John Jacob Astor IV

“ ASTOR, William Backhouse, capitalist, was born in New York. Sept. 19, 1792, son of John Jacob, 2d, and Sarah (Todd) Astor. He was educated in the public schools and in 1808 was sent to Heidelberg, where he studied until 1810, he then went to Göttingen, where he had as his tutor the Chevalier Bunsen. He returned to New York in 1815 when his father took him into partnership, and embarked in the china trade under the firm name of John Jacob Astor & Son. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The warm breeze swayed the long dry grass, causing it to give out a soft rustle; all birds except the flitting bats were asleep among the tall ferns or on the great trees that spread their branches towards heaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The souls in hell have an equally keen but distorted counterpart of our senses, so that they see in a magnified form everything vile in themselves and in each other. To their senses only the ugly and hateful side is visible, so that the beauty and perfume of a flower are to them as loathsome as the appearance and fumes of a toadstool. ”

“ Your unattained ambitions, your hopes, and your ideals will be swallowed in the grave. Your works will secure you a place in history, and many will remember your names until, in time, oblivion covers your memory as the grass conceals your tombs. Are you prepared for the time when your eyes become blind, and your trusted senses fail? ”

“ It may be a mere trifle, some unexpected thing, yet the career in the flesh is ended, the eternal life of the liberated spirit begun. The soul slips from earth's grasp, as air from our fingers, and finds itself in the frigid, boundless void of space. ”

“ If the spirits and souls of the departed have any command of matter, why may not their intensest thoughts engrave themselves on a moon that, when dead and frozen, may reflect and shine as they did, while immersed in the depths of space? ”

“ I occasionally shed an intangible tear, yet for most of those who strove to obey their consciences, purgatory, when essential, though occasionally giving us a bitter twinge, is a joy-producing state. Not all the glories imaginable or unimaginable could make us happy, were our consciences ill at ease. I have advanced slowly, yet some things are given us at once. After I realized I had irrevocably lost your love, though for a time I had hoped to regain it, I became very restless; earth seemed a prison, and I looked forward to death as my deliverer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, ac- cording to the British view, no strength was added to the claims of the United States either by the words of the treaty or by the "restoration" of Astoria in 1818. In the negotiations for the treaty of peace following the War of 1812 the Northwest Coast did not assume an important place, although Secretary Monroe in his instructions cautioned the negotiators on the point. 12 John Quincy Adams notes 13 10 The correspondence relative to the transaction and Astor's letters with reference to it are given in Annals of Congress. ”

“ They said that Arthur was the rightful king, and that John was only a usurper; so they withdrew, every man to his castle, and fortified themselves there.
The King of France becomes his ally.
In cases like this, where in any kingdom there were two contested claims for the throne, the kings of the neighboring countries usually came in and took part in the quarrel. They thought that by taking sides with one of the claimants, and aiding him to get possession of the throne, they should gain an influence in the kingdom which they might afterward turn to account for themselves. ”

“ The King of France at this time was named Philip. He determined to espouse the cause of young Arthur in this quarrel. His motive for doing this was to have a pretext for making war upon John, and, in the war, of conquering some portion of Normandy and annexing it to his own dominions.
So he invited Arthur to come to his court, and when he arrived there he asked him if he would not like to be King of England. Arthur said that he should like to be a king very much indeed. "Well," said Philip, "I will furnish [Pg 23] you with an army, and you shall go and make war upon John. ”

“ Whenever, for any reason, the true sovereign can not personally exercise the supreme power, whether from minority, insanity, long-continued sickness, or protracted absence from the realm, a regency, as it is called, is created to govern the kingdom in his stead. The person appointed to act as regent is usually some near relation of the king. Richard's brother John hoped to be made regent, but this did not suit Richard's views, for he wished to make this office the means, as all the others had been, of raising money, and John had no money to give. ”