Part 10 (1/2)
CHAPTER III
THE GROWTH OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
While at the outposts, and in the depths, of the Western wilderness an armed host was working and cheating for Astor, and, in turn, being cheated by their employer; while, for Astor's gain, they were violating all laws, debauching, demoralizing and beggaring entire tribes of Indians, slaying and often being themselves slain in retaliation, what was the beneficiary of this orgy of crime and bloodshed doing in New York?
For a long time he lived at No. 223 Broadway in a large double house, flanked by an imposing open piazza supported by pillars and arches. In this house he combined the style of the ascending capitalist with the fittings and trappings of the tradesman. It was at once residence, office and salesroom. On the ground floor was his store, loaded with furs; and here one of his sons and his chief heir, William B. could be seen, as a lad, a.s.siduously beating the furs to keep out moths. Astor's disposition was phlegmatic and his habits were extremely simple and methodical. He had dinner regularly at three o'clock, after which he would limit himself to three games of checkers and a gla.s.s of beer. Most of his long day was taken up with close attention to his many business interests of which no detail escaped him. However execrated he might be in the Indian territories far in the West, he a.s.sumed, and somewhat succeeded in being credited with, the character of a patriotic, respectable and astute man of business in New York.
ASTOR SUPERIOR TO LAW.
During (taking a wide survey) the same series of years that he was directing gross violations of explicit laws in the fur-producing regions--laws upon the observance of which depended the very safety of the life of men, women and children, white and red, and which laws were vested with an importance corresponding with the baneful and b.l.o.o.d.y results of their infraction--Astor was turning other laws to his distinct advantage in the East. Pillaging in the West the rightful and legal domain, and the possessions, of a dozen Indian tribes, he, in the East, was causing public money to be turned over to his private treasury and using it as personal capital in his s.h.i.+pping enterprises.
As applied to the business and landowning cla.s.s, law was notoriously a flexible, convenient, and highly adaptable function. By either the tacit permission or connivance of Government, this cla.s.s was virtually, in most instances, its own law-regulator. It could consistently, and without being seriously interfered with, violate such laws as suited its interests, while calling for the enactment or enforcement of other laws which favored its designs and enhanced its profits. We see Astor ruthlessly brus.h.i.+ng aside, like so many annoying enc.u.mbrances, even those very laws which were commonly held indispensable to a modic.u.m of fair treatment of the Indians and to the preservation of human life.
These laws happened to conflict with the ama.s.sing of profits; and always in a civilization ruled by the trading cla.s.s, laws which do this are either unceremoniously trampled upon, evaded or repealed.
For all the long-continued violations of law in the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to a.s.sume the role of looking upon the Indians as its wards, and thus of theoretically extending to them the s.h.i.+eld of its especial protection. If Government allowed a people whom it pleased to signify as its wards to be debauched, plundered and slain, what kind of treatment could be expected for the working cla.s.s as to which there was not even the fiction of Government concern, not to mention wards.h.i.+p?
LAW BREAKERS AND LAW MAKERS.
But when it came to laws which, in the remotest degree, could be used or manipulated to swell profits or to b.u.t.tress property, Astor and his cla.s.s were untiring and vociferous in demanding their strict enforcement. Successfully ignoring or circ.u.mventing laws objectionable to them, they, at the same time, insisted upon the pa.s.sage and exact construction and severe enforcement of laws which were adjusted to their interests. Law breakers, on the one hand, they were law makers on the other. They caused to be put in statute, and intensified by judicial precedent, the most rigorous laws in favor of property rights. They virtually had the extraordinary power of choosing what laws they should observe and what they should not. This choice was invariably at the expense of the working cla.s.s. Law, that much-sanctified product, was really law only when applied to the propertyless. It confronted the poor at every step, was executed with summary prompt.i.tude and filled the prisons with them. Poverty had no choice in saying what laws it should obey and what it should not. It, perforce, had to obey or go to prison; either one or the other, for the laws were expressly drafted to bear heavily upon it.
It is ill.u.s.trative, in the highest degree, of the character of Government ruled by commercial interests, that Astor was allowed to pillage and plunder, cheat, rob and (by proxy) slaughter in the West, while, in the East, that same Government extended to him, as well as to other s.h.i.+ppers, the free use of money which came from the taxation of the whole people--a taxation always weighted upon the shoulders of the worker. In turn, this favored cla.s.s, either consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, cheated the Government of nearly half of the sums advanced. From the foundation of the Government up to 1837, there were nine distinct commercial crises which brought about terrible hards.h.i.+ps to the wage workers. Did the Government step in and a.s.sist them? At no time. But during all those years the Government was busy in letting the s.h.i.+ppers dig into the public funds and in being extremely generous to them when they failed to pay up. From 1789 to 1823 the Government lost more than $250,000,000 in duties,[90] all of which sum represented what the s.h.i.+ppers owed and did not, or could not, pay.
And no criminal proceedings were brought against any of these defaulters.
This, however, was not all that the Government did for the favored, pampered cla.s.s that it represented. Laws were severe against labor-union strikes, which were frequently judicially adjudged conspiracies.
Theoretically, law inhibited monopoly, but monopolies existed, because law ceases to be effective law when it is not enforced; and the propertied interests took care that it was not enforced. Their own cla.s.s was powerful in every branch of Government. Furthermore, they had the money to buy political subserviency and legal dexterity. The $35,000 that Astor paid to Ca.s.s, the very official who, as Secretary of War, had jurisdiction over the Indian tribes and over the Indian trade, and the sums that Astor paid to Benton, were, it may well be supposed, only the merest parts of the total sums that he disbursed to officials and politicians, high and low.
ASTOR'S MONOPOLIES.
Astor profited richly from his monopolies. His monopoly of furs in the West was made a basis for the creation of other monopolies. China was a voracious and highly profitable market for furs. In exchange for the cargoes of these that he sent there, his s.h.i.+ps would be loaded with teas and silks. These products he sold at exorbitant prices in New York. His profits from a single voyage sometimes reached $70,000; the average profits from a single voyage were $30,000. During the War of 1812-15 tea rose to double its usual price. Astor was invariably lucky in that his s.h.i.+ps escaped capture. At one period he was about the only merchant who had a cargo of tea in the market. He exacted, and was allowed to exact, his own price.
Meanwhile, Astor was setting about making himself the richest and largest landowner in the country. His were not the most extensive land possessions in point of extent but in regard to value. He aimed at being a great city, not a great rural, landlord. It was estimated that his trade in furs and a.s.sociated commerce brought him a clear annual revenue of about two million dollars. This estimate was palpably inadequate. Not only did he reap enormous profits from the fur trade, but also from banking privileges in which he was a conspicuous factor.
It was on one of his visits to London, so the recital goes, that he first became possessed of the idea of founding an extraordinarily rich landed family. He admired, it is told, the great landed estates of the British n.o.bility, and observed the prejudice against the caste of the trader and the corresponding exalted position of the landowner. Whether this story is true or not, it is evident that he was impressed with the increasing power and the stability of a fortune founded upon land, and how it radiated a certain splendid prestige. The very definition of the word landlord--lord of the soil--signified the awe-compelling and authoritative position of him who owned land--a definition heightened and enforced in a thousand ways by the laws.
The speculative and solid possibilities of New York City real estate held out dazzling opportunities gratifying his acquisitiveness for wealth and power--the wealth that fed his avarice, and the power flowing from the dominion of riches.
ASTOR NOT AN EXCEPTION.
It may here be observed that Astor's methods in trade or in acquiring of land need not be indiscriminately condemned as an exclusive mania. Nor should they be held up to the curiosity of posterity as a singular and pernicious exhibition, detached from his time and generation, and independent of them. Again and again the facts disclose that men such as he were merely the representative crests of prevailing commercial and political life. Substantially the whole propertied cla.s.s obtained its wealth by methods which, if not the same, had a strong relations.h.i.+p. His methods differed nowise from those of many cotton planters of the South who stole, on a monstrous scale,[91] Government land and then with the wealth derived from their thefts, bought negro slaves, set themselves up in the glamour of a patriarchal aristocracy and paraded a florid display of chivalry and honor. And it was this same grandiose cla.s.s that plundered Whitney of the fruits of his invention of the cotton-gin and shamelessly defrauded him.[92]
Far more flagrant, however, were the means by which other Southern plantation owners and business firms secured landed estates in Alabama, Georgia and in other States. Their methods in expropriating the reservations of such Indian tribes as the Creeks and Chickasaws were not less fraudulent than those that Astor used elsewhere. They too, those fine Southern aristocrats, debauched Indian tribes with whisky, and after swindling them of their land, caused the Government to remove them westward. The frauds were so extensive, and the circ.u.mstances so repellant, that President Andrew Jackson, in 1833, ordered an investigation. From the records of this investigation,--four hundred and twenty-five solid pages of official correspondence--more than enough details can be obtained.[93]
WHERE WAS FRAUD ABSENT?