Chapter III

There was a wonderful difference in the manner of advertising by the old merchants thirty years ago and now. Then all the merchants advertised by the year. The regular price was $40—and that price included the paper, which was left by the carrier. Without the paper it was $30. Strange as it may appear, there was no limit fixed to the amount of advertising in those days. A mercantile firm, like Goodhue & Co., advertised all they desired. No respectable house would overdo the thing. There was a sort of self-respect about the articles advertised. Goodhue & Co. and no other respectable house would have advertised cotton. The reason was that cotton was an article sold altogether through cotton brokers; and to have advertised 1000 bales of cotton by any house, even if they had that quantity for sale, would have appeared like a bombast or an attempt to show off. A cotton purchaser did not look at the newspapers. He went directly to the offices of the different cotton brokers. The cotton brokers were even then an institution. The principal ones were N. Talcott, G. Merle and D. Crassons.

What aided in making great merchants in this city thirty years ago, was their having foreign or New England connexions. The great shipbuilders and owners were located "down east"—in any state of the five except Vermont. Maine had her Portland and Bangor; Massachusetts had Boston, Salem, New Bedford, Newburyport, and other ports ; Rhode Island, her Prov- idence and Newport ; Connecticut had New London, Norwich and New Haven. Most all of the shipping was owned in these eastern places, and consequently the merchant in New York who had the most extensive eastern connexions did the largest business. Our read- ers must understand that to be the New York agents of these eastern shipowners did not confine them to get- ting freights outward, or the consignment of the ship when she returned from a voyage to the port of New York. That was but a fraction of the business. Many of the large ship owners east were also merchants. They would load their vessels for an outward voyage, and the return cargo would be on " owners' account." If it was an East India cargo, New York was the best port, and the Salem, Boston, or New Bedford owner would order his ship and cargo to New York, consigned to his agent.

The firm of Goodhue & Co., has existed 51 years, having been founded in 1809. The founder of the firm (the Hapsburg of this ancient house) was Jonathan Goodhue. He was a princely merchant: he was a Salem boy, and brought up in the counting room of a Salem merchant and ship owner. When he became of age, his employer sent him to New York to attend to business. Here he established himself as a merchant. Of course, all the Salem business, or a good portion of it, came to one whose integrity, intelligence and business facilities were unquestioned. His first partnership in 1809, was with Mr. Swett, and the firm was Goodhue & Swett. He afterwards formed a partnership with Pelatiah Perit, under the firm of Goodhue & Co., "for the purpose of doing a general commission and commercial business." They located in South street, No. 64. Mr. Perit was a Norwich boy: he, too, had strong connexions; and although the rivals of Goodhue & Co. Gardner G. and Samuel S. Rowland, (who formed the firm of G. G. & S. S. Howland) were also from Norwich,) yet Mr. Perit brought to his firm a vast amount of New England connexions and business. Thirty years ago, Goodhue & Co., took in a partner named C. Durand, but he did not remain with them many years. This house has clerks of 45 years standing. There are many who will well remember the old house of Jonathan Goodhue, under the great elm, corner of Whitehall and Pearl street. It was painted yellow and under each window was an iron balcony painted green. It was a great affair in those days, when the aristocracy of New York clustered in State, Pearl, Whitehall, lower Greenwich, Broadway, Beaver and Broad streets.

The growth of the house of Goodhue & Co. was slow but sure. Yankee boys, clerks of the firm, went out to distant parts of the world and formed commercial houses—some in Canton, Calcutta, St. Petersburg, London, &c. Their first strike would be to open a correspondence with the firm of Goodhue & Co. The latter house ran no risk. It did a commission business. It acted as agent for commercial firms in all parts of the world. It has never deviated from its course, never speculated, and consequently stands as firmly as the rock of Gibraltar. It has had correspondents that never changed. Baring Brothers & Co., of London, and Steiglitz of St. Petersburg, hold the same relation to Goodhue & Co., that they did fifty years ago. The elder Goodhue has been long dead, and his sons have succeeded him. The second partner, Perit, is still alive, a very aged but a very good man, and one of the pillars of the Chamber of Commerce. For many years the house of Goodhue & Co., were the agents of the old black ball line of Liverpool packets. A thousand fortunes have been made by that line, and the agency still continues with Goodhue & Co., although managed by one of their old captains, Charles Marshall. I would not swear to the fact, but I think that Goodhue & Co. is the only large commercial house that has not changed the style of the firm in half a century. The old house of G. G. & S. S. Howland changed to the firm of Howland & Aspinwall Fish, Grinnell & Co., changed to Grinnell, Minturn & Co. In none of these houses remain one of the original partners, except in the great house of Goodhue & Co.

I have previously alluded to the old system of advertising thirty years ago. Those old firms have not changed in their modes of advertising, except when they have had lines of packets or steamships. Thirty years ago, the daily morning journals of New York were, the New York Daily Advertiser, New York Gazette, New York Courier, New York Mercantile Advertiser, New York Journal of Commerce, New York Enquirer. The Evening Papers were the New York American, Evening Post and Commercial Advertiser. The subscription price was ten dollars a-year, and, including advertisements, forty dollars, for all of the above papers.

I doubt whether any of the old houses (those that existed thirty years ago) have become advertisers under the new system. You may look a long time before you will find any of the firms I have named in the Herald, Sun, Tribune or Times. Not a bit of it. None of these old firms will ever go into the new papers. They despise them as advertising mediums of cargoes or parts of cargoes of merchandize.

Goodhue & Co. had many rivals to their line of packets, but none were successful. Robert Kermit once started a line of "Saint" ships. He owned the ship "St. George," and he persuaded Stephen Whitney and old Nat Prime to become owners in a new ship called the "St. Andrew." The line never succeeded, although the latter once made a very short passage in the year 1884, and brought the intelligence of an advance in the price of cotton in Liverpool. She came in late one Christmas Eve. Old Mr. Prime lived at that time at the corner of Broadway and Marketfield street, (now Battery Place). Mr. Whitney lived only a few steps distance on the corner of State street and Bowling Green Pow, (where he lived until he died very recently). These old heads, and two or three younger ones, had the exclusive news, and they intended to make the most of it. It was certain not to be made public until the day after Christmas. Letters of credit were prepared in the front parlor of No 1. Broadway for one million of dollars. Walter Barrett was selected to leave next morning for New Orleans, by way of Wheeling, hoping that he would outstrip the great Southern mail, leaving two days ahead, carrying these credits in favor of Thomas Barrett and John Hagan, of New Orleans, both eminent merchants in those days. The letters ordered cotton to be bought so long as there was a bale in first hands in New Orleans. Mr. Barrett, the bearer of credits and orders, was told to spare no expense in order to beat the mail. It was now eleven o'clock, Christmas Eve. No one had thought about money for the expense of the messenger to New Orleans. Banks were all shut—brokers too. Mr. Prime seized a blank check, and went up with it to the City Hotel.

"Willard, for what amount can you cash my check to-night?"

"How much do you wish, Mr. Prime?"

"One thousand dollars."

Mr. Willard had the money, and gave it to Mr. Prime. It was in the pocket of Mr. Walter Barrett, the next morning, when he embarked at six o'clock in the boat for Amboy, commanded then by the since famous Capt. Alexander Schultz.

The messenger, by bribing stage drivers, paying Mississippi boat Captains $50 or $75—not to stop and receive freight, reached New Orleans in eleven days. It was daylight when he got into the old City Hotel, in New Orleans, kept then by Mr. Bishop. Two hours, after, John Hagan and Thomas Barrett had the letters of credit and orders to purchase cotton. The Southern mail did not arrive for three days. Before night, over 50,000 bales of cotton had been purchased at 11 to 12 cents, or about $60 per bale. That cotton was sold at 17 and 18 cents when cotton went up a few days after. Some was sent to Liverpool. The profit was on some lots over #30 bale, and was divided up among the New Orleans houses of Barrett & Co., and John Hagan Co., and the New York operators. The messenger had the profits of 200 bales awarded him, and his expenses paid. This operation was a lucky one for some of the owners of the St. Andrew, but it did not aid Captain Robert Kermit paticularly, and the "Saint" line went down. Goodhue & Co.'s line of packets met with a more formidable opposition from the celebrated but somewhat unfortunate E. K. Collins. He started a line of packets, nicknamed the "Theatrical line." Few New Yorkers but what will well recollect the "Garrick," the "Siddons," the "Roscius," the "Shakspeare," &c.

This packet line eventually became transient freighting-ships, and Mr. Collins started the famously unfortunate steamship line, consisting of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Baltic and Adriatic. Two of the ships, the Pacific and Arctic, were steamship coffins for hundreds, and the other ships have been sold and passed into other hands; but the black ball line of Goodhue & Co. still exists, still pays, and exhibits the effect of good management by good merchants, in striking contrast to other lines.

Few persons out of the city and not many in it, have any idea of the immensity of business transacted by such a house as Goodhue & Co. They sell a cargo of teas and China goods (worth perhaps $400,000) at auction or by brokers, with less noise than an eighth avenue dealer in teas and soap displays in an hour. They get their commission of two and a half per cent, and a guarantee commission of two and a half more. In all five per cent, or if the cargo is worth half a million, the commission of Goodhue & Co. would be $25,000. The guarantee commission is against loss to those who send consignments of merchandise to Goodhue & Co. The latter are obliged to sell on time, say four to six months credit to those who buy of them. If they sent the notes so received without endorsing them to the owner of the teas, or endorsing on said notes "Without recourse," and if the purchaser failed to pay—then the owner would lose, and naturally be very indignant. So Goodhue & Co. and other commission houses guarantee their notes, and for so doing charge what they call a guarantee commission of about one half per cent, a month. If a note is received by a house like Goodhue & Co. that is worthless they lose it, and not the owner of the teas or other merchandise, for whom Goodhue & Co. have acted and Bold goods.

It it said that so many failures occur in New York, that prudent as Goodhue & Co. are, and as well as they know the standing of wholesale merchants and others to whom they sell goods, their guarantee account is a losing one, and that in the last twenty years they have lost largely by it.

At the same time it is safe to say that no foreign merchant would consign goods to Goodhue & Co. or any other commission house, unless they agreed to guarantee and make good the notes taken for merchandize, if not paid at maturity. In giving this brief sketch of Goodhue & Co. I have given a view to the readers of a commercial house of the old school—one known in every part of the world, known to all leading merchants in the great commercial marts of commercial nations, and yet scarcely known to the millions in this city—certainly to but few of them above Wall street or unconnected with its influences.