Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen | Page 6

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