Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen | Page 8

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,