baker at No. 351 Pearl street, for whom he peddled cakes, as was the custom. Walter Barrett insists that this was Astor's first occupation in New York.
Later, Astor went into business for himself. ”For a long time,” says Barrett, ”he peddled [fur] skins, and bought them where he could; and bartered cheap jewelry, etc., from the pack he carried on his back.”[73]
Another story is that he got a job beating furs for $2 a week and board in the store of Robert Bowne, a New York merchant; that while in this place he showed great zest in quizzing the trappers who came in to sell furs, and that in this fas.h.i.+on he gained considerable knowledge of the fur animals. The story proceeds that as Bowne grew older he entrusted to Astor the task of making long and fatiguing journeys to the Indian tribes in the Adirondacks and Canada and bargaining with them for furs.
ASTOR'S EARLY CAREER.
Astor got together enough money to start in the fur business for himself in 1786 in a small store on Water street. It is not unreasonable to suppose that at this time he, in common with all the fur dealers of the time, partic.i.p.ated in the current methods of defrauding the Indians. It is certain that he contrived to get their most valuable furs for a jug of rum or for a few toys or notions. Returning from these strokes of trade, he would s.h.i.+p large quant.i.ties of the furs to London where they were sold at great profit.
His marriage to Sarah Todd, a cousin of Henry Brevoort, brought him a good wife, who had the s.h.i.+ning quality of being economical, and an accession of some means and considerable family connections. Remarkably close-fisted, he weighed over every penny. As fast as his means increased he used them in extending his business. By 1794 he was somewhat of an expansive merchant. Scores of trappers and agents ravaged the wilderness at his command. Periodically he s.h.i.+pped large quant.i.ties of furs to Europe. His modest, even n.i.g.g.ardly, ways of living in rooms over his store were not calculated to create the impression that he was a rich man. It was his invariable practice habitually to deceive others as to his possessions and plans. But when, in 1800, he removed to No.
223 Broadway, at the corner of Vesey street, then a fas.h.i.+onable neighborhood, he was rated, perforce, as a man of no inconsiderable means. He was, in fact, as nearly as can be gathered, worth at this time a quarter of a million dollars--a monumental fortune at a period when a man who had $50,000 was thought rich; when a good house could be rented for $350 a year and when $750 or $800 would fully defray the annual expenses of the average well-living family.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN JACOB ASTOR.