A New Century

The departure of the Astor ships was directed from New York, their owner always giving his captains and agents explicit and minute directions in regard to the management of the expedition. If these directions were accurately followed, the voyage was usually a prosperous one.

In those days of sailing packets, with commercial restrictions peculiar to the times, with no telegraph, cable across the ocean or wireless, and with postal communication very irregular, the organization and conduct of these ocean ventures, with their possibility of accidents and delays, called for most comprehensive foresight and sagacity on the part of the managing head of this world-wide commerce. Mr. Astor was in the habit of forming his plans with the utmost deliberation, but when really under way, he carried them forward with nerve and dispatch, and with an easy grasp of every detail.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the fur trade was very profitable, and of vast extent. Six million peltries were estimated to have been sold annually, the skins varying in value from fifteen cents to five hundred dollars.

Nearly every gentleman in Europe and America wore a beaver skin upon his head, or a part of one. Good beaver skins could be bought from the Indians for a dollar's worth of trinkets. In London the same skin brought twenty-five English shillings. These twenty-five English shillings invested in English cloth and cutlery, brought a return in New York of ten dollars. So the beaver skin rolled up money as it traveled, and the fur trade was a good business.

Mr. Astor's ventures to China, as has been stated, were often most fortunate. A fair profit on a voyage to the East was thirty thousand dollars. He was the first American merchant to conceive the idea of habitually trading around the globe, sending super-cargoes with American furs to England, from there carrying British merchandise to China, and returning to America with tea. Sometimes this order was reversed, and his ships sailed westward, but eastward or westward, they circled the globe, and were gone the larger part of two years. In speaking of Mr. Astor, Philip Hone, at one time Mayor of New York, wrote in his "Diary": "The fur-trade was the philosopher's stone of this modern Croesus, beaver skins and musk rats furnishing the oil for the supply of Aladdin's lamp. His traffic was the shipment of furs to China, where they brought immense prices, for he monopolized the business; and the return cargoes of teas, silks and rich productions of China brought further large profits; for here, too, he had very little competition at the time of which I am speaking. My brother and I found in Mr. Astor a valuable customer. We sold many of his cargoes, and had no reason to complain of a want of liberality or confidence. All he touched turned to gold, and it seemed as if fortune delighted in erecting him a monument of her unerring potency." At that time a tea merchant of large capital, had an advantage which Walter Barrett, an old writer, explains.

A house that could raise money enough thirty years ago, (the first quarter of the nineteenth century) to send two hundred and sixty thousand dollars in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital, and this was the working of the old system.

The Griswolds owned the ship 'Panama'. They started her from New York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps thirty thousand worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and one hundred and seventy thousand in Spanish dollars. The ship goes on the voyage and reaches Whampoa, a few miles below Canton, in safety. Her super-cargo in two months has her loaded with tea, some china ware, a great deal of cassia or false cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo is mainly tea, costing about thirty-seven cents per pound on the average.

The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost of the tea at least; so that a tea cargo of two hundred thousand dollars, when it had paid duty of seventy-five cents a pound, which would be four hundred thousand dollars, amounted to six hundred thousand. The profit was at least fifty per cent on the original cost, or one hundred thousand dollars, and would make the cargo worth seven hundred thousand dollars.

The cargo of tea would be sold almost on arrival, (say eleven or twelve months after the ship left New York in May), to wholesale grocers, for their notes at four and six months, say seven hundred thousand dollars.

In those years there was credit given by the United States of nine, twelve and eighteen months! So that the East India or Canton merchant, after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of government capital to the extent of four hundred thousand dollars, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship.

No sooner had the ship 'Panama' arrived, or any of the regular East Indiamen, then the cargo would be exchanged for grocers' notes, for seven hundred thousand dollars. These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for four hundred thousand dollars duty, at nine, twelve or eighteen months, giving him time to actually send two more ships with two hundred thousand dollars each to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds on the first voyage were due.

John Jacob Astor, at one period of his life, had several ships operating in this way. They would go to Oregon on the Pacific, and carry from thence furs for Canton. These would be sold at large profits. Then the cargoes of tea for New York would pay enormous duties, which Astor did not have to pay to the United States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would be sold for good ur and six months' paper, or perhaps cash; so that for eighteen or twenty years, John Jacob Astor had what was actually a free-of-interest loan from the government, of over five million dollars.

Astor was prudent and lucky in his operations, and such an enormous government loan didn't ruin him as it did others.

The fur trade engrossed the thought of the men of those days, as the gold mines did a later generation. It gave employment to many thousands, and among the great merchants connected with it, there was intense competition. The fur sales of the Astors held spring and fall at a later date, brought crowds of fur dealers from all over Europe to attend them. As long as life lasted, John Jacob Astor had a warm affection for beautiful and costly furs, and for years was accustomed to have a handsome specimen hanging in his counting room.

Beaver, mink, sable and otter filled the great Northern forests when the fur trade began, but as the hunters spread each year in great numbers over the fur country, beating the woods, and trapping their game, gradually the abundance of fur-bearing animals diminished, and in some places became extinct.

This result of the great fur trade, sent the hunters in pursuit of new waters and forests, as yet unmolested by white men, where the fur-bearing animals still throve and multiplied. Woods and streams were scoured, further and further west, until the fur trade reached the Mississippi and Missouri, and finally stretched from ocean to ocean.

Although John Jacob Astor's tea business was secondary to his fur business, he combined the two as he circled the globe. He is said to have made by his voyages, "four times as much as the regular tea merchants in their most prosperous days. At this time there was not so great a variety of fancy teas. Black tea was called souchong, and green, hyson skin; but occasionally a ship would bring to New York a few packages of young hyson or hyson."

It was the custom of the day to hold auction sales of tea upon the wharves. Advertisements and handbills were distributed among the probable purchasers, and punch often contributed to tho éclat and hilarity of the occasion. When there was an "open market" the day ended with large profits for the tea merchant.

To accommodate his tea business, Mr. Astor owned an immense tea warehouse on Greenwich Street, between Liberty and Courtland Streets.

The ships that sailed the Pacific carried many articles besides furs and specie, and tea. The Howlands were a typical firm of shippers and we have a description of their freight: "They sent out cargoes valued as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, made up to Valparaiso, Lima and Mazatlan. The cargoes were composed of everything from a cambric needle to a hoop-pole, packed in small barrels so they could be carried later on mules' backs. There were wines, bales of domestic fireworks, Chinese fire-crackers, gunpowder, muskets, lead, crimson and scarlet crepe shawls, plain crockery and fine china,"—in fact, a regular department store of to-day.

With each ship went the super-cargo, who was usually a clerk in the employ of the house which he represented, who had been with them for some time, and was familiar with their methods of business. To the super-cargoes of these early days, belongs the credit of establishing American commercial houses in foreign ports. At first their mission was to sell their cargoes and buy return cargoes, accompanying them to New York. But after a time it was found that an agent was needed to remain permanently at the foreign port, and the super-cargo was the man who best understood the situation.

The first super-cargoes to Canton became in later years the principal American merchants in China. The large capital called for in the East India business, prevented the average merchant from trading in that part of the world.

While American ships were sailing around the world, it is interesting to note, that the regular packets employed between Falmouth and New York, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, still bore English names. "Earl of Leicester," "Princess Elizabeth," "Lord Charles Spencer," "Lady Arabella," "the names of all of King George's family, ministers, and officers of the Crown." These packets with royal names, were hardly as large as a North River sloop, and made but two voyages a year, but the time was not far away, when both the size and names of the vessels plying between the United States and England changed, and "North America," "Independence" and "Washington" were among the cognomens that replaced those of royal lineage.

Mr. Astor had been living for some years now at 223 Broadway, in a house built by Rufus King, when he was United States Senator, before he became ambassador to the Court of St. James. For a time his office was in Vesey Street. During the war of 1812 and for many years afterward, he had his store at 69 Pine Street, corner of Pearl Street, which gave him the opportunity of going from the dobryard of his house into his store.

This Broadway home had an open piazza supported by pillars and arches, where its owner was accustomed to sit in the cool of the afternoon after an early dinner. Here he continued through the years, to play scores of games of checkers, of which he was very fond; to enjoy his glass of beer and his pipe; and later, with his good road-horse, to start on his rides over Manhattan Island, which had become a settled custom.

The old Bowery road, bordered with the residences of the Dutch aristocracy,—low, picturesque houses with high stoops, surrounded by guarding trees and masses of shrubbery, beneath whose shade whole families sat in the cool of the day, while children rolled hoops and played marbles on the sidewalk,—was familiar ground; as was also Bleecker Street, where blackberries and roses ran riot within and without the garden walls.

Beyond St. Mark's church was open country. The Stuyvesant meadows led on to farms and market gardens, varied by thickets and swamps, while the rider occasionally passed fine old country seats in the midst of broad acres. Greenwich village was two miles from the town of New York, and a traveler was apt to take the road through Greenwich avenue, but no road was too remote or unfrequented to be traversed by John Jacob Astor and his good horse. So the island became more and more familiar to the future great land-owner.

An evening at the theatre was also among the great merchant's recreations. He warmly appreciated the dramatic performances of Edmund Kean and Charles Mathews, and the musical genius of Garcia and Madame Malibran; and when attendance at the old Park Theatre was a popular evening recreation, Mr. Astor found rest and refreshment in witnessing a good play.