NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
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CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
(From a portrait by Brady.)
MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
MEN OF BUSINESS
BY
WILLIAM O, STODDARD
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1893
THE NEW
PUBL1
1. 57874 B
R 1941
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING ANB BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
PREFACE
THE road to success in business is not a nar-
row, hedged-in highway. It is not even one
road, but many pathways, each of which may be
followed across the great field of life, if entered
by the type of human character adapted to it.
The types are varied, and often they are blended.
Any profitable study of them, however, can be
best performed by selecting a few distinct and
marked examples. This has been attempted in
a series of brief character sketches of eminently
successful careers, each emphasizing some domi-
nant trait. It has been deemed well to employ
the portraits of the living as well as of those
whose work is finished. It is somewhat like a
gallery, therefore, in which are presented like-
nesses of the warrior, the statesman, the diplo-
matist, the artist, the pioneer, the adventurer,
the inventor, the explorer, the organizer, the
foreseer, and other types of business men whose
success is beyond dispute.
The materials for these biographical studies
have been obtained, as far as possible, from orig-
inal sources, including valuable data never be-
fore printed. With a large majority of the men
selected, the author has been personally ac-
quainted, and has drawn them from the life.
4 PREFACE
He has done so in the belief that each of these
business careers, presented in outline, contains
invaluable lessons for those who are willing to
take them, and also that there is no more honor-
able, useful, enjoyable path in life for young am-
clition than that of the American business man.
WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
CONTENTS
PAGtt
I. JOHN JACOB ASTOR — Romance, 9
II. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT — Competition, . . 31
III. CHARLES Louis TIFFANY — Taste, 53
IV. JOHN ROACH — Genius, 75
V. LEVI PARSONS MORTON — Development, ... 94
VI. EDWIN DENISON MORGAN — Variety, . . .in
VII. CYRUS WEST FIELD — Tenacity, . . . . 131
VIII. CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW — Growth, , . .161
IX. ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART — Perception, . .182
X. PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR — Organization, . . 197
XI. HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFLIN — Liberality, . . . 212
XII. MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS — Dash, .... 229
XIII. GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN — Originality, . . 246
XIV. PETER COOPER — Invention, 264
XV. MARSHALL FIELD — Business Principles, . . . 281
XVI. LELAND STANFORD — Councillor, .... 295
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
CORNELIUS VANDERBII.T, . (Frontispiece.} PAGE
JOHN JACOB ASTOR, 9
CHARLES Louis TIFFANY, 53
JOHN ROACH, 75
LEVI PARSONS MORTON, 94
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN, in
CYRUS WEST FIELD, . . 131
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW, 161
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR, 197
HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFLIN, 212
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 229
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN, 246
PETER COOPER, ... .... 264
MARSHALL FIELD, 281
LELAND STANFORD, 296
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PAGE
NEW YORK WHEN ASTOR FIRST SAW IT, . . .16
CHOTEAU'S POND — NOW IN ST. Louis, 2;
J
HARLEM PLAINS, 26
STATUE OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, 33
ONE OF THE EARLY STEAMBOATS, 37
SAN FRANCISCO IN 1848, 40
THE VANDERBILT, 45
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
i'AGE
MR. TIFFANY WHEN TWENTY EIGHT YEARS OF AGE, . 57
THE TIFFANY STORE OPPOSITE CITY HALL, . 58
THE STORE ON THE CORNER OF BROADWAY AND CHAMBERS
STREET IN 1847, . .... 64
THE THIRD AVENUE HARLEM BRIDGE, BUILT BY JOHN
ROACH IN 1864 . 85
THE U. S. CRUISER CHICAGO AT SEA, . . 90
THE OLD MORTON HOME AT MIDDLEBORO, MASS., . . 96
ELLERSLIE, MR. MORTON'S COUNTRY HOME AT RHINE-
CLIFF-ON-HUDSON, N. Y., . . Io8
GOVERNOR MORGAN'S MOTHER (FROM AN OLD MINIATURE), 112
THE OLD MORGAN HOMESTEAD AT WINDSOR, CONN., . 115
BED OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN THROUGH THE CAPE VERD
ISLANDS, AZORES, AND THE TELEGRAPH PLATEAU, . 136
THE GREAT EASTERN LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE, . 153
LANDING SHORE END OF THE CABLE AT HEART'S CON-
TENT, NEWFOUNDLAND, 155
SHORE END OF CABLE— EXACT SIZE, . . . 158
THE WHOLESALE STORE OF A. T. STEWART & Co., BUILT
IN 1848, . ,89
MR. STEWART'S HOUSE, THIRTY -FOURTH STREET AND
FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, . . . 194
MEMORIAL CHURCH AT GARDEN CITY, . . .196
THE "PIONEER" SLEEPING-CAR, 253
A VIEW OF PULLMAN, ILL., 261
TRIAL BETWEEN PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE "TOM
THUMB " AND ONE OF STOCKTON'S AND STOKES' HORSE
CARS, . ...... 271
PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1829, 273
ARCHITECTURAL MOTIF OF THE BUILDINGS AT STANFORD
UNIVERSITY, 3o5
VIEW OF THE BUILDINGS COMPRISING THE LELAND STAN-
FORD, JR., UNIVERSITY, PALO ALTO, CAL., . . 310-311
THE INNER QUADRANGLE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, . . 313
NORTHEAST TOWER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, . . .315
John Jacob Astor.
MEN OF BUSINESS
I.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
THE long romance of the world's commerce
is like a picture-gallery. The earlier pictures
are oriental, but the gallery leads westward.
Here and there, at intervals, there are striking
changes in scenery, races, costumes, and mer-
chandise. Instead of being a record of com-
monplace money-getting, it is full of wonderful
stories of dreams which the dreamers undertook
to realize. They went out through the Medi-
terranean in the galleys of Tyre and Carthage,
and they sailed clown the Red Sea, no one knows
how far, in the ships of the merchant king Sol-
omon. The dreamers were mostly mere boys,
full of the hot enthusiasms of youth, but few of
them ceased from their fascinated graze into the
o
future, the distant, the new, until age and the
end drew the curtain before their eyes.
One of these visionary boys, who could not
stay at home nor be contented with surround-
ings which had satisfied his ancestors, accom-
plished remarkable things. Among others, John
Jacob Astor won a fortune, founded a family,
aided in the earlier stages of the growth of
a city and a nation, and left behind him ideas
which were to be fulfilled in the third genera-
tion.
He was the fourth son of the highly respecta-
ble village butcher at Waldorf, near Heidelberg,
Germany, and several members of the familv
had already exhibited unusual ability and enter-
prise. The generation to which he belonged (he
was born July 17, 1763) had shown even more
than had its predecessors that vigorous vital-
ity which has enabled the old German stock to
do so much both for the Old World and the
New.
There were schools in Waldorf. German
youths of good families were by no means
brought up in ignorance. There were facili-
ties for higher education not altogether out of
reach ; but these were to be sought, as a rule,
by those who looked forward to lives of profes-
sional scholarship. Most avenues for advance-
ment were shut by caste and privilege, and the
old order of things, from aspirants unsustained
by wealth or hereditary rank. The Waldorf ho-
rizon seemed very limited to the eyes of a boy
who felt that he Avas capable of better things
than supplying sausages and the like to a frugal
and unambitious neighborhood. It was indeed a
quiet place ; but, as the boy grew older, its still-
ness was continually broken by war news, the
reports of battles, stories of the sharp, sanguin-
ary struggles which marked the last quarter of
JOHN JACO/i AXTOIt 11
the eighteenth century. There was a begin-
O -s O
ning of varied activities throughout Europe, and
especially in Germany, from which wonderful
fruits were to come in the first decades of the
next century. There was to be a vastly changed
condition of things after the long convulsions of
the Napoleonic wars, but very little that was
new could as yet be seen in Waldorf.
Young Astor was a thoughtful boy, a reader
of books, with literary tastes which were one
dav to find expression in a form that is endur-
inglv useful. At the same time he was full of
O .
a fire of adventure which utterly forbade his
contenting himself with the seemingly tame suc-
cesses of scholarship. It was well for him that
against this fire contended an uncommon degree
of sturdy German prudence. His phenomenal
motive power required, and was provided with,
a remarkably heavy balance-wheel.
Remaining in Waldorf was out of the question
for such a boy, and, at sixteen years of age, he
was on his way to London. There might have
seemed something chimerical in the idea of add-
ing one more human atom to the swarms of an
already crowded hive ; but the mere means of
earning a living had been made ready for him.
An uncle was a member of the firm of Astor
& Broadwood, manufacturers of pianos and
other musical instruments, and Henry Astor, an
older brother of John Jacob, was already in the
employ of that concern. Under the name of
Broadwood & Co. it afterward attained wide
reputation and importance, but at this early date
12 MEN O/''
its business was limited. It could offer no pros-
pect whatever for the future of a very ambitious
young adventurer from Waldorf. It could give
him something to do, for a while, however, and
he could learn lessons in business, acquire the
Ensrlish lansruasre. hear all the news that came to
o o o
London, grow taller, stronger, and make up his
mind as to the direction of his next step forward.
The arrival in London was made at a time
when the thoughts of all England, and indeed of
all Europe, were concentrated upon the chang-
ing fortunes of the war for the independence of
the British colonies in America. Very little was
known, even in England, of the real state of
things in these colonies ; but before the eyes of
the Old World monarchies a young republic,
unlike any that had been seen before, was fight-
ing its way into life and a place among nations.
All the young men on that side of the Atlantic
were taking sides for or against the western
phenomenon, and the fact that they did so
changed the future of the world.
Nevertheless, if any youthful resident of Lon-
don had in his mind a dream of adventure in the
New World, he was compelled to wait for the
day of its realization, since all the seas were held
by the vigilant cruisers of Great Britain. At
last, and almost unexpectedly, the long war
came to a close, and commercial communication
with America was imperfectly opened in 1782.
It was by no means safe or regular until long
after the formal declaration of peace, in Septem-
ber, 1783; but in the summer of the latter year
JOHN JACOB AST OR 13
it was understood that emigrants from England
would have a fair prospect of landing in Amer-
ica. It was only a decent probability as com-
pared with the Atlantic ferry service of the pres-
ent day, and not a large number were found with
-sufficient courage to take the risk.
Among those who were ready was young
Astor, now a stalwart young man of twenty.
The ship which carried him sailed for Baltimore
at a date when the British fleet and army still
lingered in possession of the city and harbor of
New York. As to definite plans or purposes, he
could fairly have said that he did not have any.
He had left London behind him, and there was a
new hope thrilling him as he looked westward,
but that was all. England, exhausted by long
wars and all but crushed by taxation, was having
exceedingly hard times, and there was nothing
lost by getting away from her. It was said that
the colonies also were in a bad condition ; but
they seemed to offer a continent, not a mere isl-
and, for a boy to become of age in.
It was a long, slow, tedious sailing voyage, but
it had better fortune than many another that was
undertaken during the perilous summer of 1783.
The ship suffered no molestation from cruisers,
nor from privateers, and her passengers saw noth-
ing of the pirates which were then the grisly
terror of the high seas. The passage was not
even notably stormy, but it was nevertheless
eventful for John Jacob Astor. On board the
ship was a furrier from America, with whom an
acquaintance was formed during the dull days
MEN OF BUSINESS
of tacking westward. His previous experiences
had made him well acquainted with all the ins
and outs of the adventurous calling which sup-
plied his stock in trade. The whale-fishery it-
self could not supply more materials for quar-
ter-deck yarns than did the winter tramps of the
trappers among the reel men of the American
wilderness. He could tell, too, of the haunts and
ways of fur-bearing animals, and he knew the
prices paid for raw furs and the profits to be
made in preparing these for European markets.
Much information was also given, incidentally,
concerning the claims and exactions of the Brit-
ish Hudson's Bay Company and the probable
changes which would follow the establishment
of the independence of the United States, with a
boundary along the old Canadian and great lakes
line. It was evident that New York City, as
soon as its British garrison should leave it, would
hold a very excellent position with reference to
the fur trade of the future, and a new idea of the
life before him grew in the fervid imagination of
the young German.
It was true that he had no capital with which
to start in the fur business. He knew nothing at
o
all about handling furs. Slowly and with diffi-
culty he had hoarded the money which had paid
his passage, and he now had with him on the ship
nothing but a small invoice of flutes and other
musical instruments, which he hoped to sell in
America on commission. This business he still
proposed to do, but only as a stepping-stone, for
he saw that his other enterprise would require
.JOHN JACOB AST OR 15
both patience and a kind of technical education.
As soon as possible, after landing in Baltimore,
he worked his way, economically, to New York,
and it was a pretty long journey then. Good
care was taken for making honest returns to his
principals in London, so that they were afterward
glad to continue business relations with their
American correspondent. Exceedingly distinct,
indeed, was his idea that he was now an Ameri-
can, and that he had come to build up with the
expansion of the new republic.
On reaching New York he found all that the
war had left of the young city still suffering
under the long palsies of a semi-besieged garri-
son town cut off from trade, year after year,
and destitute of manufactures. It was a forlorn
place, excepting for its evident natural advan-
tages. As for the countrv at lanje, the old colo-
O J O
nies were now States, but not yet a Union, and
the new government was anything but nrmlv
settled. There was almost no money in circula-
tion, and trade was reduced, mainly, to its -primi-
tive form of barter.
The interior of New York State, very recently
redeemed from the savage domination of the
Iroquois, was an exceedingly rich fur-bearing re-
gion, and its red hunters and trappers were no
longer the allies or agents of the Hudson's Bay
Company, however diligently that corporation
might thenceforward compete for their peltry.
It had by no means consented to give up its hold
upon its old channels of supply from within the
American frontier, however. All along the bor-
MEN OF BUSINESS
der and the lakes, to the fort it had built at the
foot of Lake Michigan, it maintained strong
posts, garrisoned by British troops, which it re-
fused to surrender until thirty years later, and at
the end of another war.
Astor found a furrier in New York, a Quaker,
to whom he hired himself for such wages as he
could get, that he might earn a livelihood while
! : . US^*3^^tt^i^ft3,a
New York when As'or first saw it.
picking up the trade. He was serving a hard
apprenticeship, with a fixed determination of
becoming a master and something more. He
worked on, patiently, all the while acquiring
stores of general information concerning the fur
geography of the American interior, its Indian
tribes, its trappers and traders and their ways.
By rigid economy and by some small trading of
his own he made out to lay up a little money
JOHN JACOB AST OR 17
while learning how to buy and handle furs. He
had very moderate help, too, from his intermit-
tent relations with the musical-instrument busi-
ness, although there was little enough to be done
in that line in New York during the first years
of its poverty after the War of Independence.
The business and finances of the entire coun-
try were still in a terribly unsettled condition
when John Jacob Astor was at last able to open
a little shop, on Water Street, begin to buy furs
on his own account, put them into marketable
shape, and dispose of them as occasion might
offer. The national government itself seemed
still upon a doubtful basis. There was no bank-
ing system, State or national. The flag of the
republic with difficulty maintained its uncertain
position on the seas. Commerce could be car-
ried on only at great risks, for the Old World
itself was in an uproar, with only occasional
spasms of treacherous peace.
Means of transportation and communication
with the interior were slow and insecure. The
best types of conveyance were furnished by a
North River sloop, a Mohawk Valley wagon,
and a train of ponies connecting, when obtain-
able, at the western end of the route. Beyond
J
the ponies were the red men. With these, tribe
after tribe, there was a kind of peace which any
man venturing among them could maintain and
trust according to his own personal qualifications
for dealing with them. Traders whose lack of
o
courage, integrity, or knowledge of Indian nat-
ure, unfitted them for dealing with the awful
2
13 MEN OF BUSINESS
uncertainties of forest traffic, were now and then
seen to enter the woods, never to return. Mr.
Astor was not lacking1 in either respect, and,
during successive years after his small begin-
ning, the shop on Water Street was at times
shut up, or only occupied by an assistant able
to inform inquirers that its master was away
in the western wilderness or the northern moun-
tains.
Wherever his daring and arduous ventures
carried him, he continually found his operations
hindered, hampered, often defeated, by the open
competition or the secret and dangerous ma-
chinations of the agents of the Hudson's Bay
Company. He learned, as the nation itself was
learning, that the first treaty of peace with Eng-
land had not secured a definite frontier on the
north, nor a trustworthy opening to the com-
merce of the great lakes, the West and the
Northwest. Through all he was forming ideas
of his country's political future, the breadth and
soundness and forecast of which indicated the
mind of a statesman rather than the keenness of
a mere trader.
Concerning all the great regions beyond what
was still regarded as the hunting-grounds of the
Iroquois, Hurons, and a few other tribes, little
was known. The men, of all sorts, with whom
Mr. Astor was dealing, were as yet the only ex-
plorers ; but from them he gathered informa-
tion with which he was able to put into shape,
gradually, his dreams of future enterprises. It
was seen that these must wait, for the greater
JOHN JACOB AST OR , 19
part ; but money enough had now been accumu-
lated for another step forward as a merchant.
This was a voyage to England, to form better
business connections. The most important of
these were to be made with houses in the fur
trade, but he did not, even now, surrender the
very first connection he had formed after setting
out from Waldorf. It is an interesting exhibi-
tion of the peculiar tenacity of his character
that, while in England, he arranged with Astor
£ Broadwood to become their agent in Amer-
ica, besides receiving consignments of similar
goods from other concerns. On his return he
opened a suitable salesroom and became the
first regular dealer in musical instruments in the
United States. He did not on this account give
any less attention to his other undertakings, and
these were reaching out, in several directions,
beyond the fur business. An exceedingly im-
portant part of them was growing the more
rapidly because of the expansion of one of
the peculiar national industries. Nowhere else
could wooden sailing-vessels be built so cheaply,
and American shipwrights were earning the
highest reputation for the speed and stanch-
ness of the craft they were launching. The
prize to be won was the carrying trade of the
ocean, and Mr. Astor was one of the pioneers of
the American shipping interest. He not only
bought or chartered vessels to carry his own
furs, with whatever additional freights could be
obtained, but the character of the return cargoes,
and his management of them, speedily entitled
20 MEN OF BUSINESS
him to a high rank among the successful mer-
chants of New York.
While keeping fully abreast of the swift march
of progress in this direction, there was yet
another field in which he was presenting a dif-
ferent phase of his business capacity. The will-
ingness to take risks which startled other men,
and the enthusiastic faith in the future which
seemed to spur him forward, seemed in him
entirely consistent not only with habits of
personal economy, but with the most sagacious
keenness in the employment of surplus funds.
He was singularly well acquainted with the
character and resources of every noteworthy
resident of Manhattan Island. He was there-
fore better prepared than other men to do a
great deal of the only kind of banking business
which, for a time, the condition of affairs per-
mitted. In so doing he became an important
helper of many other business men, and it was
said that he rarely lost money by lending it.
If his profits were considerable, that is one of
the well understood results of judicious bank-
ing.
Mr. Astor was now a married man, and he
was fond of saying that although Sarah Todd
brought him only three hundred dollars of
dowry, she brought him also the best business
partner that any man ever had. He was, how-
ever, the possessor of large wealth, for those
days, before he and his wife thought it needful
to take a dwelling separate from their place of
business. Mere display or ostentation formed
JOHN JACOB AKTOlt 21
no part of their ideal of earthly happiness, then
or afterward, and there was even something of
political principle in his own leaning toward
republican simplicity. It was inevitable that
such a man should exercise a wide influence,
socially as well as financially, and he was vigor-
ously patriotic.
In the year 1800 there was no other business
man in New York who was rated at the huge
sum of a quarter of a million of dollars. It was
truly a tremendous capital with which to begin
the business of the nineteenth century, and it
was a good time for taking a long look ahead.
The politics of the day, and any forecast of the
great events which might be expected by such a
man, but not yet by the mass, were in close rela-
tion to the business plans of America's foremost
merchant. Upon the sea, American ships were
as yet by no means secure, for the maritime
laws of nations were but loosely interpreted and
American commerce had outgrown any efficient
watchcare of the infant navy of the United
States. On land, our entire northern frontier
was dominated by British posts and forces, no
less than five considerable forts within the
American lines being still held by British gar-
risons, in hardly concealed alliance with the
Indian tribes. These constituted a barrier not
only to the fur trade but to the general settle-
ment of the country.
The M-ississippi was our western boundary,
and all beyond was French territory. The
southeastern boundary was in doubt, but Florida
22 MEN OF
was Spanish, if the border could be ascertained.
An unknown vastness on the Pacific coast and
in the middle of the continent was also Spanish.
We were a power of the Atlantic slope only, as
yet, but American settlers were pushing rapidly
into the Ohio country, and there were vague
rumors of mighty changes soon to come. In
1803 all men were startled by the sudden suc-
cess of President Jefferson's daring plan for the
purchase of the Louisiana territory. It was
Napoleon's blow at England, given almost in
desperation, but it at once extended the northern
frontier of the United States across the conti-
nent to a much disputed point on the shore of
the Pacific Ocean. It was somewhere away
north of the mouth of the Columbia River, but
there were only vague ideas extant of the course
and character of that exceedingly distant stream.
There was said to be but one good seaport south
of the Columbia, and the bay of San Francisco
was Spanish, as it was afterward to be Mexi-
can.
Mr. Astor's dream of his country's future had
long since been busy with the addition which
had thus been made. He knew more than other
men concerning the wilderness beyond the Mis-
sissippi and of the great northwest country. It
was rich in furs now, but it was to become a
settled country and be cut up into States, and
across it was yet to be a highway which would
realize the wild ambition that led Columbus
across the Atlantic. The new path to Asia was
to be by way of the United States and the Pa-
JOHN JAC'OJ] AUTOH -i:>
cine. The time was not yet ripe, but, during
several years which followed, Mr. Astor was the
head and front of the growing opposition to
British encroachments on our northern frontier.
At the same time, his commercial interests were
increasing and brought him into frequent colli-
Choteau's Pond — now m St. Louis.
sions with another phase of the overbearing pol-
icy of England. Her course with reference to
the rights of American ships and seamen became
more and more difficult to endure as the keels
laid in her lost colonies multiplied upon every
sea and took from her a larger and larger share
of the carrying trade of the world.
'24 MEN OF BUSINESS
Mr. Astor's forecast was shrewdly manifested
in another direction. New York had not yet,
by any means, established her position as the
greatest commercial centre of the New World.
Other cities were proposing" to rival or surpass
her. Only a part of the lower end of Manhat-
tan Island was as yet required for business pur-
poses, and most men seemed to believe that the
remainder might be occupied as villas and farms
for generations. Not so did Mr. Astor. What-
ever capital could be spared from other opera-
tions, he continually invested in real estate, a lit-
tle outside, for the greater part, of the ideas of
other buyers. Some, indeed, was for immediate
improvement and he built upon it, but more be-
longed to the city of the future which his pro-
phetic eyes were looking at. In this as in other
parts of his widening plans, there was no haste,
nothing which he himself considered speculative,
but only the onward march of a settled policy
based upon his perceptions of the sure develop-
ment of the town he lived in. It was a policy so
clearly outlined and so firmly fixed that it be-
came a recognized part of the inheritance which
he at last handed over to his children.
The merchant-statesman had fully developed
his ideas concerning the new West, by the year
1809, and he warmly urged them upon the gov-
ernment of the United States. The old frontier,
he said, must now be made thoroughly Ameri-
can, and must be guarded by American forts and
lake-cruisers, as far as the foot of Lake Michigan.
From that point, by a route ascertained by ac-
JOHN JACOB A8TOR 25
tual survey, there should be a chain of posts,
protecting traffic and immigration, all the way
across the continent, to the mouth of the Colum-
bia River. From thence an American line of
ships should connect with Asia, one of the Sand-
wich Islands being secured as a half-way station.
He himself, at once and single-handed, set out to
found the new seaport town at the mouth of the
Columbia River. Read in the light of subse-
quent achievements, Mr. Astor's project offers
something like a measure of the luminous brain
in which it was originated. So does the cour-
age with which he undertook to carry it out,
under the most discouraging circumstances.
Long before the overland stages ran, or the rail-
way and telegraph were thought of, the work
they were to do had been laid out for them.
The Pacific Mail steamships of to-day make pre-
cisely the use of the Sandwich Islands that was
assigned to them in Mr. Astor's Asiatic line, but
they sail from a port which was not then Ameri-
can.
The " War of 1812 " broke rudely in upon the
efforts, begun the previous year, to carry out the
Columbia River scheme. It was a war in the
direct line of Mr. Astor's entire policy, but com-
pelled its temporary abandonment. It was also
a war singularly marked by civil and military
blunders, but which, nevertheless, accomplished
the purposes for which it was begun. At the
end of it, American ships and sailors were free,
and the northern frontier was forever clear of
encroachments, with the great lakes opened to
•2<> . MEN OF BUSINESS
the future of American commerce. While hos-
tilities were still going on, the country suffered
unduly. It was not yet of age, in years, it was
very poor in purse, and it had very little credit.
Mr. Astor, however, had entire faith in the secu-
rities of the United States and invested in them
Harlem Plains.
heavily. The subsequent advance in price of all
the purchases he made at war-time rates, much
more than reimbursed him for his many losses
*/
occasioned by the war, in a kind of political
financial justice.
After the return of peace the Northwestern
scheme was not at once taken up again. It
JOHN JACOB AST OR 27
could not be, without direct and liberal co-opera-
tion by the national government, and some of its
topographical and other difficulties were better
understood than at an earlier day. Mr. Astor's
interest in Asiatic commerce continued, how-
ever, and his commercial operations expanded
after the war. The growth of New York City
was already more than justifying his earlier pur-
chases, and he was now reaching out yet further
and was buying land which had been mere past-
ure when he opened his first shop on Water
Street. He was a builder as well as a buyer,
with a very clear conception of the kind of
structure required for immediate occupation in
any given locality.
As the first quarter of the nineteenth century
drew to a close, Mr. Astor began to feel that his
time for new enterprises and daring adventures
had naturally passed away. While still main-
taining a keen supervision of his affairs and di-
recting all things with a steady hand and almost
unerring business judgment, there were many
things which could now be safely left to others.
The very nature of his investments made them
easier of administration. Without prejudice to
any financial interest, therefore, more time could
be given to books, to literary friends, and to a
watchful study of the manner in which events
were fulfilling the most extravagant dream of
his youth. It was a rarely exceptional accom-
plishment of a penniless boy's ambition, but
there had been in it very little of the element
which takes the name of chance or fortune.
28 MEN OF BUSINESS
There had been exhibited, on the other hand,
great personal courage and endurance, accom-
panied by long patience. It is not easy, now, to
couple the idea of youthful dash and daring with
even the earlier days of such a career as his, but
it was there, in a degree only surpassed by the
sagacity and the known integrity which enabled
him to deal equally well with red Iroquois, New
York business men, or the mercantile houses
of Europe and Asia. The result accomplished
was led up to along plainly marked lines, by
the working of distinctly readable forces. Espe-
cially is it notable that the ever-present spirit of
adventure, ready for taking risks, was at no time
changed into the spirit of gambling, the feverish
rashness which so often sacrifices the future to
the present.
Mr. Astor's benefactions were many, but he
said no more about them than about his other
business affairs. Those that are known evince
his characteristic of building thoughtfully upon
matured plans. One of them was an asylum for
poor children in his native village of Waldorf,
which he endowed with $50,000. It was a kind
of memorial of his own boyhood, given to the
children poorer than himself with whose needs
he had been acquainted.
For the city to which he had been led, after
leaving Waldorf, by way of London and Balti-
more, Mr. Astor provided something altogether
new. There were already public libraries, here
and there, in America, better or worse, and none
of them of a high order of merit. The literature
JOHN JACOB AST OR 29
of the country was in its infancy, but it gave
promise of fruitfulness. Americans might yet
write readable books, some said, but Mr. Astor's
habitual forecast began to deal with the needs of
the men and women who were to write. There
was a long and careful study of the subject, and
there were many consultations with eminent
scholars and literary men, including near per-
sonal friends like Irving and Halleck. The idea
that grew was that of a library for literary work-
ers especially, and for all readers incidentally.
It should be a perpetual servant of American
bookmaking, for even Mr. Astor could hardly
have foreseen its usefulness to a periodical liter-
ature yet to be created. It was, however, for a
condition of things not yet existing, but clearly
foreseen, that he invented the library bearing his
name.
The very locality selected for it was well up-
town. It was among the dwellings of the rich,
as became the dignity of its intended character,
although these were before long to drift up the
island, northward, like ships carried by an irre-
sistible current.
For the fulfilment of his well-matured library
plan, Mr. Astor made a cash devise of $400,000.
Of more than equal value was the fact that its
future usefulness was made one of the inherited
ideas of the Astor family, for another of the
dreams of the Waldorf boy had been realized,
and he had founded a " family." At his demise,
March 29, 1848, his estate was estimated at a then
present valuation of only twenty millions; but its
30 MEN OF BUSINESS
nature was such that its future was inseparably
bound up with that of the city. Its subsequent
history tallies closely with that of the country
with whose birth it began, and whose first stages
of growth Mr. Astor served so well, as a pioneer-
merchant-statesman. In studying the record of
his career it becomes easier to separate the idea
of statesmanship from that of office-holding, and
to perceive that some of the greatest, most far-
reaching public services may be all the while per-
formed by lives which have apparently been given
to the accomplishment of success in business.
II.
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
THE ancient idea that war is the normal con-
dition of the human race has been put away only
so far as the relations of states and nations are
concerned. These indeed are content, in this
latter day, to maintain an attitude of armed peace
which is itself an exceedingly costly warfare,
consuming vast armies in fortified camps with-
out sending them into actual battle. In other
departments of human activity there is perpetual
conflict. Business men of all occupations still
speak of the season before them as " the cam-
paign." In it they expect to meet with com-
petition, and with the chances and changes of
production, consumption, and finance, as with en-
emies in the field. The gathering and use of
varied forces, the strategies of attack and de-
lence employed, are often in striking correspond-
ence with processes involved in the movements
of armies. The larger and the more carefully
studied may be the operations, the stronger ap-
pears the military likeness. At the close of each
campaign, moreover, with its consequences of
victory or defeat, there is apt to be a military
illustration of the related doctrine of " the sur-
vival of the fittest."
32 MEN OF BUSINESS
During many years, a period which might be
measured by one long business life, there was a
little group of men in New York City whose
membership attracted the eyes of the nation
somewhat as did its statesmen and its generals.
It was generally understood that they were con-
stantly engaged in a warlike rivalry which fre-
quently brought them into collisions, into trials
of strength and skill, in the results of which large
numbers of their fellow-citizens, if not all, had at
least an indirect pecuniary interest. Whatever
might be said of any of them, as speculators,
financiers, money-kings, or the like, they and
their ways were so discussed from day to day
that other men became familiar with them, with
even their faces and their dress and their habits
of speech, almost as if they were personal ac-
quaintances.
Towering among them, like Saul above his
brethren, the most dramatic figure of them all,
but without knowing it, was one tall, broad-shoul-
dered, muscular form, which remained upon the
field of battle after most of the others had passed
away. In fact, it still remains, and cannot even yet
pass out of the minds of men ; for Cornelius Van-
derbilt was in many respects the most remarkable
man of business yet developed in the long, stormy
fermentations of American business affairs.
He was born near Stapleton, Staten Island,
N. Y., May 27, 1794, and was descended from
Jan Aertsen Van der Bilt, a Dutch immigrant
who came over from Holland about the year
1650, and settled upon a farm near Brooklyn.
Cornelius Vanderbilt.
34 MEN OF BUSINESS
Something like sixty-five years later, or in 1715,
his grandson, the great-grandfather of Cornelius
Vanderbilt, went over to Staten Island and be-
came the owner of a farm near New Dorp.
Here he became converted to the doctrines of
the Moravians, which continued to influence the
religious ideas of the family during several gen-
erations.
The type of character introduced by the early
Dutch colonists and developed under American
conditions has presented marked differences from
its near neighbor and rival, or fellow-citizen, the
New England Puritan stock. It has, however,
in equal degree, the enterprise, the love of ad-
venture, the fearlessness, the sturdy personal in-
dependence ; for these were inherited from the
heroic people who made the great history of the
Dutch Republic.
The father of Cornelius was a farmer in mod-
erate circumstances, but might have given his son
something like an early, common-school educa-
tion, if he would have taken it. He learned to
read and write, whether he would or not, but
that was the end of his consent to have anything
to do with books. Arithmetic, in all its practical
applications, came to him naturally ; and as for
geography, any map he cared to examine was
transferred to his memory as if it belonged to the
ins and outs of New York Bay or the Sound.
He was hardly more than a child when he began
his searching acquaintanceship with all of those
coast-lines that he could get an opportunity of
visiting.
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 35
It was, after all, a wholesome life for a boy to
lead, with its boating- and fishing adventures and
its increasing" knowledge of land and sea. The
Staten Island farmers and their neighbors, like
all islanders, were necessarily a semi-maritime
people. Among them and those who from time
to time drifted ashore, were old seafaring men,
full of strange yarns and also full of varied funds
of nautical information. It was a preparatory
school, after all, for a boy who was yet to have
so much to do with ships and shipping. His
next lesson in life was one which at once gave
him his bent and introduced him to the career in
which his distinguishing work was to be per-
formed. He was a handsome boy, tall and strong
beyond his years, of a steady and resolute, but
sometimes pugnacious temper, and with keen,
restless dark eyes, which seemed to miss nothing
between them and the horizon.
His father sent the produce of his farm, with
some from other farms, to New York City, in a
sail-boat of his own. It was a stout craft, built
for safety rather than speed, for the waves of the
Bay were sometimes rough sailing, but before
long Cornelius proved himself so good a sailor
that he was trusted to go and come by himself.
He was the captain and often the entire crew of
a vessel which carried freight, but was also will-
ing to convey passengers. The produce carried
was generally to be delivered for sale to market
consignees, but there were exceptions, and occa-
sions for the exercise of judgment. It was a
business with " points " of its own to be studied
36 MEN OF BUSINESS
and perceived, and the Staten Island boy shortly
obtained a thorough comprehension of his mar-
ket, with its ups and clowns, its over-sales, its
scarcities, and its artificial " corners." He made
ventures of his own, before long, and his opera-
tions were conducted so well that at the age
of sixteen he became a ship-owner, that is, he
bought and owned a better sail-boat than his
father's. It carried freight as well, but it had
more room for passengers, and these were in-
creasing in number as the years went by. There
was money in the business, and he prospered,
growing taller and stronger while he did so. At
eighteen, he not only owned two good boats,
handled for him by hired crews, but was captain
of a third and larger boat, commodore of a little
line that made quite a figure in the trade and
transportation of Staten Island. Here he kept
his office and headquarters at the old farm-house,
during one year more, but he was studying more
extended enterprises. At nineteen, he married
his cousin, Sophia Johnson, and moved to New
York City, where he transacted business and
made and kept his contracts with small reference
to the fact that he was not yet of age.
Immediately the strong, deep mark of his busi-
ness genius manifested itself. It seemed ' as if
every line of water transit between New York
and other ports, small or great, was already held,
and some were apparently more than supplied,
but young Vanderbilt had noted deficiencies.
He began to plan for both traffic and freight be-
tween the city and several towns along the Hud-
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
37
son River and Long Island Sound. The days of
steam were at hand, but had not arrived, and he
planned and had built, according to his several
requirements, boats, sloops, and schooners, upon
the best and latest models for speed, capacity,
One of the Early Steamboats.
and comfort He met with both encouraging
successes and speculative losses. Nothing like
wealth seemed to promise as yet, and before long
there were greater and greater encroachments
made by steam vessels upon the old time craft and
their business. That, too, was a change for which
he was getting ready, and he was only twenty-
three years of age when he became captain of a
38 MEN OF BUSINESS
steamer running as a freight and passenger ferry-
boat between New York and New Brunswick,
N. J. During the twelve years that followed he
was nominally at work upon a salary, but was all
the while getting ahead, mentally and pecuniar-
ily. He was able, therefore, in 1827, at the age
of thirty-three, to lease on his own account the
ferry between New York and Elizabeth, N. J. It
was a promising line, but he at once made its
promise of greater value by building new and
improved boats for it. So well was his forecast
verified by cash results that two years later, in
1829, he was ready to contract for new and larger
craft with which to compete for the rich trans-
port harvest of the Hudson River. There was
but one road to victory, for his competitors were
wide-awake men. It was necessary to offer the
public something better than others gave them,
and he did so, zealously hunting out every dis-
coverable improvement in hulls, machinery, or
outfit. Moreover, he was personally acquainted
with the entire boating community, and knew
how to select men for their work. The very prin-
ciple upon which he was managing led him to
make continual improvements in the human force
in charge of his fleet. He was remorseless in dis-
pensing with defective subordinates, continually,
as if they were so many boats, replacing those
who were unsatisfactory with something better
adapted to the business in hand.
There were few millionaires in the United
States in the year 1836. It was a time, too, of
wide-spread financial distress, and business men
CORNELIUS VAXUEIUilLT 39
generally were losing money, rather than mak-
ing any. All the more prominence, therefore,
was given to a man who had acquired the fleet
captain's title of Commodore, and was loosely
estimated to be worth $500,000. This was prob-
ably much too high an estimate, and nearly the
whole sum, larger or smaller, was invested in
property which required constant activity to
maintain its value. It was not large enough to
enable its owner to maintain a war, campaign
after campaign, over too broad a field, in oppo-
sition to powerful and capable antagonists. The
Hudson River interest was therefore parted with
to Robert L. Stevens, the Commodore restricting
himself, for a time, to Long Island Sound and its
growing requirements. The commerce of this
great water-way had not yet been materially in-
terfered with by railway competition, but any-
thing like a mastery of it called for a further
application of the fundamental principle of im-
provement, the best boats handled by the best
men. If again and again weaker rivals were
crushed by a persistent system of lower rates
and better accommodations, the methods of the
campaigns in which they were beaten were not
injurious to the public interest.
The Commodore was now in a kind of general
partnership with important concerns engaged in
ship-building. Acting independently, of course,
they understood and were prepared to meet his
increasing requirements. When, therefore, in
1849, the California gold excitement broke out,
with its sudden flood of feverish migration, he
MEN OF BUSINESS
was better ready than other men to seize the op-
portunity. He promptly placed steamers upon
the Nicaragua route to San Francisco, and began
to gather a golden harvest before any large
amounts had returned from the placers. Four
years later, in 1853, he sold out this part of his
San Francisco in 1848.
undertakings, upon what seemed peculiarly ad-
vantageous terms. He had toiled long, had ac-
cumulated wealth, and had determined upon
enjoying a vacation. For this he had planned in
a manner that was altogether his own. There
Avere steam yachts, although not many, both in
America and Europe, but he had built for him-
self, upon general designs of his own making, a
vessel which he named the North Star. In her
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 41
construction, tonnage, and appointments, she sur-
passed any other steam yacht then in existence,
and he sailed in her to the Old World, with his
family and a chosen party of friends. It was a
long pleasure cruise, during which he touched
at many ports, and everywhere attracted and
received marked attention. There were great
ship-owning houses and corporations, the world
over, but no other individual was " Commodore "
of so large a fleet, owned and directed by himself.
He was a kind of prince in the realm of sea-going
transportation, and he was treated accordingly.
If this was to be regarded as the celebration
of a business triumph, he returned to America to
find a new war upon his hands, and he entered
into it with vigor. The parties to whom he had
sold the Nicaragua line were disputing the con-
ditions of their bargain and were trying to evade
its payments. It is possible that in the courts,
or if he had been less of a fighting man, or with
weaker resources, they might have succeeded.
They might, at least, have obtained compro-
mises. As it was, they found him at once re-en-
tering the field as their competitor, and with a
vastly better mastery of all the elements of that
species of campaign. After a sharp, pitiless
struggle, they were forced into bankruptcy and
the victor retained possession of the field of bat-
tle. It was a prize worth contending for. Dur-
ing the eleven years that followed, his profits
amounted to $i 1,000,000. He was not the richest
man in America, but he stood among the fore-
most half dozen.
42 MEN OF BUSINESS
During a part of this period, a large share of
the Commodore's energetic work was turned in
another direction. England was then, although
to a less extent than now, the mistress of the
ocean-carrying business. The United States
stood very near her — next in rank — but mainly
with wooden sailing vessels. Only one impor-
tant line of American steamers, the Collins, ran
upon the Atlantic ferry. There had been signs
of an approaching collision between England and
Russia, and it was plainly to be foreseen that
such an event would offer an American oppor-
tunity by a partial crippling of the English mer-
chant marine. That France also was involved
increased the probable opening, and the Com-
modore prepared to take advantage of it. His
idea \vas a long campaign for the carrying trade
between Europe and America, and he began it
with the outbreak of the Crimean War, in 1853.
Using whatever other ships he owned or could
obtain, he built three new ones, the best and the
swiftest, and established them as a line between
New York and Havre. The Crimean War was
ended in 1856, and before that time the English
ship interest had more than recovered from its
temporary disability. It was once more exceed-
ingly difficult for any American line to maintain
what was, for many reasons, an unequal contest.
A mistake of generalship on the part of the Com-
modore himself, made it impossible. All great
leaders make mistakes, and even the Commodore
hastily overlooked the fact that to weaken any
American line or the general resources of such
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 43
lines, was to strengthen the common enemy.
The great English steamship interest was \vell
known to be aided by Government subsidies, in
one form or another, in addition to their many
other advantages. The Collins line was main-
tained against them, narrowly, by its United
States mail contracts. It was a fatal blow when
the Vanderbilt ships proposed to carry the mails
for nothing. The payment ceased ; the Collins
steamers shortly were withdrawn ; the Commo-
dore was left alone in the field. If he had won an
apparent victory over an American rival, how-
ever, he had enabled his European opponents to
concentrate against him, and they forced him to
give up the fight.
Long before this, however, Mr. Vanderbilt's
genius for transportation had led him to the care-
ful study of another of the most obvious signs
of the times. His own account books, and the
reports of other steamboat men, told him how
the railways w^ere taking away the carrying busi-
ness of the Hudson and the Sound. The latter
was of less importance, but the rails parallel
with the river reached on, westward, as far as
the future of the country might build tracks for
them, or provide freight and passengers. Nev-
ertheless, these lines of transportation had been
so managed that their record had been largely
one of losses, and the prices of their stocks ruled
low. As early as 1844, Mr. Vanderbilt began to
buy shares of the New York and New Haven,
then at a low figure, but he did so quietly, with-
out attracting attention. It was not until the
44 MEN OF BUSINESS
close of the Crimean War, in 1856, that he was
known to be drawing out from the steamboat
lines on the Sound. In very nearly the same
manner, if not quite so early, he acquired and
steadily increased an interest in the New York
and Harlem road, the shares of which were
almost despised and neglected on the Exchange.
He was biding his time and setting his capital
free ; but too much of it was yet invested in ships
and steamers, and their management could not be
neglected without disastrous losses.
It looked as if these had come to him, as to
other American ship-owners, with the outbreak of
the Civil War, in 1861. The commercial marine
of the United States was indeed soon swept from
the sea, and the carrying trade of the world
passed into other hands altogether. At once,
however, there was a war demand for such craft
as could be fitted up as light cruisers, or could
serve as transports for troops and army supplies.
It does not appear that the Commodore at once
availed himself of this market for vessels to any
extent, but the spring of 1862 brought him an
exceptional opportunity. The Monitor and the
Merrimac fought their historic battle, in Hamp-
ton Roads, changing in a day the navies and
naval warfare of the w^orld. With the first news
of the appearance of the Merrimac, however, and
of the destruction of the United States wooden
war-vessels, the patriotism of the Commodore
took fire. His best steamship was the Vanderbilt,
the swiftest, strongest, best appointed ship afloat,
as he believed. She could, at least, run down the
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
Merrimac, armored or unarmored, even if both
ships went to the bottom together. The experi-
ment was never to be tried, although thenceforth
the " ram ' recovered its old Roman place in
naval combats; but the Vanderbilt was made a
present to the United States and performed other
services of vast value. At the close of the war,
in 1866, the patriotic giver received from Con-
gress a vote of thanks and a gold medal, in
The Vanderbilt.
cordial recognition of his timely gift. It had
indeed stimulated all other support of the na-
tional cause, and had strengthened the Govern-
ment in its hour of need. There was afterward
no expression of jealousy when it became gen-
erally understood that subsequent disposal of all
his other available craft, by sale or charter, to the
Government, had enabled Mr. Vanderbilt to per-
manently withdraw his capital from the water,
with large profits, that he might reinvest it in rails
and rolling stock. Only a year later, in 1863, he
had upon his hands his first important railway
46 MEN OF BUSINESS
and Stock Exchange campaign, and he fought it
out, through what seemed inevitable defeat, to a
victory which opened the way to a long series of
brilliant successes.
Owing to long-continued mismanagement and
other causes, the stock of the Harlem Railroad
was selling, in 1863, at only $10 a share. It
was therefore easy for a man with millions of
released capital to buy a controlling interest,
but there were those who wondered what he
could do with it, even as a Wall-Street shuttle-
cock. His lifelong policy, or principle, of de-
velopment and improvement was not understood
by mere speculators. Neither were they aware
how silently and rapidly he was buying shares
of the Hudson River road, in the neighbor-
hood of $75 per share. His first movement
was to obtain a charter for a system of New
York City street railways, connecting with the
road, including a line traversing Broadway. Up
went the stock to par, and for a little while
the enterprise looked well ; but daring and skil-
ful foes were preparing something very much
resembling a night attack. Prominent Wall-
Street operators entered into combination with
controlling politicians and sold the stock short,
or for future delivery, while the city government
prepared to rescind the Broadway part of the
new franchise, considered its greatest value.
The stock went down, down again. The
franchise was reduced to narrower limits, and
still the operators sold and sold, to push their
supposed victim lower. What they did not
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 47
know was the fact that the opposing general
was quite willing to risk his resources and was
buying all they offered. He went on until the
entire stock of the road was in his hands,
and men who had contracts out for its deliv-
ery must buy of him. That their settlements
were made, as it was said, " at two prices,"
was a matter of course, but the plans of the
victor included a permanent increase of actual
value as well as of selling price. His purchases
had now given him control of the Hudson River
road also, and he at once sent into the State
Legislature a bill providing for the union of the
two franchises. Here he was again confronted
by the financial political clique of stock operators,
led by some of the most acute and able men
on the Street or at Albany. The stock had risen
to one hundred and fifty when they began to
"bear" it. Down it went, and they seemed to
be making money and beating their too venture-
some adversary all the way, until its price was
lower than that at which he at the first began to
purchase. He and his friends, however, were
obligingly accepting all offers, until the out-
standing short contracts covered twenty-seven
thousand more shares than had ever been issued.
There was a hot day on the Street when this fact
came to light. It was even necessary for the Com-
modore, in order to avert a general panic, to
settle with the associated "shorts" at an average
price of $285 per share. His profits were enor-
mous. The two roads were made one, and instant-
ly began a searching reformation in every part
48 MEN OF BUSINESS
and department of their management. Mr. Van-
derbilt assumed the presidency of the new cor-
poration, with a nominal board of directors,
who directed very much as if they had been the
mates and crew of one of his old-time coasting-
vessels. Perhaps no other feature occasioned
more surprise, from time to time, than did the
minuteness of his knowledge of all the items of
a railway construction account, and his determi-
nation to use only the very best appliances, of
every kind. Allied to this was his rigid demand
for discipline, fidelity, and efficiency in all the
human part of his transportation service. In so
doing he was rendering a vast and permanent
public service, for it was a revolution which
rapidly extended to all other American railways.
Mr. Vanderbilt's first purchases of New York
Central stock had attracted no special attention,
but his successive graspings of the river lines
sent a spasm of alarm through the circle of finan-
ciers then in control of the railroads from Al-
bany to Buffalo. They had held that impor-
tant interest long, believed themselves firmly
seated, but they dreaded the swift advances
of this new railway king. He was a danger-
ous enemy to other kings, and they made the
serious mistake of beginning a war upon him.
They were not overwise, for they overlooked
the ice-bound condition of the Hudson during all
the winter months, when they made their ar-
rangements to send down their heavy freights
and as many as possible of their passengers to
New York by water instead of by rail. It was
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 49
a war in which both shippers and travellers prof-
ited, and the roads did not, but it only lasted a
year or so. The Commodore's new movement
was ready with the winter of 1865. His friends
and agents on the street were heavily short of
New York Central stock, and the river was closed
with ice, when he suddenly transferred the Al-
bany terminus of the river roads across to the
eastern shore, and refused to receive freight from
the Central. Down went the market price of its
shares, and the Vanderbilt interest not only prof-
itably covered its shorts, but took also all the
stock that was offered by the surprised and all
but panicky holders. At the end of this cam-
paign there wras an assurance of peace in the fut-
ure, for the winner controlled the rails from New
York to Buffalo, and was arranging for another
consolidation. In 1869 he was elected President
of the New York Central & Hudson River Rail-
road Co. He had already been President of
the Central since 1867, however, and there had
really been but one road and one head, with a
drastic process of reorganization, reform, recon-
struction, and deeply searching improvement go-
ing on from hour to hour.
The reorganization of the financial structure
of the consolidated roads involved an important
feature which was then and afterward the sub-
ject of severe criticism. Mr. Vanderbilt de-
clared that the existing stock did not fairly rep-
resent the property. Additional stock was there-
fore issued to holders, at the rate of one hundred
and seven per cent, nominal shares to outstand-
4
50 MEN OF BUSINESS
ing shares of Central, and eighty-nine per cent,
to shares of the Hudson River. In spite of this
watering process the price arose to two hundred,
so great was the general confidence in the new
management, and so thoroughly was any exist-
ing " bear " interest defeated.
While the improvement in the roads under
Mr. Vanderbilt's control was altogether phe-
nominal ; while tracks, bridges, depots, cars, and
lateral connections changed their character as if
by magic, the Commander-in-Chief, now, rather
than the Commodore, was leading his financial
forces westward. By obtaining control of the
Lake Shore, Canada Southern, and Michigan
Central, he completed his relations with the com-
merce of the great lakes and reached Chicago.
From this centre of freight and trade he pushed
on, over road after road, into the west and north-
west country, and formed connections across the
continent to the Pacific. Almost every succes-
sive step involved a contest, more or less severe,
but he met with no more perplexing adversaries
than those with whom he contended, at the very
outset, in a campaign aimed against the then
competing management of the Erie, or " New
York, Lake Erie & Western ' Railway. The
leaders upon the opposite side were Daniel Drew,
Jay Gould, James Fiske, and other well-known
powers of the Street, and the contest passed
through a swift succession of exciting, drama-
tic, often grotesque and even repulsive phases.
Never before or since has it been equalled in the
annals of American " stock operations," and its
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 51
details were bv no means pleasant reading, for
courts of law were made to figure as mere chess-
men in the hands of skilful players. If all things
are fair in war, upon that and no other ground
could much that was done be justified. If, how-
ever, the Commodore was at one time beaten,
with a loss of $7,000,000, by means of a fraudulent
over-issue of Erie shares, he afterward justly
recovered nearly $5,000,000 of it, after a contest
in the courts. His real success, however, con-
sisted in the final result that his own great rail-
way system was left without an important rival
nearer than the more southerly east-and-west
trunk lines. With these it was afterward to
enter into a number of brief, spasmodic competi-
tions for the business of the West, but there was
to be no campaign worthy of record as throwing
further light upon his own genius.
It has been said of him that he was not and
could not have been a pioneer; that he never
projected or opened a new line or channel. If
this should be accepted as measurably true, it
should be read in connection with his leading
characteristic as a business man, that of perceiv-
ing at a glance whatever could be done to de-
velop any existing channel to its utmost capacity,
with reference to all the future effects or conse-
quences of that development. The roads that he
perfected and the rates of carrying as he reduced
them, may be said to have made some of our
new States possible. The rapidity of their settle-
ment and prosperity could not otherwise have
been attained.
52 MEN OF BUSINESS
The long warfare of Mr. Vanderbilt's busi-
ness life grew somewhat less active toward the
close, but it could not altogether cease until the
very end. This came, in New York City, Janu-
ary 4, 1877. His estate was estimated at about
one hundred millions of dollars. With the ex-
ception of a million previously given to Vander-
bilt University, at Nashville, Tenn., and $50,000
to the Church of the Strangers in New York, it
went to his children, the larger part going to his
son, William H. Vanclerbilt, into whose hands
the business management had already passed.
A much greater inheritance remained, divided
among all men, in the work he had performed
for the transportation business of the United
States. He went into it in its very infancy, grew
with it, and its present advanced condition owes
more to him than to any other man. He builded
well through all the sharp campaigns of his war-
like business life. He left behind him a broadly
written record upon the face of the land, in stone
and steel and iron. No other American business
man can be given a higher rank as one of the
builders of the prosperity of the commonwealth.
Charles Louis Tiffany.
III.
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY.
THERE yet lingers, in the minds of many men,
a remnant of the old, semi-barbaric idea that
there is a natural separation between the fine
arts and good business management. A better
understanding grows more and more into gen-
eral acceptance, but art and good taste are not
intelligently studied as important servants of
success, except within the limits of a few pecul-
iarly developed lines of business. Their possible
application has hardly any limit. If it were
made, as it eventually must be, a wide range of
occupations would become vastly useful also as
educational and refining processes.
It is true that the more obvious uses of color,
order, arrangement, for effect in attracting the
eyes of retail purchasers, are by no means neg-
lected, but they are sought for with an exceed-
ingly defective perception of their nature and
value. It is also true that the general public
taste has advanced, attaining a better but still
very dim idea of the distinction between orna-
mentation and bedizenment. The better culture
may well be acknowledged in full. Both its
growth and its importance may find instructive
54 MEN OF BUSINESS
illustrations from the record of the business men
to whose successful careers the improvement
attaches.
The field of art culture is wide, and the part of
it under consideration owes less than might be
imagined to the utterances or writings, or even
to the art-achievements of men who have earned
fame as masters and professional instructors.
More has been done for the general forward
movement by men who have obtained practical
business successes by taking good taste and
sound art-principles as partners in the councils
of their counting-rooms.
Charles Louis Tiffany was born at Killingly,
Conn., February 15, 1812. The family, of Eng-
lish origin, were among the early settlers of New
England, for his great-grandfather was a native
of Massachusetts. His father, Comfort Tiffany,
was born and brought up at Attleboro, Mass.,
and, shortly after marrying Miss Chloe Draper,
of that place, removed to Danielsonville, Wind-
ham County, Conn., to engage in the manufact-
ure of cotton goods.
There was a noteworthy reason for such an
adventure, for the war of 1812, with England,
shutting off importation, gave the first impor-
tant opportunity and stimulus to the manufacture
of cotton goods in America. During a series of
years there was a pretty rigid protection from
foreign rivalry, and the new industry began to
get upon its feet, although it still had long to
wait for its better machinery, or even for ample
supplies of raw material from the slowly opening
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 55
cotton-fields of the South. Comfort Tiffany had
many obstacles to contend with as a pioneer in
a new industry, and some of these were of a
commercial nature, coming- with the return of
peace and competition. His eldest son, Charles,
was therefore born into a species of technical
school, and grew up through a course of inci-
dental instruction in all that was then known of
the art-business of adopting or devising patterns,
varying or improving fabrics, or providing in
advance for anticipated or supposable changes
in the popular taste and demand.
There were other schools at and near Kill-
ingly, and Charles received his primary educa-
tion in " the little red school-house ' at Daniel-
sonville, a typical New England district school.
He afterward spent two years at the Plainfield
Academy, about ten miles from his own home.
This was at that time a somewhat noted school,
presided over by John Witter, a Yale College
graduate and tutor. While young Tiffany was
at Plainfield his father organized a company,
called the Brooklyn Manufacturing Company, for
larger manufacturing operations. They bought
half of the water privilege on the Brooklyn
side of the Quinnebaug River, opposite Daniel-
sonville. While their new mill was building,
Comfort Tiffany opened a little country store,
took his son Charles out of school and put him
in charge of it. The young merchant was but
fifteen years old, but then his store was also very
small and young. He kept the accounts of the
business, and after it became pretty firmly estab-
56 MEN OF BUSINESS
lished he made a number of trips to New York
for merchandise.
About a year after the new mill was opened
Mr. Tiffany removed his residence to the Brook-
lyn side of the river. At the same time he bought
out his associates, and the cotton-goods manu-
facturing went on under the firm name of C.
Tiffany & Son. The country-store business had
developed so well that a larger place was ob-
tained for it, and the management of it was
given to other hands, so that Charles L. Tif-
fany could take up his books again. Several
terms at the Brooklyn Academy completed this
part of his education. Leaving school behind
him at last, he went into his father's cotton
factory as a student of business methods under
a shrewd and capable instructor. He even
completed his course, so to speak, and was
graduated into the factory business ; but its ap-
parent prospects were not tempting. The days
of cotton-mill prosperity were at hand, but they
had not come, and young Tiffany, at the age of
twenty-five, decided to go out from home in
search of something better adapted to the pecul-
iar faculties he believed himself to possess. He
had worked hard, and his habits had been all that
could be asked for, but the pay had been only
too moderate, without a possibility for accumu-
lation, and he had no capital of his own. His
former school-fellow and firm friend, John B.
Young, was in the same condition, financially,
but he had gone out six months earlier, and was
now, in 1837, employed in a stationery and fancy-
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY
57
goods store in New York City. Here he was
joined by Tiffany in the early summer, and to-
gether they made a thorough study of the busi-
ness possibilities.
Mr. Tiffany when Twenty-eight Years of Age.
To the eyes of most men, there hardly seemed
to be any, for it was a dull, dead time, when
commerce, trade, and manufactures were pros-
trated by the sweeping financial hurricane of
the great Panic of '37. Perhaps it was not so bad
a time for a beginner, after all, considering what
58
MEN OF BUSINESS
an immense number of the older concerns had
suddenly disappeared. The}7 were at the very
bottom of the hill, but Mr. Young believed he
knew something of the line he had served in for
half a year, and Mr. Tiffany had ideas of his own.
Mr. Comfort Tiffany approved of his son's un-
dertaking, and loaned the young adventurers five
The Store Opposite City Hall.
hundred dollars each. Upon this capital they
launched the firm of Tiffany & Young, after
painfully searching for and finding a salesroom
over which they could put up their modest sign.
They could not think of going down town among
the costlier buildings around what was then
the centre of trade, near Trinity Church, and yet
they were criticized as rash in establishing them-
selves so far up Broadway as No. 259, opposite
the middle of City Hall Park. Mr. Tiffany was
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 59
much encouraged in making his selection by the
fact that a young dry-goods merchant named
Alexander T. Stewart, who had opened an estab-
lishment two doors above, was known to be doing
very well. In after years he continued to have
great confidence in that man's capacity as a
salesman. The building obtained was one-half
of a respectable double dwelling-house. Each
front was fifteen feet in width, and the half be-
tween them and Stewart's was occupied by a
fashionable dressmaker named Scheltema. The
rent was moderate, and the front room, once a
parlor, but now altered to suit their purposes,
was large enough to display the stock of station-
ery and fancy goods provided by their slender
capital. They were not yet ambitious enough to
think of jewelry, but presented an array of Chi-
nese pottery and other goods, Japanese lacquer
work, terra-cotta wares, umbrellas, walking-sticks,
cabinets, fans, leather work, bric-a-brac, station-
ery, and miscellaneous " notions." It was some-
thing new and out of any beaten track with
wrhich the city shoppers were then familiar, but
that \vas by no means the special attraction of
the place. Its charm was that whatever it con-
tained was so well presented. The very show
of goods was a work of art, and every selection
had been made with good taste and good judg-
ment. There could not be a grand opening,
largely advertized, but on the iSth of September,
1837, tne little shop was ready for customers.
Hardly any came, and three days went by with
an aggregate of sales amounting to only $4.98.
60 MEN OF BUSINESS
One day more added $2.77, but those who came
in to make these petty purchases went away to
tell what a pretty place they had seen, and others
also came to see. The good taste, with some-
thing allied to it in the manner of meeting cus-
tomers, operated remarkably. Lower Broadway
was then the fashionable promenade of a pleasant
autumn day, and shoppers on their way to the
great establishments below the Park were almost
sure to glance at a show window so filled that it
was a kind of picture. Sales increased, and with
the growth of business it was easy to obtain con-
signments of various kinds, including works of
art, which greatly aided the desired effect of
making all things work together as an invitation
for people with purses to come in. A few weeks
later, the cash-book began to look encourag-
ing, for on the day before Christmas the sales
amounted to $236, and then, after a busy holiday-
week, the day before New Year's Day brought
in $675. The latter was then "gift day," as
Christmas is now.
After that, success seemed to be assured and
the character and quantity of the stock present-
ed for sale improved continually. Mr. Tiffany's
constant effort, studied from hour to hour, was
to obtain and offer the very best that he could
obtain with the means at his disposal. There
was a constant watch and search of the import-
ing houses for whatever would serve to increase
the growing reputation of the young concern,
refusing anything which did not seem to agree
with the intended tone and effect, even if promis-
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 61
ing temporary profits. As for things acceptable,
almost any manufacturer or importer was now
willing to place wares in so popular a salesroom.
How great was the success actually gained may
be fairly measured by the first misfortune that
befell the house of Tiffany & Young. On the
morning of January i, 1840, thieves broke in and
stole almost everything that could be carried
away, to the amount of about $4,000, four times
the original capital ; but all the holiday sales had
been already made and the young merchants had
carried their cash home with them. They were
therefore the better able to start well with the new
year, and before the end of it their growing busi-
ness required them to take in the next building,
Mr. Stewart having removed, and they now had
a frontage of forty-five feet on Broadway, with a
show window on Warren Street. Once more,
under the unerring eye of Mr. Tiffany, an effort
at "art effect" was made, Avith the aid of Bohe-
mian glassware, French and Dresden porcelain,
cutlery, and clocks. Nothing worth mentioning
had as yet been done in jewelry, but an enter-
prise in that direction was under discussion. It
was not to be undertaken, in the ordinary hum-
drum way, making the concern only one more
rival of the seemingly sufficient number which
were already attending to the jewelry business.
The firm itself was reorganized by the admis-
sion of another partner, Mr. J. L. Ellis, the new
firm-name being Tiffany, Young £ Ellis, each
member having his own specialty and responsi-
bility. The next step was a very long one for a
62 MEN OF BUSINESS
house not four years old. The manufactures
of the United States were still in their infancy.
In many lines there was hardly an effort to com-
pete with imported wares. The greater part
of the goods dealt in by Tiffany & Young had
been brought to this country without any oppor-
tunity given them for the exercise of taste or
judgment in deciding beforehand what should
come. They were confident that they knew
better than other men the requirements of their
increasing clientage of customers. At the same
time they had only a defective knowledge of, and
no direct relation with, the manufactories and
salesrooms of Europe. It was therefore decided
that Mr. Young should be sent to Europe upon
a general exploring tour, with the intention of
enabling the house to do thenceforth, as much
as possible, its own importing. He was especially
to search for novelties, and provide the Tiffany
art warerooms with articles not to be obtained
elsewhere in the city. The councils of the firm
were perfected, and he sailed for Europe. It was
indeed something new, for while many European
houses sent travelling salesmen to America in
those days, hardly any American houses, in any
line, had the presumption to send travelling pur-
chasers to the Old World.
Mr. Young's inspection was widely extended.
He discovered a long list of attractions, and made
beginnings of a number of important business
relations. Probably the most important of all
were those which related to jewelry. At Hanau
and Frankfort, Germany, and in Paris, were
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 63
found manufacturers of better grades of cheap
jewelry than were previously known upon this
side of the Atlantic. There were shops in New
York and elsewhere which offered a superabun-
dance of inferior goods, but here was something
of real merit. The materials and workmanship
were good, the designs were artistic ; while the
profits to be realized were all that could be asked
for. No great amount of capital needed to be
risked in a sufficiently showy beginning, and the
new departure was made.
On November 30, 1841, not long after Mr.
Young's return from Europe, the partnership
ties already existing were strengthened by the
marriage of Mr. Tiffany to his sister, Miss Har-
riet Olivia Young.
The results of the new European connections
were rapidly manifested, for whoever desired
ornaments at a low price was willing to visit the
one house which offered them the very best.
The other novelties of all kinds added to the at-
tractiveness of the now well-known salesroom,
and strangers visiting the city came to it as to
one of the "sights." Before long, real gold- and
silverware began to make an appearance, and
every piece of it was made the most of under the
critical eye of Mr. Tiffany. He felt that he had
gained a genuine business victory, moreover,
when it began to be the custom for rich and
cultured people to ask each other, on meeting,
whether or not they had seen the latest imported
novelty in the precious metals on exhibition at
Tiffany's.
MEN OF BUSINESS
Better grades of English jewelry began to
supplant the German manufactures, and these
were followed by the best work of Florence,
Rome, and Paris. It was a steady advance upon
a predetermined line, the one idea of art perfec-
tion controlling each step.
~ - ii^*™ ™ °" ^; • — r~l,lL • — • c ^L * — '
The Store on the Corner of Broadway and Chambers Street in 1847.
The first ten years of success, uninterrupted
except by the robbery on New Year's Day, 1840,
found the old quarters too narrow, and there
was a removal, in 1847, to the corner of Cham-
bers Street, at 271 Broadway, just a little be-
low Stewart's. The new store was not only lar-
ger, but vastly more convenient ; and in the
following year, 1848, the firm began to manu-
facture gold jewelry upon its own account, with
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 65
a cessation of a large part of its importations.
Perhaps at no previous date, nor in any other
department, had the peculiar faculties, and what
was now the training of Mr. Tiffany in sound
principles of applied art, proved so valuable an
element of business success. The character of
the work turned out rapidly established its repu-
tation, even when it was compared with the best
importations offered by his own or other houses.
He had indeed been a close and thoughtful stu-
dent of art effects of every name and nature, and
had acquired a thorough knowledge of the clas-
sic, the antique, as well as of the best achieve-
ments of every modern school, for there was
hardly anything in his warerooms or workrooms
which did not operate as an object-lesson.
Now, step after step, another class of lessons
was brought before him, for precious stones of
increasing value and variety were added to the
stock. No other house in the city was doing a
larger business, but this branch was of slow de-
velopment on account of the amount of capital
locked up by its requirements. Gems came first,
followed by all the brilliant category of nature's
wonders; and-Mr. Tiffany acquired the art within
an art which understands the subtle fascination
of each individual stone, and can advise its judi-
cious treatment by the practical lapidary. It was,
after all, only the more thorough education of
the faculty which had managed so well the pres-
entation of the Japanese fans and knick-knacks
in the first show-window he had arranged on
Broadway. There are a multitude of men, how-.
5
66 MEN OF BUSINESS
ever, who can do very well in the lower grades
of any art, while they seem unable to climb high-
er. Not so many are needed, perhaps, in the
upper stories of the art temple.
It was in strict relation to the increase of such
a business that the wealth and culture of Amer-
ica, and especially of the city of New York, was
advancing1 so wonderfully. In commercial and
financial standing among the cities of the world,
and in all its social features, the great seaport
of the New World was putting off its old provin-
cial character. On one side it was assuming
a marked relation to the whole nation and on
the other it was becoming cosmopolitan. All
its bonds of supposed subserviency to any ideas
of European superiority were breaking rapidly.
America and its chief city were gaining freedom
in art and literature as in politics, and Mr. Tif-
fany exercised a noteworthy agency in the con-
tinuous processes. At every stage of advance-
ment, from the day in which he left his father's
cotton-mill, he had evinced great keenness ot
business forecast and a tendency to be boldly
ready for dealing with coming events, or even
with sudden emergencies. It is a trait of every
strong and successful business character. Its im-
o
portance is enhanced by the well-perceived truth
that the great opportunities of life seem to come
unexpectedly. Then those who are not ready
can only stand still and see the chance go by.
Very often, indeed, the disasters of one man fur-
nish the opportunity of another, as was now to
be forcibly illustrated.
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 67
The dealings of the house placed them in close
relations with Parisian jewellers. The French
capital in 1848 became a kind of revolutionary
chaos, in which the ordinary processes of borrow-
ing and lending money were suspended. The
rich and titled classes, purchasers of precious
stones in time of peace, were the greatest suf-
ferers from the current disturbances. They were
under a sharp necessity for turning their jewels
into cash and their excessive offerings made
them so many " bears" upon the diamond mar-
ket. Prices were forced down to fifty per cent,
of peace valuations and European buyers even
then held timidly aloof. At the first sugges-
tion of the coming opportunity Mr. Tiffany and
his partners began to make their financial prep-
arations. They had money of their own to use,
and they were able to obtain as much more as
they needed. Every spare dollar went across
the water after diamonds, to be brought home
and stored away until called out from the
vaults by the demands of American buyers. As
soon as the European turmoil was over all
could have been returned and sold abroad with
profit, but there was yet another purpose in-
cluded in the general plan of operation. The
purchases in Paris, conducted personally by Mr.
Young and by Mr. Banks, the head of the jew-
elry department, had been half-way a romance,
for they had been jealously watched and were at
one time actually under arrest as " political sus-
pects." They had exercised courage, finesse, di-
plomacy, as well as mercantile acuteness and
68 MEN OF BUSINESS
expert knowledge, and now the fruit of their
daring and address was to be something more
than speculation, for the house determined to
step forward into the front place among Ameri-
can diamond merchants permanently.
Apart from any other beauty, there is a value
attaching to some gems from their historic asso-
ciation, and hardly anything else is more subtle
or requires a keener perception of the demands
of cultivated " taste " and connoisseurship. Not
only one by one, but in large lots, the historic
stones of Europe began to drift toward the
sparkling show-cases of the American house.
Among the earlier purchases came the zone of
diamonds worn by the ill-fated Marie Antoinette.
A few years later, when the famous Esterhazy
diamonds were sold, Tiffany & Co. paid a hun-
dred thousand dollars for their selections. At
the sale of the French crown jewels, in 1887, one-
third of all was bought by them, at a cost of
about half a million. Many another glittering
memorial came, from time to time, and each in
turn added something to the peculiar business
character sought to be established. It took its
place in line with a predetermined policy.
From his first attempt as a manufacturer, Mr.
Tiffany, with the enthusiastic co-operation of his
associates, had proposed the attainment of the
best possible art results in silverware. It was
his ambition to rival, in purity of metal and in
fineness of workmanship, the historic silver-
smiths of Europe. The beginning was neces-
sarily small, as to the size of the shop, but it was
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 60
liberal in its judicious hunt for and employment
of "workmen cunning in silver." The little shop
grew until it was a huge block of brick and
iron, on Prince Street, and the workmen num-
bered five hundred. At the same time the
policy of absolute fineness in metallic quality
obtained for the stamp of the firm the same
authority as in Europe attaches to the " hall-
mark " stamp of the British government ; it in-
dicates a standard of T^V<r Pure silver.
In 1853 the firm was again reorganized, Mr.
Young and Mr. Ellis retiring, several junior
partners coming in, and the name changing to
its present style of Tiffany & Co. Without de-
traction from the ability or services of any of
the builders of the house, this had been really
the name, in the minds of the public, before that
day. As before the change, though now in a
wider, more perfect system, each of the several
departments of the extended business was un-
der a responsible head, but the united opera-
tions were controlled by the art purpose of the
directing artist, who was not himself a handi-
craftsman of any kind.
In the following year, 1854, still larger accom-
modations were obtained by a removal to No. 550
Broadway, and again it was said that the house
had gone too far uptown. Perhaps it is an illustra-
tion of a quick perception of historic values, that
Mr. Tiffany, in 1858, bought up, promptly, the
unused miles of the first Atlantic cable, cut
them up, mounted them in various styles, and
sold them to an eager multitude as souvenirs.
70 MEN OF BUSINESS
During all these years Mr. Tiffany had been
a public-spirited citizen, but he had never taken
any active part in politics. It hardly seemed
possible that he should at any time do so, but he
did effectively, and that too in the direct line ol
his own business.
The winter of 1860 and the early spring of
1 86 1 brought the first muttering thunders of the
civil war to the ears of the people of New York
City. It must be said that the first responses
were by no means bold or patriotic. The timid,
captious, wavering, were in a large majority.
There came a time of intense depression. Most
men were irresolute, for the future of the country
looked very dark indeed. It did not seem so to
Mr. Tiffany, although it was not easy to see
what a silversmith could do in case of war. But
the Sumter gun sounded, and at once the great
Tiffany shop-front on Broadway blazed with
flags, while the windows were a glitter of steel
and gold. Mr. Tiffany himself hurried to sub-
mit to Quartermaster-General Meigs a complete
model of the equipments of the French army,
then supposed to be the best in Europe. Even
the jewels and silverware in his salesrooms were
pushed aside to make room for military supplies.
His agents in Europe were ordered to send over
weapons, ambulances, army shoes, all manner of
war materials, instead of works of art ; but to
send the best. At once, as if from general rec-
ognition, orders began to pour in from all parts
of the country and he was compelled to enlarge
his premises by adding the adjoining store, No.
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 71
552 Broadway, to handle the new line of goods
in. Manufacture followed the first hasty pur-
chases, and the artists of the house were busied
with army badges, corps and other ; with pres-
entation medals ; with the hilts and blades of
swords of honor, and with the numberless flags
and banners carried by the hosts that poured
southward to the battlefields of the republic.
Mr. Tiffany's activity went out in attendance
at patriotic public meetings ; in liberal cash con-
tributions; in vigorous support of the Govern-
ment wherever he could find a place to give it ;
and he became one of the founders of the Union
League Club. It is beyond all question that
such an establishment as his, so acting, under
such patriotic inspiration, was one of the great
helps of the national cause.
During the draft riot, in 1863, when the mob
was moving down Broadway, after burning and
plundering a number of dwellings and business
houses up-town, word came that its next errand
was the looting of Tiffany's. There were prizes
there of peculiar attraction for banditti, but Mr.
Tiffany made prompt and vigorous preparations
for defence. The doors and windows were
strongly barricaded, weapons were distributed
to the employees, and the garrison was ready to
defend a business fort. It is related that Mr.
Tiffany insisted on charging with his own hands
the hand-grenades and bombs which were to be
cast from the upper windows upon any assaulting
mob-force. That no assault was made was only
because of the decisive defeat of the mob, just
72 MEN OF BUSINESS
above Bleecker Street, by a strong detachment
of police.
There was a continual expansion of business
operations during the war years, and another re-
organization became necessary. The firm be-
came a corporation, in 1868, with Mr. Tiffany as
president, with a branch house in London, and
with a watch-factory, the largest in Switzerland,
at Geneva.
Already, in 1867, the Tiffany display of domes-
tic silverware had gained the first award at the
Paris Exposition, and now the house which
began as an importer of such goods Avas export-
ing large amounts of American silver art-work
to Europe. One after another the crowned heads
and royal personages of the Old World, in a long
procession, made Mr. Tiffany their " silversmith
by appointment," while he received from Russia
the insignia of the Premia Digno and from France
the cross of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Still, the drift of trade was up the island and
again the expanding business called for more
room and better accommodations. The old
Church of the Puritans, at the corner of Broad-
way and Fifteenth Street, was for sale, and Tiffa-
ny & Co. bought it, organ, pews, and fittings of
every name. On Broadway the frontage was sev-
enty-eight feet and on Fifteenth Street one hun-
dred and forty. On this ground a fire-proof five-
story building was put up and it was opened for
business on the loth of November, 1870, but
the crowds that poured in to look almost pre-
vented business.
CHARLES LOUIS TIFFANY 73
It is worth while to place beside this building
a mental picture of the little salesroom parlor of
the narrow-fronted dwelling1, away down Broad-
way, in 1837. If that was only as an acorn to an
oak compared to this, nevertheless the life-germ
was there or there could have been no such vig-
orous growth, and the nature of the vitality may
appear upon a close analysis of the record.
Here is a great manufactory, turning out art
products in endless variety ; it is also a school of
design and workmanship. The vast salesroom
is a gallery of innumerable masterpieces. Here
and there are massive safes, and under all, in
deeply sunken vaults and crypts, fire-proof and
thief-proof, are the depositories for all the store
of gems and precious metals which make up
the accumulated stock of the foremost jewelry
house of America. In every respect the costly
structure is adapted to the uses of the regiment
of skilled and trusted artists which occupies it.
Mr. Tiffany was one of the founders of the New
York Society of Fine Arts. He is also a trustee of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the Amer-
ican Museum of Natural History. It is alto-
gether fitting that he should also be a Fellow of
the National Academy of Design and of the Geo-
graphical Society. Other memberships and trus-
teeships, social, financial, charitable, attest the
position he has attained during his long and
useful citizenship, but the pleasantest of all his
personal testimonials are his family ties and un-
broken friendships.
In 1841, just after the first success away down
74 MEN OF BUSINESS
Broadway, there was a wedding, and fifty years
later, in a stately mansion on Madison Avenue,
there was another, a golden wedding, such as
no jeweller on earth can make, for the groom and
bride of the first wedding now gathered their
family and their friends in the house of their old-
est son.
F
i
AS "*D
. -
L
John Roach.
IV.
JOHN ROACH.
THERE are exceptional lives whose priceless
lessons, in successes or in seeming failures, ought
not to go unrecorded. Not by any means the
least important of the teachings which should be
preserved are to be sought for among the work-
ings of that genius which patiently, although al-
most unconsciously, searches within itself for its
own natural resources. These being found, from
day to day, the battle of life is won with them, in
spite of all imaginable obstacles. To these ob-
stacles the world never gives due weight, in any
estimate of the successes attained. It may be im-
possible to do so. Nevertheless, the courage, the
endurance, the all but blind reaching out, the de-
velopment and exercise of inborn abilities which
at first did not appear, not even to their possessor,
but which were afterward proved and seen in
actual work done, must be set forth as offering
example and encouragement of a high order.
Such men are the healthy stimulus of other men.
At Mitchellstown, County Cork, Ireland, on
Christmas Day, 1813, John Roach came into the
world. His father's father had been a well-to-do
merchant, but had lost his property through in-
dorsements of other men's paper. As a conse-
76 MEN OF BUSINESS
quence, the next generation was poor in purse,
and the times and circumstances were altogether
unfavorable. There was hardly any darker day
for Ireland than that which was marked for all
Europe by the Napoleonic wars and their politi-
cal consequences.
The Roach family traced its lineage back to
gentle blood. There was a further effort to main-
tain its position, and John was sent for a while to
such schools as were attainable, but he received
nothing more than the barest beginnings of an
education. Books were a luxury almost out of
the question where the struggle was almost one
of life and death. Almost everything seemed to
have passed away except a kind of personal pride,
self-respect in a tangible form, which was strong
enough to operate as a continual stimulus. In
later life Mr. Roach told a friend that one of his
greatest incentives to effort, when a boy, was the
knowledge that his ancestors had been men of
good degree. Out of this, apparently, sprang an
ambition to climb out of the place in which he
found himself and up to where they had been, or
higher. At the first it was a blind and all but
hopeless feeling, but it made him, at the least, re-
fuse many evils which belonged to base associa-
tions, and it continually bade him seek for and
enter the paths in life which led upward.
The parish schools of Ireland in that day were
in a wretchedly crude condition. All that young
Roach obtained from them, during his broken at-
tendance, was a rude acquaintance with reading
and writing ; with arithmetic in its crudest form ;
JOHN ROACH 77
and with such other ideas relating to scholarship
as might be picked up in the most scattering
and chance-medley way. He \vas never able, in
after years, to make good the defects of that
beginning. Its limits were a kind of wall, and
yet he went on and did what he did in spite of
its seemingly insurmountable restriction. It is
true, that as he went and worked another kind of
education came, and of an exceedingly high order,
but the elementary teaching, with all its aids and
all its technical facilities for the transaction of
business, he was compelled to dispense with.
Out of school, the years of boyhood were
spent very much as were those of other Irish
boys, except that further misfortunes fell upon
the family. As for the future, there was really
no prospect for a poor Irish boy in Ireland. The
industries of the country were bound hand and
foot and misgovernment was almost forbidding
the people the means of living. Every remain-
ing channel or avocation was filled to overflowing
and there was no possibility that new ones might
open. Hardly any darker future could have
been set before a bright, merry-hearted young
fellow, with a fire of ambition beginning to burn
within him.
In one direction only was there any sign of
blue sky, and that was westward, beyond the
broad Atlantic. There, indeed, fluttered a flag,
every star of which seemed to shine with promise
of a better life for the down-trodden poor of
Ireland.
America, the United States, was the new
78 MEN OF BUSINESS
world in which there was something to do and
liberty to do it. There was the land of promise,
but for John Roach, as for a multitude of others,
the Atlantic was in the way.
For a time the ocean barrier seemed insuper-
able, but it was overcome at last, and, at the age
of fifteen, he was provided with the cheapest
kind of steerage passage for New York. It was
the day of sailing vessels and there were hard-
ships to be endured in the crowded steerage, but
these were borne with boyish cheerfulness. The
ship went westward gallantly, until she sailed
in through the Narrows, anchored off Manhattan
Island, and her passengers of all sorts were per-
mitted to go ashore.
John Roach was now in America, but that was
about all that he could say, for he had neither
money nor friends, nor trade, nor probable oc-
cupation. He had no distinct idea of how he
was to support himself, but he had a most cou-
rageous faith that he could and would do it. He
had one advantage in the fact that all the Irish
people whom he met, and they were many, had
themselves been immigrants and understood his
case warm-heartedly. Moreover, they were bet-
ter able than they would have been in the old
country to give a poor boy a lift, and he had,
therefore, something better before him than rags
and starvation. Guided by such information as
was given him, he worked his way over into New
Jersey, to what was then known as the Howell
Iron Works, owned by James P. Allaire. Here
a stout boy of fifteen, ready to do anything, could
JOHN ROACH 79
earn a bare living as a run-about and could grow
up into a trade and regular wages. It was also
a<place where an uninstructed waif from Ireland,
without guide or adviser, could easily form evil
associations and detrimental habits. All such
enemies of success, however, were firmly put
away, and it was not long before fixed religious
principles came to aid in resisting the tempta-
tions which kept other workingmen down. He
saw at the outset that no boy could hope to rise
under a burden of strong drink and its attendant
wastefulness. No such load was assumed by
young Roach, for he was rigidly temperate in all
things. At the same time, he was overflowing
with good spirits and his fund of wit and humor
made him a very popular fellow. It was not
long, moreover, before his associates discovered
that his geniality and steadiness were accom-
panied by soundness of judgment, keenness, and
decision, so that he became a kind of leader
among them. It was this natural leadership
which provided him with a kind of business
capital after awhile. He was a born foreman,
as soon as he could get hold of anything to direct.
With the faculty came also something very like
a passion for directing, and it led him to attempt
great things. Ten years went by, and, in a rude,
imperfect way, he had become an iron-worker.
His busy mind, however, had made him master
ol many things to which he had as yet no oppor-
tunity to put his hands. The work engaged in
was too often painfully severe and monotonous,
a grinding toil with small prospect of anything
80 MEN OF BUSINESS
better to come in that direction. He had long
since earned full wages and he had thriftily laid
up money.
There was a tide of migration setting toward
the West, and seductive stories were told of the
richness of the prairies, the cheapness of land, and
the certainty of easy prosperity. Roach decided
to go and see, and he went as far as Illinois. The
many imperfections in the methods for getting
there made a deep impression on him, but he also
understood at a glance that he \vas not cut out
for a prairie farmer. The raising of corn and
pork had in it nothing in accord with his genius,
as he was beginning to understand it. Still, the
trip to Illinois helped him to knowr himself. It
settled his conviction that his vocation was con-
struction, particularly the shaping of iron. He
was no machinist, not a designer or draughtsman,
not an engineer, he could not keep accounts, he
could not write a business letter, he knew noth-
ing of commerce nor of banking. All this was
true, and yet concerning all these things and
many more he had been thinking, studying, and
his mind was teeming with ideas that he could
not as yet formulate nor express. He returned
to New York, consulted with other workmen,
and together they started a small foundry. This
was on Goerck Street, and was the germ of what
was afterward known as the ^Etna Works. The
purpose was to produce " architectural iron-
work," and there were already powerful rivals in
that line of business. The foreman of any new
competitor required to be a capable business
JOHN ROACH 81
man as well as a skilled workman. A time of
severe and often harassing toil was therefore en-
tered upon, and besides the responsibilities of
the shop, those of the family were often pressing
enough, for Mr. Roach was now a married man,
with half a dozen or more of very young children.
As the small capital increased it was applied
to the " plant," in the addition of steam-power
and improved machinery, and a long range of
varied work came in, rising from grade to grade,
as it could be obtained or dealt with. A very
good degree of prosperity was obtained and the
reputation of the ./Etna Works was becoming es-
tablished. Its manager saw the path of his ambi-
tion opening before him, but one day even his own
steam-power seemed to turn against him. The
boiler in his engine-room exploded, with disas-
trous effect upon life and property. In one mo-
ment the whole concern was ruined, and John
Roach, after all his years of hard struggling, was
once more a poor man.
It was one of those occasions which test and
bring out all there is in a man, and either make
or mar him. If any of his associates were dis-
couraged, he was not. There was his family,
which he was educating for the grade in life to
which he believed himself and them to belong.
There was the broad field of enterprise into
which he had been looking forward from year to
year, as his first successes came. Right before
his face were the shattered ruins of his works,
and he said, courageously : " They must be
started again, if I do it all alone ! '
6
82 MEN OF BUSINESS
That was the very thing which he found him-
self compelled to do, and the means for doing it
were mainly supplied through the personal char-
acter he had built up, more firmly than the ^Etna
Works, for capacity and integrity. He could
obtain credits on his own name, and the business
he undertook and accomplished speedily set him
upon his feet. He had now developed to a high
degree what may fairly be considered as his dis-
tinguishing characteristic. Without having re-
ceived, at the outset, more than the merest
germs of technical education, he had discovered
a marvellous ability to comprehend the plans and
work of other men. He could criticise before-
hand the defects or the performances of compli-
cated machines and massive engineering. He
had become an excellent reader of other men, as
well as of varied mechanism. He was therefore
ready to undertake important offerings of work
as fast he could discover and employ other men,
differently endowed and trained, to whom he
could intrust the designing of details and the
processes of construction over which he was to
preside as director. With reference to these, he
could say " no ' or " yes " from point to point,
concerning any form of stone or metal as its idea
was brought before him.
He had been dealing with such ideas, in the
busy workshop of his fertile brain, from the
beginning of his rude apprenticeship. His ripe
capacity declared the results of an internal edu-
cation, obtained through years of ceaseless think-
ing, while carrying on his roughest and most
JOHN ROACH 83
laborious business. It may have been almost an
aid to him, in this regard, that the excessive
heats of his earlier moulding-rooms and the deaf-
ning clamors of the boiler-shops had greatly
injured his hearing. He was compelled to think
rather than talk, and he would not read anything
which did not furnish him with some incentive
or other to hard thinking.
Mr. Roach had become an uncommonly good
business man, in a well-understood use of the
term, although he had not meddled with sci-
entific book-keeping. He could, for instance,
make exceedingly close estimates of the cost
of labor and materials required for any de-
scribed work, while the changing conditions of
his finances were recorded in his own brain
very nearly as accurately as upon the account-
books kept by his book-keeper and his bankers.
As his name became better known, the best
engineers, inventors, craftsmen came to him
with their ideas and their offers of co-operation.
So did a swarm of adventurers and visionaries,
and with these also he was prepared to deal with
a shrewdness which was very apt to express
itself humorously.
His acquaintance with financiers grew wider
and capital was more and more readily placed
at his disposal, while his own capital grew, his
" plant ' increased, and he was able, year after
year, to undertake and carry to success larger
and larger contacts.
The ^Etna Works and their manager had
gained a high reputation for large performances,
84 MEN OF BUSINESS
but there were those who freely prophesied a
failure when, in 1860, John Roach was the lowest
bidder and obtained from the city of New York
the contract for the great iron draw-bridge, piers
and all, over the Harlem River, on Third
Avenue.
There was nothing else precisely like it in all
the land, for its required strength was enormous.
The piers and their masonry were not unlike
what men were already familiar with, although
there were serious questions relating to their
foundations. The avenue itself, however, was to
go on over the bridge, and the middle of this,
a hundred feet in length and of full width, was
to swing around upon a pivot, by steam power
always ready, that vessels might go up and down
the Harlem. Smaller swinging bridges had
been made, scores of them, notably in Chicago.
Greater iron concerns might have built this, if
they had received the contract, but could John
Roach do it ? Vast interest was aroused, for the
Harlem Bridge was a matter of exceeding im-
portance to a multitude of people in New York
and Westchester Counties. It was a kind of chal-
lenge to him, involving great success or utter
ruin. He had taken it up, and now every part
of that bridge became a study that was toiled
upon by day and night. But then it had been
worked out, excepting as to its actual details of
construction, before he put in his bid for the con-
tract. The business marvel had been performed
before a stone was laid.
The bridge was built, and never was there a
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86 MEN OF BUSINESS
more complete success in iron-work, masonry,
and engineering. Thirty years later the huge
central span swings around upon its pivot-pier as
easily and as accurately as if it did not weigh ten
pounds, and no defect has been discovered.
When it swung for the first time, however, amid
the loud acclamations of an excited throng, who
afterward stepped upon it almost doubtfully, a
great anxiety was lifted from the mind of its con-
tractor and he too seemed to pass onward over a
great bridge into a new future.
Several more years of very good success added
largely to Mr. Roach's financial strength, and all
the while his ambition had been pointing out a
field of enterprise which appealed to him with
irresistible power.
The civil war had swept from the high seas the
American flag and had transferred to foreign
keels the carrying trade between the United
States and Europe. The day of wTooden ships
seemed almost to have gone by. Side-wheel
steamers had given place to propellers. Great
hulls of iron, score on score, came ploughing the
waters around New York, and not one of them
was made by American labor in an American
ship-yard. There were indeed a few iron ships
in the United States Navy, monitors and the like,
and there were yards for building them, but some-
thing yet was lacking, for these were by no
means doing well. The fact that they were not,
however, presented Mr. Roach with the very
opportunity he longed for. He believed that he
could succeed where other men had failed, and he
JOHN ROACH 87
pushed forward. In 1868 he purchased the Mor-
gan Works, in New York City, with a fine water-
front and docks. The Neptune Works followed,
and then the Allaire and the Franklin Forge, but,
all put together, they did not give precisely the
facilities required by the man who was all the while
thinking of the Clyde and its tremendous yearly
output of English iron hulls. He was also obtain-
ing the most minute information concerning all
the methods of the Clyde builders. Their shops
and yards contained no kind of appliance the
points of which, good or bad, he had not thor-
oughly comprehended.
Down on the Delaware River, at Chester,
Pennsylvania, there was a large ship-yard, that
of Rainey & Sons, which had latterly not proved
a financial success. It was said that nearly a
million and a quarter of dollars had been ex-
pended to develop it, but not all of the money had
been wisely employed and there were defects
requiring remedy. For less than three-quarters
of a million, in 1871, Mr. Roach became the owner
and named it The Delaware River Iron Ship-
building and Engine Works. He added to its
area until the entire yard contained twenty acres.
He increased all facilities with thoughtful lib-
erality until the entire "plant" was moderately
valued at two millions of dollars. There were pay-
days, not long afterward, when the long lines of
men who marched up to obtain their earnings
numbered two thousand, and when hundreds
more were in like manner being paid off at the
New York shops. The ragged Irish boy who
88 MEN OF BUSINESS
could find nothing to do was now providing
whole regiments of toilers with the means of earn-
ing liberal wages. For each and all of them,
as could be seen whenever he met them, their
employer felt a friendly, kindly interest, as being
one of them, with a perfect understanding of the
ways and feelings and interests of his fellow-
workingmen.
It was not the work of a day, for the great
" plant " grew while ship after ship was building,
of every grade and kind that can be constructed
out of iron. Similar building went on in the
New York shops, for contracts offered rapidly.
Now, however, as business multiplied in all
directions, another of Mr. Roach's natural busi-
ness qualifications became more plainly manifest.
He had never been taught any part of the tech-
nicalities of finance or of banking, but he Avas a
clear-headed, far-sighted, practical financier. The
construction of a great steamship, for peace or
war, Avith several others in hand at the same
time, or of such a work as the sectional dry-
dock at Pensacola, Fla., with a multiplicity of
minor work, repairing, rebuilding, and so forth,
calling for heterogeneous outlays ; the long pay-
rolls, which could not be postponed, and the petty
cash expenditures of every kind from day to day,
required a perpetually full bank account. On
the other hand, the heavier payments were re-
ceivable at long intervals and were often subject
to perilous contingencies. For instance, a ship
might fail of speed or other qualities and might
be rejected by the government or by a corpora-
JOHN ROACH 89
tion. As to all such matters, men had great con-
fidence in Mr. Roach and were disposed to sus-
tain him ; but he was going ahead very rapidly.
There were rivalries, jealousies, even enmities,
and his every danger and liability was narrowly
watched in financial circles.
There were crises occasionally, when the
almost overstrained concern seemed to totter,
but difficulty after difficulty was met and over-
come, and ship after ship was launched. Large
capital had to be tied up in the "plant" and in
materials, and there were corporations asking
for ships with only defective credit to lean upon.
Always, just ahead, there was a kind of threat,
and it might have dismayed a less courageous
and self-reliant manager. Perhaps one element
of his continued power to meet emergencies Was
the unwavering cheerfulness with which he
could encourage dismayed or perplexed asso-
ciates. At all events, there was hardly any other
feature of his business achievement in which he
took so much personal pride as he did in his
finances and his unique methods for handling
them.
During twelve years he built at the Chester
Works no less than sixty-three iron steamships,
and fifty-one of various grades elsewhere, mak-
ing one hundred and fourteen in all. Among
the Chester-built vessels were six " monitors,"
three cruisers — the Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston
-and the despatch boat Dolphin, for the United
States Government. Not less important were
the huge steamships built for the Pacific line of
90
MEN OF BUSINESS
The U. S. Cruiser Chicago at Sea.
the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. These, and
indeed every ship turned out from his yards,
brought Mr. Roach into close relations with of-
ficial and legislative circles at Washington. He
was an enthusiast upon the general subject of
American ships and American commerce. Prob-
J01IN ROACH 91
ably no man understood it better, but he was not
a politician. Naturally patriotic, his individu-
ality was too strong to be confined within the
barriers of a party organization. For instance,
while a stanch supporter of President Grant's
administration and on friendly terms with every
Republican statesman who agreed with him upon
the protection of American ship-building, the
candidates named in his own New York district
for Congressmen by the Republicans sometimes
did not meet with his approval and he gave his
influence, almost equivalent to an election, to
James Brooks, and afterward to S. S. Cox.
There were frequent visits to Washington re-
quired, and he was never weary of explaining to
legislators and others his analysis of the rela-
tions between American iron in the form of a
ship and the American labor which had devel-
oped the finished commerce-carrier from the raw
materials in the forests and the mines. Of one
great steamer, the Tokio, he declared : " All but
about five per cent, of her present cost price is
wages paid to workmen."
As time went on, the foremost statesmen be-
came willing to consult with him and to obtain
his fresh and quaintly expressed ideas. On one
occasion, when the subject of American com-
merce and the ocean-carrying trade, as related
to American ships and the admission of foreign-
built hulls to our coastwise trade, was before
Congress, a leading statesman asked him for a
written digest of repeated conversations. It was
the purpose of Mr. Roach to prepare a pamphlet
92 MEN OF BUSINESS
and print it in response to the request. He
called in the assistance of a literary friend, him-
self an enthusiast and frequent co-worker in the
same field, and during several evenings they
toiled at the task of expression and condensation.
The completed manuscript was sent to Wash-
ington for criticism and for any required use
also, but it arrived at a peculiar crisis. The sub-
ject was up in the Senate and the Senator was
otherwise unprepared to meet it. He arose in his
place and delivered a speech so full of knowl-
edge, suggestions, mastery of the entire matter,
that it was printed in full in the New York
dailies as one of the " great efforts ' of his life.
So it was. The thoughts, arguments, views
were all his own, and he was entitled to the hon-
or of them, but there had been hardly any ver-
bal changes, and the oration was after all no-
thing but the great speech of John Roach in
the Senate of the United States.
The personal attachments and family ties of
Mr. Roach were very strong. He continually
assisted other men, and his numerous corps of
assistants regarded him as a friend as well as
employer. As wealth accumulated, he con-
sented to live in very good style, but could never
be comfortable if surrounded by anything like
display. His business office in New York was
a dingy, work-a-day place to the last, and his
habitual dress was suited to a man who belonged
there. His manner, however, although not
brusque, was that of a man accustomed to make
prompt decisions and to be obeyed implicitly,
JOHN ROACH 93
with the added idea that his mind was very
much occupied and that his time was valuable.
The vast business went on, year after year,
until it struck upon the very rock which had
been so often avoided by skilful steering. The
despatch-boat Dolphin was rejected and
thrown back upon his hands by government
examiners at a bad stage of the general money
market. That the decision was not justified was
at a later day proved by the final acceptance of
the vessel. The utterly unexpected blow, how-
ever, was disastrous in its first effects. The
timid money market closed its hand, credits
ceased, and the house of John Roach & Son
was forced to suspend. Yards and shops ceased
their operations. So did distant iron mills and
forges that supplied materials. The workmen
went home and so did John Roach. Not but
what he made a brave, persistent, and partly
successful struggle to regain his feet, but he was
getting old and he was tired. Not many months
later, January 10, 1887, he closed his career, leav-
ing behind him, in the minds of all who knew him,
an exceedingly kindly and respectful memory of
one of the best and most patriotic of American
business men — a man whose splendid faculties had
been forced to work altogether through the hands
of other men. Genius of any kind, especially busi-
ness genius, seeking to understand and use its
own powers, fettered or walled in by circum-
stances, may take invaluable courage and instruc-
tion from the record of the Irish immigrant boy
who overcame so much and who builded so well.
V.
LEVI PARSONS MORTON.
IF a man should be seen presiding, with fault-
less dignity and perfectly equipped ability, over
the varied deliberations of a legislative body
second in importance to no other upon earth ;
If he should again be observed, in the most
critical and exacting of European capitals, serv-
ing as the chosen ambassador of one of the
world's two great republics to the other, and
should be found provided with all the social
knowledges and all the diplomatic training re-
quired to mingle there with courtly statesmen,
brilliant women, and others of every kind ;
If he should again be seen in a congress of
scientific men, exchanging thoughts with other
thinkers, as a man acquainted with their work
and their attainments ;
If he should pass through all the trying or-
deals so indicated with the strongly expressed
approval of friends and adversaries alike, it
might well be deemed worth while to investigate
his career and to ascertain in what schools his
manifestly unusual original capacities were de-
veloped and prepared for such eminent uses.
It has been declared by many that only in
sombre universities, only in the courts of kings,
Lev! Parsons Morton.
iJDii
LEV I PARSONS MORTON 95
only under the tuition of men themselves not-
able for learning and for wisdom can such at-
tainments be accomplished. Something of truth
is hidden in this declaration, no doubt. The
diamond must be polished by the diamond, but
the inquiry remains as to where shall be found
the best lapidaries of intrinsic worth, to cut
rough gems and bring out to view the best and
highest qualities of any given human character.
There is an answer, supplied by multiplied ex-
amples, but not yet fully accepted. Still, it is
better understood and admitted now than in
former days, that the ordinary business of this
world, transacted upon right principles and for
its own sake, as an art to be loved and a science
to be honored, is the true and the best finishing
school of men, whatever they may have known
as their primary or their grammar school.
Levi Parsons Morton was born at Shoreham,
Vt., May 1 6, 1824. On his father's side he was
descended from George Morton, who came
over from England and settled at Middleboro,
Plymouth County, Mass., in 1623, after having
served as the financial agent in London of the
Puritan colonists who crossed the Atlantic in the
Mayflower. On his mother's side he was de-
scended from the Parsons family, equally early
Puritan colonists, through Joseph Parsons, who
held the rank of cornet, or at our modern rating,
second lieutenant, in a troop of colonial cavalry.
The cornet was also distinguished as the father
of the first child born at Northampton, Mass.
Every part of our country bears witness to the
96
MEN OF BUSINESS
peculiarly valuable mental and bodily inheri-
tance transmitted from generation to generation
by that primitive stock of men and women who
dared and endured all things for conscience's
sake.
Levi's earlier days were those of a hardy, dar-
ing, intelligent country boy. He was trained in
"-"'-' t.
The Old Morton Home at Middleboro, Mass.
the needful industries, the rigid morality, the
religious reverence, and the patriotic traditions
of a New England farm and village home.
In the latter and its surroundings there was
plainness without poverty. In the social posi-
tion of the family, however, it is pretty well un-
derstood that there was a great deal of the
intense but very rational self-respect which re-
fuses to admit the existence of any higher rank
on earth than that of the right kind of American
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 97
citizenship. This is a feature of well-developed
republican character which is not always easily
understood by many whose best claims to emi-
nence must be hunted for among the records of
a herald's office.
There were fairly good public schools at
Shoreham, with a somewhat uncertain proces-
sion of successive teachers. Instruction of a
higher grade was next obtained in the village
academy and in that at Springfield, Vt.
From each in turn young Morton obtained
quite as much as could have been expected, but
he certainly did no more. There were books to
be had, and he read many ; but his tastes were
not those of a student of books. There was in
him an overpowering element of dash, vigor,
and enterprise which was at war with scholarly
ways. In close alliance with this was another
strong characteristic which quickly showed it-
self in his keen perception concerning any mat-
ter connected with trade or traffic. It was not
the mere sharp-bargain instinct, which may be
presented most obviously by a pedler or a jack-
knife swapper. It was the disposition to study
and the power to rapidly master the primary
laws which govern commerce.
There was less of disappointment, therefore,
when, at the age of fifteen, he was informed that
a college education could not be given him. His
father, a liberal and intelligent man, was bring-
ing up a family of six children on a salary, at
that time, of only six hundred dollars. He had
already, by rigid economy and straining his
7
98 MEN OF BUSINESS
slender resources, provided Levi's elder brother
with a college course at Middlebury, and he
could do no more.
Levi did not ask for anything more, but was
quite ready to begin taking care of himself.
Employment was obtained for him in a country
store at Enfield, Mass. It was a small place and
the store itself was small, but the world was
pretty well represented in it. Small samples
of almost everything could be found upon the
shelves, or were stored away among the bags
and boxes. It was somewhat like the index of a
book, for each article of merchandise had its own
peculiar line of associations. Moreover, all kinds
of people came to trade, and all were so many
human object-lessons to young Morton. While,
for instance, he learned much concerning tea
and coffee, about manufactured fabrics, about
all manner of country produce and its handling,
he also learned how to deal with men and
women. While doing so, and in spite of his ex-
treme youth, the strongest point of his charac-
ter began to manifest itself. This was his mar-
vellous capacity for winning the confidence of
all who came in contact with him. His way
of meeting people had no repellent feature.
If this first service behind the counter was to
be regarded as a school, a fairly full course was
taken ; but it was left behind when, in the winter
of 1841-42, the young clerk rose to the rank of a
common-school teacher at Boscawen, Vt. This
was but an episode or a makeshift while prepar-
ing for his next venture. He was not yet of age
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 99
in 1843, and was somewhat embarrassed by that
consideration, but, in association with others, he
managed to go into business for himself at Han-
over, N. H. It was a small enough beginning,
and the field before him seemed narrow, but he
widened it as time went on. Even here he was able
to discover channels for small business enterprises
which had not appeared to the eyes of others. At
the same time he took an active part in all local
interests of a public nature and kept himself well
informed concerning all manner of affairs at home
and abroad. Books were a matter of course, to
some extent, but one kind of student can read
more in a morning newspaper than another can
in a solid volume, and there are mental processes
for acquiring information which strongly resem-
ble absorption from the atmosphere.
It is not recorded that, during this part of his
career, Mr. Morton swerved for a moment from
his chosen pursuit. Whatever duties of a citizen
he might attend to, he had determined to per-
fect himself as a man of business, and his am-
bition grew as he was compelled to measure
himself with other men.
Prosperity came with reasonable steadiness, al-
though there were also such checks as were in-
evitable during a period in which the country
was again and again swept by financial storms.
Losses which operate as disasters to some men
seem almost to have an opposite effect upon oth-
ers. At all events Mr. Morton continually kept
a firm grasp upon his business until a time came
when he was ready to turn it over to others.
100 MEN OF BUSINESS
From the position of a prosperous country mer-
chant it was easy to study and investigate wider
fields, and the nearest, best known of these was
that of Boston. There was no haste to make a
new venture, but in 1850 Mr. Morton became a
member of the house of Beebe, Morgan & Co., of
Boston. It was a long step, but it was only a
step, for he had already grown beyond the stat-
ure at which he was willing to hold a subordi-
nate position, such as must be that of a junior
partner in a strong concern.
Moreover, with the mind of a genuine mer-
chant, he was attaining a better grasp and under-
standing of those business relations between the
Old World arid the New which were to become his
specialty. He perceived that whatever might be
the relations of the great New England port to
the commerce of other nations, it was not and
could not expect to be the centre of operations
for the business of the republic. Perhaps it
could also be discerned, almost unpleasantly, that
Boston business was already firmly held by hands
from which no great share of it was likely to be
wrested, while the vast increase was drifting
elsewhere. After four years of success, there-
fore, that was noteworthy, to say the least, Mr.
Morton transferred the basis of his operations to
New York. Here, in 1854, he organized the house
of Morton & Grinnell, having already established
important connections and practically assured
success in advance. The best part of this assur-
ance was speedily found to be his thorough mas-
tery of the difficult problems presented, almost
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 101
hourly, by the swiftly changing tides and cur-
rents of the city of exchanges. The trained ca-
pacity for reading and for dealing with these
changes, as they come, is a very good substitute
for what is called foresight.
The higher planes of cultivated society, in
America as in Europe, are also, inevitably, al-
most coextensive with the higher planes of finan-
cial and commercial diplomacy. An ornamental
element of our social activity is more or less igno-
rant of the use made of it, but more and more do
the real social forces prove their vitality. The
eminently social side of educated business life
continually brings together the elements of busi-
ness undertaking. Men meet, talk, agree, and
thenceforth pull together.
The merchants of New York, from the earliest
days of colonial history, have been distinguished
for social qualities, and Mr. Morton's ready wel-
come among them was clue in no small degree to
his being an adept in the multifarious diplomacies
of entertainment. He could meet men in the
drawing-room with as perfect readiness as on the
exchange, and an important result rapidly fol-
lowed. He was found ready to meet the com-
mercial ambassadors of Europe upon an equal
footing, and from time to time as they came he
formed relationships with the business world be-
yond the sea.
As the years went by, financial crises came ;
convulsions of the nation's finance ; panics that
were like hurricanes ; business earthquakes, in
which seemingly solid structures came tumbling
102 MEN OF BUSINESS
down. With reference to these, from all the
effects of which no man could hope to be de-
livered, it must be said that Mr. Morton exhibited
in a high degree the prescience which prepares
beforehand for the evil sure to come. Owing to
this, including its related prudences,, his com-
mercial undertakings were never disastrously
broken in upon, but increased, year after year,
while hundreds of houses older than his own dis-
appeared from the lists.
A great merchant is of necessity more or less a
banker. He has always a certain control which
enables him to do much of his banking business
through his own rather than through other
hands. In a steadily increasing exercise of this
control, so fully in accord with his own tastes
and habits, natural or acquired, Mr. Morton
found himself becoming even more a banker than
a merchant. There was, therefore, no suddenness
of transition when, in 1863, his merchandise ac-
count was parted with and his entire attention
turned to finance. This may be regarded as the
culmination of his business education, for he was
at once understood to possess a degree of fitness
not often acquired by even capable men brought
up from their beginnings in banking-houses.
Nothing but disaster awaits the man who at-
tempts so difficult a career without such fitness,
and Mr. Morton did not venture until entirely
assured of his own qualifications. The date
chosen was itself an evidence of courage and self-
reliance, for the new firm of L. P. Morton & Co.
opened its doors for business in 1863, in the midst
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 103
of the financial tumults occasioned by the civil
war.
His intention, at the outset, was to take hold
of the financial relations, private and public, be-
tween the money markets of the United States
and those of Europe.
To this end, a London house was needed, not a
mere correspondent, but his own, and at an early
day it was established under the firm name of L. P.
Morton, Burns & Co. It was a bold challenge of
competition with great houses of historic fame
and enormous capital, which at that time be-
lieved themselves able to control the indicated
field of operation. The new house stepped in
ambitiously, some said presumptuously, among
the Rothschilds and the Barings, but it speedily
obtained for itself a cordial recognition and an
established position.
The oldest and ablest financiers discovered
that its managing head could successfully en-
counter them upon their own ground. Once
more, however, he evinced his singular faculty
for obtaining the implicit personal confidence of
all men. The higher their own position and
capacity, the more surely he won their reliance
as allies or their respect as antagonists.
The affairs from time to time proposed and
undertaken were such as might well arouse the
ambition of an enthusiastic devotee of business
for its own sake. Other men also took pride in
the fact that it was done so well. His house was
widely recognized as a kind of national triumph,
an American success in which his fellow-citizens
104: MEN OF BUSINESS
felt a patriotic interest. Its failure would have
been heard of somewhat as the news of a lost
battle.
Six years of continual expansion, of business
acquisitions through divers channels, created a
demand for new and larger machinery. In 1869,
therefore, there was a reorganization, with an in-
crease of capital and membership. The Ameri-
can house took on the name of Morton, Bliss &
Co., while the Canadian Minister of Finance, Sir
John Rose, left his high colonial position to go
to London as a partner in the firm of Morton,
Rose & Co.
Four years later the London house was made
the financial agent of the United States Govern-
ment. Among its more notable transactions in
that capacity were the reception of the Geneva
award of $15,500,000, on account of the Alabama
claims, and the subsequent payment of the Hali-
fax award, on account of the coast fisheries, of
$5,500,000.
The head of a house so trusted and employed
became an important unofficial public servant,
and Mr. Morton found himself in continual con-
sultation with the business managers of the re-
public. He became a counsellor for the Treasury
and almost of the Stock Exchange, and a sort of
ex-officio member of important committees of
Congress. It was as a complimentary acknowl-
edgment of services rendered without pay that
he was afterward appointed one of the com-
missioners who represented the United States at
the Paris Exposition. In that capacity he earned
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 105
general and very warm approval by his liberal
and courteous care of the perplexing interests
which demanded his attention.
In addition to this he served as American
commissioner-general to the Paris Electrical Ex-
position, and as representative of the United
States at the Submarine Cable Convention.
The world of business achievement hardly
seemed to offer any higher honor or success.
The upper level had been reached and perma-
nently occupied. Nevertheless, there were
great uses awaiting a man so thoroughly well
educated for their performance. Mr. Morton
had been a steady and liberal supporter of the Re-
publican party, without being a politician, in the
common acceptance of that term. He had given
his money and his influence, and had frequently
been taken into consultation by the leaders and
statesmen of his party. His advice was sure to
be asked in emergencies, and he had become one
of the known but unadyertised powers of politi-
cal management. He did not pretend to be an
orator, howrever, and he had never held office.
He had not expressed any ambition for political
distinction, but it was known that in his own Con-
gressional district, the Eleventh, of New York
City, he had acquired singular personal popu-
larity. It had been, as a rule, a Democratic dis-
trict, not a hopeful battle-ground for a Re-
publican nominee. In 1878, nevertheless, the
Democratic party placed in nomination a gentle-
man whose hold upon the popular confidence
was believed to be defective, presenting a reason-
106 MEN OF BUSINESS
ably good opportunity for a contest. Mr. Mor-
ton was induced to enter the canvass as the
Republican nominee, but the result was much
more striking than anybody had anticipated, for
his vote more than doubled that given to his
opponent. A very similar declaration of the
public will followed Mr. Morton's second nom-
ination in 1880, but his Congressional career
was not to be very long, however creditable. In
the Forty-sixth Congress and in the opening of
the Forty-seventh he distinguished himself as a
" business member." His wide acquaintance
with commerce and finance made him of inesti-
mable service in the committee-rooms, while the
care of bills upon the floor, after his work was
done, was mainly in other hands. As \vas his
life-long custom, here as elsewhere, he acquired
the continuous education of his surroundings.
He made his own all the specific knowledges of
the situation in which he found himself. That
is, as if he could not help it, he acquired famil-
iarity with parliamentary laws and usages; the
handling of debates ; the strategies of legislative
contests. He forced his way to the front as one
of the few who were distinctlv known to all the
J
rest among the mass of representatives. Con-
gress is an assembly of able men who for the
greater part attain a kind of honorable obscurity
-at least during their first term.
Mr. Morton's most capable associates in Con-
gress, including such men as General Garfield,
then the leader on the Republican side of the
House, perceived that his best fitness was not for
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 107
the business of legislation. His abilities and his
training were administrative and also, in a high
degree, diplomatic. He was a presiding officer
rather than a debater, except as debates are con-
ducted by men who speak only to each other and
without reference to any audience.
Garfield was a reader of men, and when, in
1 88 1, he became President of the United States,
he offered Mr. Morton the choice of the post
of Secretary of the Navy or that of Minister to
France. The latter duty was accepted without
hesitation, and the Congressional committee-
rooms were exchanged for the brilliant salons of
Paris. There were manifest reasons for such a
choice by such a man. The Navy Department
did not, at that date, seem to offer any field for
the exercise of special energy. The time for its
development was at hand, but had not arrived.
As for statesmanship, in the position of council-
lors to the chief magistrate, a cabinet council pre-
sided over by President Garfield and directed in
its policies of all sorts by James G. Elaine, was
one in which another man might become little
felt and barely visible. On the other hand, the
public and private interests to be guarded or
promoted by a Minister of the United States to
France were mainly commercial or financial in
j
their nature, while the social side of the position
also presented a strong attraction.
Four years of arduous services, well performed,
justified the President's choice. There were dif-
ficulties and perplexities of many kinds, some of
which, of course, grew out of the disturbed and
108
MEN OF BUSINESS
changing nature of French politics. All were so
dealt with that competent critics, without dis-
tinction of party, united in declaring Mr. Morton
an exceptional diplomatic success.
On the other hand, scholarly men, looking on
from their own places, recognized the peculiar
culture obtained through, while required by,
these successive achievements. In 1881 Dart-
mouth College gave Mr. Morton the degree of
PvH ' {.• s - tvire3^
1 W.-i ^ ''•-
"K -*I^11S£ Lr«J &.• ,.-•.'.•>; .i; .' .-> i^-
ftJ»^i?;"^ii;;;
L, fo"v -''';•• -\it- .'-i (>' - -I-'
ff^fM
'" ••> .,»^-.- ,-.•- •
friSi^ffl^^'^'''''^®'''1"!^^^"'^''"*^
;:"••"'•" ""''" .'<.
•-."-jS,"T':.' ,^-^
... ," •-,.. . ,«,'.^
' -.«•;*.**',.•. .
Ellerslie, Mr. Morton's Country Home at Rhinecliff-on-Hudson, N. Y.
LL.D., and, as if in thoughtful approval and
confirmation, Middlebury College did the same
1882. There have been college degrees
n
awarded to distinguished citizens, from time to
time, to which the assent of the general public
was given with a smile, which meant that the
honors were ornamental only, and of a kind not
to be commonly worn by the recipients.
He returned to the conduct of the increasing
business which poured like a tide through the
great banking-house, but it was only to discover
LEVI PARSONS MORTON 109
that he had become something more than a
trusted financier. It was hardly upon this side
of his character that most men were looking. He
seemed even to have escaped the popular jealousy
so apt to point its finger at those whom it distin-
guishes as " money kings." He had not made
upon the public mind the impression of an exces-
sively rich man, or of a mere gatherer of riches,
but as being altogether and successfully a " busi-
ness man," and that is a character which Ameri-
cans understand intuitively. It was an idea
that spread, silently but continuously, during
four years following and it produced a remark-
able but entirely natural consequence. At the
Republican National Convention in 1888 the list
of the party's available men was scrutinized
with more than ordinary severity, for the vote
was sure to be close, the prospect was very
doubtful, and an error at the outset would be an
invitation to sure defeat. The candidate for
President, General Harrison, was selected be-
cause of his solid strength and unassailable
name. When the next inquiry was made for
another candidate as secure of public approval,
to be found, however, on the Atlantic slope, it
was noteworthy how unerringly the sifting pro-
cess put aside other names and settled upon that
of Mr. Morton, as a representative business man.
He received a more than two-thirds vote of
the convention. Success at the polls followed
and he became the presiding officer of the Senate
of the United States. It was a chair which had
been occupied by a long line of distinguished
110 MEN OF BUSINESS
men. Each in succession had been called upon
to deal with a daily tangle of such delicate prob-
lems, often even personal in their nature, as be-
long to the swift processes of debate and legisla-
tion. Some had succeeded better than others,
and there had been very able men among them
whose success had been less than brilliant. It
was a severe test of any man's capacity. No
doubt, Mr. Morton's parliamentary schooling in
the House of Representatives was of vast value
to him with reference to what may be called the
revised statutes of Senatorial deliberations. More
than that, however, was the fact that he had been
in the almost life-long custom of presiding over
important affairs and of courteously adjusting
disputed balances between other men. He Avas
better trained for the place than were some of
the most adroit and eloquent parliamentary de-
baters on the floor of the Senate. Of the man-
ner in which, during four years, he met and filled
the requirements of his high and difficult station,
no other comment need be made than the deci-
sion recorded by the Senate itself. At the close
of Mr. Morton's term, every man of the eighty-
eight members of the Senate signed an invita-
tion to a public banquet which they offered him,
in testimonial of the fact that neither friend nor
foe had any fault to find. It stands alone, the
first honor of its kind ever awarded. He had
conducted with perfect success, and strictly as a
business man, the business of the Senate.
THE N
PUBLIC
TIL;
.
Edwin Demson Morgan.
VI.
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN.
THE history of other countries, as well as our
own, teaches us that the qualities of mind and the
training obtained by them in winning the higher
grades of success in business are available for
other uses than those of commerce. Here, more
than elsewhere, such uses are sure of being given
if at all sought for. Many of our eminent mer-
chants have all the while worked also in other
fields. They have been inventors, explorers,
projectors, builders, or financiers. Others, al-
though not so large a number, have become
eminent as politicians, as statesmen, without sev-
ering their relations with their original field of
work. The generation of business men immedi-
ately preceding this present was fruitful in such
instances, and among them were men who left
their mark indelibly upon the history of their
country.
Edwin Denison Morgan was born at Washing-
ton, Berkshire County, Mass., February 8, 1811.
His mother's maiden name was Eliza Matilda
Waterman. The Morgan family were among
the earliest settlers of the township of Groton,
near the mouth of the Thames River, Connecticut,
from which his father removed to the new home
112
MEN OF BUSINESS
in Massachusetts in 1809. Here the childhood
of Edwin was passed during a few years, and
then his father again removed to a farm in
Windsor, Conn., not far from his former resi-
dence. He was a man of moderate substance,
but of high character, and his sons, while given
the hardy training and in-
dustrious habits of New
England farmer boys, re-
ceived at home the firm
foundations of moral and
religious culture which pre-
pared them for whatever
else could be afforded.
The schools were good,
but as soon as Edwin was
old enough to work the de-
mands of the farm came
first, and he was able to at-
tend the local free academy
in winter only, with the ex-
ception of one term at the
Bacon Academy, in Col-
chester. This, with such
books and periodicals as were to be had at
home, or borrowed, made up the apparent sum
of his schooling ; but there were other lessons
whose influence was apparent in all his after
life. One of these came to him from the in-
tense spirit of patriotism which was like the
very air of the coast country of New England.
The neighborhood in wrhich his boyhood was
passed was exceedingly rich in its treasured le-
Gov. Morgan's Mother.
(From an old miniature.)
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 113
gends of heroic men and women and their deeds,
from the earliest Colonial days, and the last war
with England seemed hardly over when he was
learning his first letters. As he grew older, yet
another strong incentive feeling was at work
among the boys, not many of whom had any
other prospect than that of making their own
way in the world. He had not, and he was just
the boy to become imbued with the prevalent
purpose of going out into the world in search of
something better than could be attained among
the very restricted opportunities around him.
He was an athletic fellow, thoroughly healthy
in mind and body ; not over fond of books, but ex-
ceedingly fond of out-of-door exercises and pos-
sessing a singular quickness in estimating at true
valuation whatever object, animate or inanimate,
might come in his way.
At seventeen, in the year 1828, taller and
stronger than most boys of his age, he became a
" clerk ' in the wholesale grocery store of his
uncle, Nathan Morgan, at Hartford, Conn. He
was to learn whatever was to be learned there
and he was thenceforth to support himself, but
the manner in which he did it, and much more,
was an astonishment to most people, although it
might not have been to his old school-fellows.
The business training and the knowledge at-
taching to it were to the last degree miscellaneous,
for the customers, sellers as well as buyers, were
as widely assorted in character as were the
goods. It was a place in which to get acquainted
with men as well as with things, and it was not
8
114 MEN OF BUSINESS
long before young Morgan " knew everybody."
He not only began to understand the grocery
business in all its branches, but he began to un-
derstand Hartford itself and to take an interest
in its public affairs. In both directions he was
preparing for the extraordinary future before
him.
His peculiar genius as a merchant began to
exhibit itself quickly and was intelligently recog-
nized by his uncle Nathan, so that the boy clerk
was intrusted with duties beyond his nominal
years, as having an oldish head upon very young
shoulders.
Then, as now, the city of New York was the
great commercial centre, but it was vastly more
distant from inland places like Hartford. There
were neither railways, steamboats, nor telegraphs.
Postal communication was slow and defective.
The great mass of minor dealers in the rural dis-
tricts were almost altogether supplied through
intermediates, and the produce of all kinds was
collected and forwarded in a corresponding man-
ner. Even for a Hartford merchant, dealing at
wholesale, an actual business visit to the great sea-
port was a matter of moment to be talked about
and planned beforehand and to become almost
family history afterward. It was therefore an
excellent illustration of the good opinion Edwin
had been winning, when, at barely twenty years
of age, in 1831, he was placed in charge of a con-
siderable shipment of country produce to be de-
livered in New York, with full power of bargain
and sale.
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN
115
He himself felt sure that his uncle had select-
ed the right supercargo. He had talked with
scores and scores of sharp New Englanders
about the ways and methods of the city dealers,
and he knew some of these. Even the topog-
raphy of the city, the wharves and the streets he
y&i&v^'?Wj^'* > ^ '<-
'( ! flJ
Pi ' ,1
' i fii! iv II"'"' •' . nr'3;inr n!/rW-.' wilPl'
l^fe^ fepfefeS^^^
The Old Morgan Homestead at Windsor, Conn.
was to see, were already familiar to his mind's
eye. When he reached his destination, therefore,
he was not at all in the character of a green boy
from the country. He felt and acted as if he were
at home, or had but walked out of Hartford into
a larger village, among men with whom he was
reasonably well acquainted. The fact that he was
able to do so rendered that trip a sort of turning
point in his business career. He not only sold
116 MEN OF BUSINESS
out to the best advantage, but, without waiting
for authority or advice, which could not be had
at that distance from home, he promptly seized
an opportunity offered by the current market
prices, bought a return cargo with the proceeds
of his uncle's consignment, and returned with it
to obtain a somewhat unusual rate of profit.
Great was the surprise of uncle Nathan, how-
ever high had been his opinion of his dashing,
trading, keen-eyed nephew. He at once declared
that a boy who could handle business after that
fashion had manifestly passed his apprenticeship.
It was time for him to become a partner in the
concern. Morgan had already become a leader
among the young men, the budding politicians,
of his own ward. He had strong views of his
own concerning the management of municipal
affairs, and he made himself so active in urging
them that in the following year, 1832, he was
chosen a member of the City Council at the very
election in which he cast his own first vote.
There were several visits made to the great
city during the following four years, and every
time the young country merchant went there he
found himself feeling more and more at home.
The country business prospered in his hands,
moreover, and his share of each year's results
brought him nearer to the accomplishment of an
ambition he was forming. He was ready for his
proposed venture in 1836, and then, at the age of
twenty-five, he removed to New York and went
into business for himself as a grocer on Front
Street. That year, and very much more so the
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 117
next, marked a time of wide-spread financial tribu-
lation. The panic of 1837 swept into bankruptcy
not a few of the old Front Street houses, and so
the field may have been somewhat cleared for the
operations of a vigorous new-comer. He was
hardly that in some respects, for he already had
formed a large number of business acquaintances,
upon whom his almost excessive energy had made
its due impression. As for the business itself, its
earlier operations offered very few features with
which he was not entirely familiar. Such others
as turned up from time to time he mastered with-
out an effort, for all their details came to him as
if he had somewhere read them in print. Per-
haps he had no other characteristic more marked
than this of perpetual readiness, almost impossible
to be surprised, and it had a foundation in the iron
firmness, the unwavering business courage, with
which he was prepared to grapple and overcome
the constantly occurring perils and emergencies
of a stormy career. Strength and courage seemed
to develop and increase from year to year, and
a steadily widening circle of acquaintances cor-
dially recognized qualities so rare and so valu-
able. With all his push and force, moreover, he
was accustomed to meet other men with a hearty,
kindly cheerfulness, which had in it something
winning, coming from so robust and uncompro-
mising a man. If he was not exactly what is called
popular, he was exceedingly wrell liked, which is
much better.
Business grew and multiplied, and the young
merchant himself grew with it. It was a period
118 MEN OF BUSINESS
of great commercial activity, during which the
United States pushed forward almost abreast of
England in the ocean-carrying trade, while our
coastwise commerce grew apace, and that of the
interior began to give promise of its present pro-
portions. The stately ships at the wharves or at
anchor in the stream, as the Front Street grocer
came and went, were as if they beckoned to him.
They were his servants, and it was not long
before the keels that he owned or chartered were
ploughing the most distant seas, carrying to
other lands the produce of America, or bringing
back purchases or consignments from all the
corners of the earth. As for the business con-
cern which he was so rapidly building, if it were
to be considered as a ship, he was always and
unquestionably its captain and somewhat intoler-
ant of any possible variation from his orders
given or from the established regulations of his
counting-room. This regard for discipline and
system was what slack-handed people, inefficient
employees, and a wide range of uncertain char-
acters were in the habit of calling his severity
or his tyranny. It was a steady-handed common
sense, without which no business of any kind can
successfully be carried on.
The general details of a merchant's career-
voyages, cargoes, purchases and sales at home
and abroad, with their ever fresh excitements-
are intensely interesting to those who are en-
gaged in them. Even their narration is often
picturesquely useful and full of illustrations of
men and times, but the striking incidents of Mr.
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 119
Morgan's commercial transactions are almost too
numerous for easy selection. As time went on,
he necessarily took up the banking department
which, in one form or another, is almost insepa-
rable from a large mercantile business. He did
not, however, for a long time, at least, become
more a banker and less a merchant. As a prac-
tical financier, in any relation whatever, but al-
ways outside of speculative finance, his sound-
ness in fixed principles and his prophetic judg-
ment of the probable course of events, came to
be relied upon almost implicitly by his business
associates. Not that losses did not come, and
sometimes heavily, for he was called upon to pilot
his affairs through more than one season of storms
when there were shipwrecks all around him.
An invaluable element of his business strength
was his capacity for reading other men and so of
choosing wisely his partners and subordinates,
temporary or permanent. He and his house took
rank as belonging to the solid things " on 'Change "
which the public expected would remain.
While altogether a business man, Mr. Morgan
was not the less on that account a very active
and public -spirited citizen. The tendencies
which made him a member of the Hartford Com-
mon Council at twenty-one came with him to
New York. Even while managing a moderate
business on Front Street he began to be known
in the political gatherings of the day as a man
of decided opinions, which he was ready to ex-
press at any time.
These were not always the opinions of the
120 MEN OF BUSINESS
majority, by any means, but his courage and
ability in defending them forced him after a
while into the position of a local leader. During
a number of years he restricted his political
services to liberal contributions of counsel, cash,
and influence, but the swelling tide of exciting
questions, municipal and national, was drawing
him in. The year 1849 found him an Alderman
of the city, and before its close he had been
elected a member of the State Senate for a two
years' term. In both places his political influence
grew with extraordinary rapidity. At the end
of his term in the Senate he was re-elected. He
was not an orator, unless it may be considered
good oratory to present clearly formed views
boldly and convincingly, without a sign of at-
tempting what is described as eloquence. His
acknowledged power in the Senate was close-
ly allied to that which he evinced in his own
counting-room, and his "office desk " upon the
floor was a very unique centre of perceived
political power, the power of strong common
sense and an unwavering will.
At the end of his second term, in 1853, he had
a nominal vacation from politics, holding no
office, but busily advising in party affairs. In
1855 he accepted the position of Commissioner
of Emigration, mainly because the management
of the important interests involved was sadly in
need of reformation. This duty he attended to
during three years which followed, although
others of an even more pressing nature were
meantime forced upon him.
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 121
The political world began to show threatening
signs of great changes, if not of convulsions. It
was the day of anti-slavery agitation, and there
were extremists upon both sides of that question
who were greatly in need of the restraining hands
of moderate men. The old parties, Whig and
Democratic, were manifestly breaking up. They
were as "old wine-skin" bottles, badly decayed,
not strong enough to bear the fierce fermentations
aroused by the discussions of the right of State
secession and the future of the Territories. Mr.
Morgan was distinctly an anti-slavery man, but
not what was in that day termed an " abolition-
ist," for his steady conservatism was opposed to
feverish utterances or violent measures. His
very conservatism, however, compelled him to
see and to say that the welfare of the nation re-
quired the creation of a new and strong politi-
cal party as a power competent to govern the
country in the interests of freedom, while pre-
venting anarchy and protecting the Union. To
see and declare such a necessity was also, for a
man of his character, to take up energetically
the business of supplying it, and the materials at
hand were abundant, if rightly administered.
There was a period of very sharp and exciting
preliminary agitation, in every stage of which
he made himself felt, so that he became generally
regarded as one of the leading spirits, if not the
foremost figure, in the movement in the State of
New York. His industry at this date was phe-
nomenal, for he was compelled to superintend the
vast affairs of his commercial house while in al-
122 MEN OF BUSINESS
most ceaseless consultation with the founders of
the new political organization East and West.
When it was decided to hold a somewhat in-
formal " national convention," that met at Pitts-
burg in February, 1856, he attended as a delegate
from New York. In his opinion the time was
not yet ripe for definite action, nor was the body
itself properly representative. It had been
gathered too hastily and had no hold upon the
popular mind. It was therefore adjourned, after
providing for a more systematic, business-like as-
sembly to follow. This second convention was
held at Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, and con-
sisted largely of the men who had been present
at the first. The impression there made upon
them by Mr. Morgan was at once manifested in
the hearty acclamation with which they chose
him chairman of the convention. He was dis-
covered to be an admirable selection as the pre-
siding officer of such a body, which contained, at
first, as many doubtful or timid men as it did of
those who were rashly over-zealous. The pro-
ceedings greatly profited by the peculiar power
exerted by the chairman, but it was remarkable
that this fact was so clearly discovered by all the
members of the convention.
John C. Fremont was nominated for President
and William L. Dayton for Vice-President ; a
platform of principles was adopted ; the new
party was called into existence, but its first name
was " The People's Party," that of Republican
attaching, by common consent, not long after-
ward.
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 123
Before the convention adjourned it selected
a national committee to take entire charge of
the affairs of the new organization, and at the
head of this, as chairman, it placed Mr. Morgan,
with responsibilities which few men would have
been fitted for. It was a position which he con-
tinued to hold during eight years that followed.
At the end of that time he exchanged it for the
chairmanship of the " Union Congressional Com-
mittee," which he retained, in like manner, year
after year.
The " Fremont campaign " was one in which
the only success to be reasonably hoped for was
in State and municipal elections and in the gath-
ering and welding into unity of the varied hete-
rogeneous elements of which the new political
body was to be composed. To this work Mr.
Morgan gave himself with all energy and with
considerable expense, and he proved that the
construction of the framework of a party and
its rapid extension over a vast area are alto-
gether like other business undertakings. He
did not at first permit himself to be named as a
candidate for office, but he exercised much in-
fluence over a large number of the nominations
made, especially in New York. Here, too, his
judgment of men came into play, and a long list
of young men who were afterward prominent
in political affairs owed their first recognition,
their summons to important activities, to the
quick perception and vehement urging of Edwin
D. Morgan. General Fremont was not elected,
but he carried more States (eleven) and more
124 MEN OF BUSINESS
votes in the electoral college (one hundred and
fourteen) than any but the most sanguine had
expected. The new party also obtained control
of the House of Representatives, but perhaps
the best result accomplished, with reference to
the future, was the admirably efficient condition
attained by the brand-new machinery of the
party organization.
The next State election in New York was in
1858, and Mr. Morgan was elected Governor for
a two years' term. His position had now be-
come indeed important, as manager of the par-
ty and as Executive of the Empire State. It
was a time which called for strong men. There
were two years more of increasingly hot and
perilous agitation, during which the most ur-
gent private interest might well be laid aside
that every energy might be given to the State
and the nation. In the Lincoln campaign of
1860 Mr. Morgan's efficiency was warmly ac-
knowledged, and he was again chosen Governor
of New York, that he might be in a position to
give all the strength of the State to the support
of the national government and the preservation
of the Union. Bitter as had been the political
contest, and loud as were the threatenings of
the advocates of " secession," many able men re-
fused to believe that war was coming, but Mr.
Morgan was not one of them. He began at once
to prepare for the trying responsibilities of a
" war Governor " of the State which must neces-
sarily furnish more men and more money than
any other, and whose attitude and action would
EDWIN DENIS ON MORGAN 125
surely give the tone or set the example to be
followed by lesser commonwealths. The State
of South Carolina seceded ten days before Mr.
Morgan took the oath of office for his second
term, but he was already preparing to respond
to the counter-proclamation which he knew must
shortly come. The militia system of New York,
outside of a few city regiments, was decidedly
upon a peace basis. Not one of those regiments,
even, could be maintained in the field, for there
was no such thing as a quartermaster's or com-
missary's department, except on paper in the
pigeon-holes of a dusty office-room of the capitol
at Albany. Mr. Morgan looked around among
his capable young men and asked one of them,
named Chester A. Arthur, to go with him, as a
member of his military staff, to put the State on
a war footing as rapidly as might be, and to be
ready to respond to any call for troops. It was
an admirable selection, for General Arthur be-
came the very life and soul of the rapidly de-
vised methods for hurrying to the front all
J O
troops whatsoever that passed through the cen-
tral military depots of the city of New York. It
was partly with reference to volunteers from
other States, over whom, as Governor of New
York, Mr. Morgan had no legal authority, that
President Lincoln shortly appointed him a major-
general of volunteers, and made the State a
military department under his command. Vol-
unteer officers could, therefore, report to him,
and any within his district were under his direc-
tion, if the needs of the service required it. The
126 MEN OF BUSINESS
New York militia also became the Army of
the Northern Frontier. He accepted the com-
mission for the sake of the uses involved, but he
refused to draw pay or rations, or even for the
reimbursement of many actual outlays. These,
indeed, in all directions, had been largely in ex-
cess of any appropriations placed at his disposal
by the State. The movement of the militia of
New York was at no time hindered by the lack
of funds. Only at the outset the Governor and
his capable aid were compelled to be cautious,
even in spending their own funds for war prep-
arations, lest they should arouse critical jeal-
ousies both at the North and at the South.
The Sumter gun sounded, and the President's
proclamation calling for troops was issued on the
1 5th of April, 1861, and at once the quota of New
York militia began to go forward, while all over
the State regiments began to form for the volun-
teer service. What this might be was as yet not
even outlined, but the Governor went on with its
first stages of preparation, very much as if he
already knew what the next demand would be.
A number of hastily formed but pretty well
equipped regiments were sent to the front before
any act of Congress provided for their recep-
tion. They were on the ground and others were
ready to go forward, when the Bull Run defeat
was so swiftly followed by Congressional legisla-
tion placing half a million of men at the sum-
mons of President Lincoln. The rusty, defective
military machinery of the State, in time of peace,
was replaced by bureaus of organization, equip-
EDWIN DENISON MORGAN 127
ment, transportation, and maintenance, whose effi-
ciency rivalled that of a first-class business estab-
lishment. The position assumed by the Empire
State was of inestimable value to the national
cause all over the land, and the warm personal
friendship of the President was one of the honors
won by the stalwart patriotism and striking
ability displayed by its Governor.
Two years that were very long to live and
very short to look back upon, brought Mr. Mor-
gan's official term to a close. Disasters in the field
had been counted twice by the war-wearied people
and advantages won had certainly been much
underestimated. A very large part of the Re-
publican vote was in the army, and so the party
was defeated at the polls. There was to be an
opposition Governor of New York, although one
by no means lacking in patriotism, but the public
services of Mr. Morgan continued, for he was
transferred to a seat in the Senate of the United
States for a six years' term.
It was a time when thoroughly trained busi-
ness men were sorely needed in that body, for
the questions of the day were financial much
more than otherwise political. Congress had
indeed a large burden of general legislation upon
its hands, and it rightly considered itself the co-
ordinate of the Executive in scrutinizing every
feature of the conduct of the war. Still, it was
practically resolved into a Committee of the
Whole on Ways and Means, and there were
those among its membership whose previous
experience had brought them only crude per-
128 MEN OF BUSINESS
ceptions relating to the taxable resources of the
country and the science of turning available cred-
its into debt-paying paper. The just weight due
the counsels of the New York merchant-states-
man was accorded him at once. He was placed
upon the Committees of Finance, Commerce, Pa-
cific Railroad, and the Library. It is recorded
that during his entire term he did not miss a
single session of the Senate, but was always in his
place ready for business. His work in the several
committee-rooms was of the most valuable char-
acter and its performance was tireless. He was
in the full vigor of a manhood unimpaired, for
his habits from boyhood had been rigidly simple
and correct. He had wasted nothing and he
could therefore endure toils that were too exact-
ing for the bodily strength of many another able
man.
Mr. Morgan was a good parliamentarian and
could hold his own as a general debater, but he
never consumed the Senate's working hours in
speech-making. He was a legislator confining
himself to business upon the principles which
had gfiven him his successes as a merchant.
o
The various important financial measures of
President Lincoln's first term owed so much to
the New York Senator, that at the beginning of
the second term he was offered the portfolio of
Secretary of the Treasury. It was declined for
what seemed the manifest reason that the na-
tional finances of the future required him to
remain in the Senate. His decision was un-
doubtedly as correct as it was unselfish, and he
EDWIN DEN1SON MORGAN 129
continued his watchful service through all the
stormy years of President Johnson's administra-
tion.
At the end of his Senatorial term, in 1869, there
was nothing to demand any special devotion to
politics. The affairs of the nation were in good
hands, while the affairs of the house of E. D.
Morgan & Co. seemed to ask for the return and
attention of its head. They had been managed
by capable and trustworthy men, always more
or less in consultation with him, and the credit of
the firm stood high at home and abroad. Even
when the panic of 1873 came, a few years later,
and the whole " Street" seemed to go down to-
gether at once, no trace of the storm was left be-
hind upon the financial position of the old war-
Governor.
Not that he was really old, but that every
resident New Yorker had known him for so long
a time, during all of which he had been a prom-
inent and often a striking figure. It was said
that his presence upon the platform, at a public
meeting, was somewhat like adding a very large
percentage to the number of men present. It
surely added much to the force and respecta-
bility of the meeting, for he was now, in more
respects than one, a historic character.
However that might be, he was an exceedingly
hard-working character, for he was a busy di-
rector in banks, railway and telegraph com-
panies, and a trustee of several charitable institu-
tions. There were also family and social duties
which he did not neglect, and he was during
9
130 MEN OF BUSINESS
many years the president, adviser, and liberal
helper of the Women's Hospital. He was well
known as a judicious and wisely scrutinizing
giver, disposed to know exactly what was to be
done with the money given and to act as a di-
recting counsellor whenever he saw a need.
Sometimes, too, his advice was worth quite as
much as his money. Of his larger gifts, $100,000
went to Williams College, Massachusetts, and an-
other $100,000 to the Presbyterian Theological
Seminary.
In September, iSSi, Chester A. Arthur became
President of the United States. He had request-
ed the Cabinet officers appointed by President
Garfield to remain with him, and all but the
Secretary of the Treasury did so. The President
at once offered that portfolio to Mr. Morgan and
sent the nomination to the Senate, where it was
promptly confirmed. It was a graceful recogni-
tion alike of the old and strong tie between the
President and his early friend, and of the high
character and eminent public services of the
nominee. It could not be anything more, how-
ever, for the sturdy strength which had en-
dured so well was beginning to yield and the
honor was declined. Only two years later, Feb-
ruary 14, 1 88 1, the long and useful career of the
merchant-prince and patriotic citizen closed,
amid an almost universal acknowledgment that
one of the strongest men in the country had
finished his work.
-
VII.
CYRUS WEST FIELD.
THERE was a time when regions and places
on the surface of the earth were in all respects
separated from each other by measurable dis-
tances. The time required for communication
from point to point was governed by the speed
of such methods, horse or ship or foot, as might
convey a man, a messenger. Very nearly in a
related correspondence was there a wideness of
separation in feeling among communities and
nations. Sympathies were narrowed, neigh-
borly feeling could not grow, and in times of
trial the hands which might have helped were
too late in coming. Numberless were the in-
stances of resulting evils, greater or lesser, for
even battles were fought after the nominal re-
turn of peace, but before it could be announced
in the opposing camps. At New Orleans, Jan-
uary 8, 1815, all the bloodshed and suffering-
were needless, for the treaty of Ghent had al-
ready been signed two weeks when General
Pakenham fell and his veterans recoiled from
before the American lines.
The invention of the electric telegraph and the
construction of land lines began at last to work
a kind of revolution, but the victory over dis-
132 MEN OF BUSINESS
tances, so important to the future of the world,
was only half won so long as the wide reaches of
the oceans remained impassable.
The world before the telegraph and the world
since its coming are hardly the same, in many
great features, but the transition from the old to
the new is already an almost forgotten story.
We are so accustomed to the news of all the
earth that we receive it like the air, and think
and talk as if our ancestors had done as we do.
There was a long all but desperate struggle
before the oceans ceased to be barriers in the
path of the electric current, and the hero part of
that struggle was borne by a man who went into
it altogether as a man of business, undertaking
an enterprise in the soundness of which he had
what may be described as " business faith." In
so doing he offered a perfect illustration of an
element essential to every permanent or consid-
erable business success.
Cyrus West Field was born in Stockbridge,
Mass., February 20, 1819. The family to which
he belonged has been fruitful in men and women
o
of exceptional ability through several genera-
tions. His own parents were in moderate cir-
cumstances, but he received excellent home
training and with it all that could be obtained
from the very good public school and academy
of Stockbridge. Although fond of books, he was
a tough and hardy boy, and evinced a spirit of
adventure which was to bear remarkable fruit
in after years.
He was only fifteen when it became desirable
CYRUS WEST FIELD 133
that he should begin to do something for him-
self, and an opening was ready for him. An
older brother, David Dudley Field, was begin-
ning to win success as a lawyer in New York,
and through him employment was secured in
the flourishing dry-goods house of A. T. Stewart
& Co. It was a capital school in which to study
the ways and means for success in business, but
the young scholar from Stockbridge did not be-
come devoted to business for its own sake. Es-
pecially, he formed no liking for the dry-goods
business. Nevertheless, he remained with Mr.
Stewart during about six years, acquiring the
confidence of his employer and of other men.
He had been looking around him for another
kind of opening and he had found one. When
he became of age, in 1840, he ceased to be a
clerk that he might set out for himself, with
others, in the manufacture and sale of paper. It
was a comparatively small beginning, but the
paper business was itself in its infancy. From
that time onward the demand and consumption
were to increase with marvellous rapidity. So
were all the machinery and appliances of manu-
facture and the sources of supply of varied
materials. It was with reference to this develop-
ment of the business he had selected that the
peculiar faculties and training of Mr. Field
came out into strong contrast with those of
some of his slower-footed competitors in the
paper trade. He grew with the growth of the
demand, meeting it with so much of shrewdness
and enterprise year after year that he was only
134 MEN OF BUSINESS
thirty-six years of age when he declared that his
fortune was sufficient and he was ready to retire.
Not only had he money enough ; his family re-
lations were all that he could ask for ; his home
was an acknowledged social centre ; there was
no need for toiling so severely any longer ; but
he longed to see the world and know what was
in it. He would, therefore, give himself to books,
to art, to travel, to whatever ways in life the pos-
session of wealth, position, and friends might en-
title him.
Six months were spent in travel in South
America, among rivers and mountains and peo-
ples outside of the accustomed paths of rich
American tourists, but all the while a remark-
able proposition had been preparing for his
return. His brother, Matthew D. Field, and
Frederick Gisborne had planned a telegraph
line across Newfoundland, to meet the news of
Europe at the coast and send it to New York.
It would be " six days or less " from its starting
point on the other side of the ocean, if the plan
could be carried out, and all the vague possibili-
ties of cable telegraphy came in as hopes to add
to its attraction.
This at first did not seem to be very strong,
and Mr. Field resisted it. All his pleasant visions
of the life to be led by a retired merchant
seemed to draw him in an opposite direction.
They argued, however, and he pondered, and
all the while a great dream of a vast, world-
serving enterprise crept into his mind and fixed
itself, taking permanent possession. The trans-
CYRUS WEST FIELD 135
atlantic cable had become the business of his
life.
The idea was by no means new. While study-
ing the outlines presented him, he wrote to his
friend, S. F. B. Morse, and received for reply
that the inventor himself, as long ago as 1843, nad
reported to the Secretary of the Navy : " Tele-
graphic communication on the electro-magnetic
plan may with certainty be established across
the Atlantic Ocean."
As to the ocean itself, its tides and currents,
its deeps and shoals, the acknowledged authority
was Lieutenant M. F. Maury, of the navy, and in-
quiries sent to him brought back an encourage-
ment that was almost startling in its nature and
timeliness. The recent soundings made by the
United States brig Dolphin had defined the exist-
ence of the great North Atlantic bottom plateau,
with an oozy bed that seemed as if it were made
to rest cables on. Moreover, recent experiments
in the use of gutta-percha for purposes of insula-
tion seemed to set at rest some causes of anxiety
concerning the character of the cable to be
laid. As to the route across Newfoundland, it
presented somewhat vaguely the idea of a
rugged wilderness to be penetrated.
Perhaps Mr. Field did not yet know how com-
pletely he had given himself up to the enterprise
which was taking form in his hands as he pro-
ceeded with his inquiries and calculations. He
had now gone far enough, however, to assume
the position of its eloquent advocate, when he
prudently began to "ask the advice' of such
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CYRUS WEST FIELD 137
men as he selected for desirable associates. His
own views and plans were in shape for vivid pres-
entation before they were heard and scrutinized
by a coterie of the clearest-headed business men
in America. His next-door neighbor was Mr.
Peter Cooper, a man of rare acuteness and judg-
ment, but overflowing with business dash and
courage. To him, first of all, the new scheme
was presented across the library table, and his
prompt and strong approval, with an assurance
of pecuniary support, was a great encouragement
to Mr. Field. His own brother, David Dudley
Field, had already joined him heartily, and there
was need of a cool, capable counsellor learned in
the law.
It was Mr. Cooper's opinion, as well as that of
Mr. Field, that the general public should not be
consulted nor asked to contribute. The nature
of the adventure required that only a few strong
hands should carry it. The next recruit sought
was Mr. Moses Taylor, one of the leading capi-
talists of the city, and known also as one of the
hardest to convince. An introduction \vas ob-
tained, and Mr. Field himself recorded that the
keen-eyed financier sat and listened to him a full
hour without speaking a word. He then gave
his assent, however, and he also brought in his
friend, Mr. Marshall O. Roberts, a man whose
name was as a synonym for clash and enterprise
to all the generation of business men that knew
him. The next man enlisted, almost against his
will until his enthusiasm was aroused, was Mr.
Chandler White, a retired merchant of large
138 MEN OF BUSINESS
wealth, a personal friend of Mr. Field. It was
now suggested by Mr. Cooper that five were as
good as ten if they would pull together, and re-
cruiting ceased, but Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, an emi-
nent merchant, joined them about a year later.
Mr. Field, accompanied by his brother and Mr.
White, were now ready to make a first and some-
what stormy voyage to St. John's, Newfound-
land. They were well received with assurances
of co-operation from the colonial government,
and after a surrender of what may be called the
Gisborne charter, of a preliminary undertaking
which had failed for lack of capital, a new com-
pany was chartered, with a right of way, a grant
of land, and some financial help, under the name
of the New York, Newfoundland & London Tel-
egraph Company.
As yet the ocean cable was a thing of the
future and of doubtful experiment. It was a
dream entertained by Mr. Field and his brother
and their four visionary financiers, but for which
sober-minded people were not yet quite ready.
The idea presented for immediate realization was
a telegraph line across Newfoundland, a cable
across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connection with
land telegraph lines to New York, and then the
establishment of the fastest steamship line on
earth. Each steamer was to touch at St. John's
long enough to land news, and this could then be
telegraphed to New York, possibly only five or
six days from London, and the reverse process
was to be accomplished at a point on the Irish
coast, a land line across Ireland and a cable to
CYRUS WEST FIELD 139
England. It was a daring scheme, but it had in
it no traces of the wildness which attached to the
idea of a telegraphic rope upon the bottom of the
deep sea.
The first action consisted in the general pay-
ment of debts belonging to the old company and
assumed by the new, much to the gratification of
many people in St. John's, and then the Ameri-
can party set out for home. Perhaps the char-
acter of the five cable visionaries may appear
somewhat from the fact that their other business
engagements were pressing, so that Cyrus W.
Field and Chandler White, with their report, met
Moses Taylor, Peter Cooper, and Marshall O.
Roberts in David Dudley Field's dining-room on
Monday morning, May 8, 1854, before six o'oclock.
The new company was organized ; a million and
a half of dollars was subscribed ; Peter Cooper was
made president, Chandler White vice-president,
Moses Taylor treasurer, all before the sun was
well up ; and then part of them went home and
the others sat down to breakfast with a general
understanding that the company expected Cyrus
W. Field to go on and do whatever he might deem
needful.
The first part of the undertaking, the New-
foundland line, included, under the provisions of
the company's charter, " a good and traversable
bridle roacl eight feet wide, with bridges of the
same width," along the entire distance, over four
hundred miles. The country was a wilderness
of mountain, forest, and morass, over which win-
ter reigned during fully half of each year. Of
140 MEN OF BUSINESS
large sections of the proposed pathway, in fact,
there had as yet been no considerable explora-
tions since the discovery of the country. The
cost of overcoming the difficulties which arose
at every step as the work went on was much in
excess of the first estimates, but the projectors"
did not flinch. Whenever Mr. Field was in New
York his house was the office of the company,
and its directors spent their evenings there dis-
cussing the Newfoundland wilderness ; but tow-
ard the end of 1854 they were ready to send him
to England to contract for the cable to- be laid
across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to connect
Cape Ray with the Island of Cape Breton.
It was the first of more than forty voyages
made across the Atlantic by Mr. Field. He
secured his short cable, but discovered that the
time was not ripe, nor the minds of men, for pre-
senting the idea of the longer line. His only
convert was Mr. Brett, already distinguished for
his success in laying two cables across the British
Channel. Mr. Field returned and all things
waited until the following summer. By that
time the land lines were doing well and a hun-
dred and forty miles of " bridle road ' were
opened across the Island of Cape Breton.
The Gulf cable was shipped and came across
the ocean safely. All things seemed to be going
well. Even the weather was good when the
work of laying began, on the 7th of August,
1855. When about forty miles had been paid out,
however, a violent storm arose and the captain
of the bark which carried the cable was com-
CYRUS WEST FIELD 141
pelled to cut loose in order to save his craft from
utter wreck. The loss was hopeless and the
work went over to the following year. If it had
been in the hands of weak men it would have
been given up, but there were a few neighbor-
hood consultations, and then Mr. Field going
again to England, the additional cable was
ordered, and also the proper fitting up of a
steamer instead of a sailing vessel to carry and
pay it out.
The year 1856 came; the cable was laid suc-
cessfully ; the land lines worked well ; there was
telegraphic communication from New York to
the most easterly point of America at which the
proposed line of steamers could deliver news,
and the first great advance had been made tow-
ard a cable across the ocean. Thus far the pro-
jectors had paid out over a million of dollars in
nearly equal portions, Mr. Field somewhat more
than the others. Small sums had been contrib-
uted by Professor Morse, Robert W. Lowther,
and Mr. Brett, the cable-builder of England.
Now, however, another change came, for the
admission of Mr. Wilson G. Hunt to the board of
directors and to a share in the financial burdens
was made upon the death of Mr. Chandler White.
The changes among associates ; the unexpected
trials and reverses ; the long delays ; the per-
petual assurance that success of any kind was
yet a thing of the far future — all are important
considerations in a study of the kind of mental
and moral fibre capable of exercising the faith
• which wins success.
142 MEN OF BUSINESS
During all this time the general subject of
ocean-cable telegraphy had received a great deal
of careful study, accompanied by numerous ex-
periments, by the best electricians of Europe and
America. There were yet mechanical obstacles to
be overcome and problems of transmission which
had not by any means been solved. The keenest
and most hopeful investigators were the very
men to whose minds every doubt was sure to
suggest itself.
Neither bonds nor stock of the company had
been placed upon the general market, but now a
quarter of a million of dollars in bonds was issued
and taken at par by the associates themselves
prior to an attempt at obtaining English co-
operation. The next step required that Mr.
Field should go to England, taking his family
with him, and reside there while conducting
financial negotiations and superintending experi-
ments. He went in the summer of 1856, with
full power of all kinds. One of his first consul-
tations after reaching London was with his old
friend Brett, and he learned how deep an im-
pression had been made by the difficulties met
by that gentleman in laying the channel lines and
by the first failure in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
If so much had to be overcome in laying less
than three hundred miles of cable, what impossi-
bilities might block the way of one three thousand
miles long, if that was to be its actual length ?
Nevertheless, Mr. Field met with a great deal
of cordial encouragement, especially from scien-
tific men and constructors. Among these was
CYRUS WEST FIELD 143
Mr. Brunei, the builder of the great steamship
Great Eastern. He took Mr. Field to look at
the vast hull that he was putting together, and
remarked : " There is the ship to lay the Atlantic
cable," but neither of them had any idea of what
was really in store for her.
While other financial negotiations were going
on Mr. Field opened relations with the British
Government and was listened to by men of broad
and liberal statesmanship, fully capable of com-
prehending the results of the proposed achieve-
ment.
Autumn came and nearly passed before a
definite success seemed near. In November a
favorite sister of Mr. Field, who had accompanied
him, died in Paris, while he and his family were
making a pleasure trip to France, but he returned
from her funeral to be stirred into activity again
by the decision of the treasury lords. It was
given in the form of an offered contract with the
company that the cable should be laid and that a
subsidy of fourteen thousand pounds sterling per
annum should be paid, from the date of the com-
pleted laying, and that the governments of Great
Britain and the United States should have equal
rights in the use of the line. Other helps and
protections were promised and a financial basis
was obtained. A new company was organized,
called the Atlantic Cable Company, with a cap-
ital of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds,
and Mr. Field undertook to obtain subscriptions.
He began in London, aided by enthusiastic
friends, and he went to Liverpool a.nd Manches-
MEN OF BUSINESS
ter to address the Chambers of Commerce of
those cities, but he had no need to go further.
Subscriptions poured in, even excessively, and
his own original subscription of two-sevenths
was cut down to one-fourth, or eighty-eight
thousand pounds, which he expected to dis-
tribute among American subscribers. It was not
a " promoter's share," but every dollar of it was
actually paid in money, and the contemplated
distribution, owing to a succession of interfer-
ences, was only in part ever made, the main bur-
den of it remaining upon Mr. Field himself.
The next immediate anxieties in England re-
lated to the mechanical construction of the cable
itself and to the methods and perils of its paying
out from shipboard. These, however, had to be
left, for the time, in other hands, for questions of
vital importance summoned him to the United
States. He arrived in New York on Christinas
Day, but not for rest or a holiday, for there was
an imperative demand for his presence in New-
foundland. A tempestuous passage landed him
at St. John's under the care of a physician, but
he toiled on and reached New York again, his
errand accomplished, after a month of continual
exposure, sickness, and suffering. It was a part
of the price of the cable. The very day after
his return he went on to Washington to ask from
his own government something like the recog-
nition he had received from the statesmen of
Great Britain.
So far as President Pierce and his Cabinet
were concerned the response was all that he
CYRUS WEST FIELD 145
could have asked for, but the assent of Congress
was needed, and this body was at that time un-
fortunately constituted. Even the Senate, while
it listened to the arguments of Senators Seward,
of New York; Rusk, of Texas; Douglas, of Illi-
nois ; Bayard, of Delaware, and other able men,
in behalf of the cable enterprise, was neverthe-
less so inert or so suspicious that the required
legislation was at last carried through, after a
severe contest, by a bare majority of one. In
the House of Representatives there was an oppo-
sition as narrow and obtuse. Only at the end of
the session did the cable bill pass, as closely
almost as in the Senate, and it was signed by Pres-
ident Pierce on the 3d of March, 1857, as one of
the latest acts of his administration.
With the passage of the act of Congress the
cable enterprise put on a new aspect. Its funds
had been provided ; its cable and appliances were
approaching completeness ; the Newfoundland
land lines and the cable across the Gulf of St.
Lawrence were working well ; the two nations
were apparently in accord, and even the question
of the transmission of messages seemed to be an-
swered hopefully by the later experiments of the
electricians.
Our own government assigned the Niagara,
the best and largest steam-frigate in the world,
with her armament removed, attended by another
fine ship, the Susquehanna, to the work of laying
the cable. The British Government had in like
manner placed the Agamemnon and the Leopard
at the service of the company. The Niagara was
10
146 MEN OF BUSINESS
to begin the work and, after a splice in mid-
ocean, the Agamemnon was to finish it. The
shore end was anchored on the 5th of August,
1857, after a long succession of courtesies and
festivities. So far as the science and skill then
available could provide, all seemed to promise
well, and at an early hour next morning the
cable fleet moved away. Before it had sailed
five miles, the heavy and somewhat inflexible
cable used for the shore end caught in the ma-
chinery and snapped in twain ; but the Niagara
put back, the lost line was lifted and spliced and
another beginning was made. The feeling on
board is described as intense. The suppressed
excitement, the ceaseless anxiety, had such a
power that all through the following night even
the sailors walking the deck trod softly, as if there
might be danger in a heavy footfall. All through
the next two days the weather was fine and mes-
sages passed freely to and from the shore. On
land a somewhat similar anxiety prevailed and
the coming of bad news was freely prophesied,
for it was sagely remarked by many that this was
a new thing, and Mr. Field had never before laid
an ocean cable. He was not used to it, truly, but
his long-tried faith was receiving an apparent jus-
tification.
There was no cloud upon it until Monday
evening, when they were over two hundred
miles from shore ; but then, at about nine o'clock,
the current ceased to work, without any assign-
able cause. It was as if the hearts of men stood
still while the electricians tried in vain, again and
(JYRUS WEST FIELD 147
again. It had nearly been decided to cut the
cable and give it up, when suddenly the current
came again, after an interruption of two and
a half hours. The ships moved on again and all
the hopes came back with the current, but before
the dawn of day a worse thing came. The cable
seemed to be running out with perilous freedom
and the brakes were applied just as the stern of
the Niagara arose from a deep wave-trough, and
the strain was too great. The cable snapped and
the voyage was ended, after three hundred and
thirty miles of perfect success, more than one
hundred of it in water over two miles deep.
The fleet sailed back, and it was determined
not to try again at once, but at least to wait for
the construction of more perfect appliances, sug-
gested by this first experience. The directors of
the London company seemed to be by no means
disheartened, but ordered new cable to replace
the lost piece and proposed to be ready for
another attempt in 1858.
Mr. Field soon returned to America, only to
hear of the great financial panic of 1857. It had
swept the country like a hurricane and his own
fortune had suffered severely. He was not a
bankrupt, but he was no longer a rich man. It
had been a terrible year and it closed in the dark-
ness of a great doubt, for the temporary confi-
dence of the previous summer was all gone and
in the minds and utterances of many men he was
once more a mere visionary, following a will-o'-
^ 7 o
wisp.
The first experiment had sunk a hundred thou-
148 MEN OF BUSINESS
sand pounds of the company's capital, and there
was difficulty in replacing it ; but this was done,
and Mr. Field returned to England as general man-
ager, after obtaining from President Buchanan's
administration all the ships and co-operation
asked for. Comparatively poor as he now was,
he refused the compensation offered for his ser-
vices, a thousand pounds, and worked without
wages.
The improvements of all kinds were many and
important, but their very supervision gave Mr.
Field several months of severe, unresting toil.
The Susquehanna being detained in the West
Indies by yellow fever on board, the British
Government replaced her with the. Valorous.
This time the laying of the cable was to begin
in mid-ocean, the two ships to meet, splice cable,
and sail toward opposite shores. The cable
squadron sailed from England June 10, 1858.
Even in getting to the ocean rendezvous, terrific
storms all but wrecked vessels so heavily and
unmanageably laden, but on the 25th of June
they were all together at the place appointed.
Days had been consumed in repairing the conse-
quences of the bad weather, but on the 26th the
splice was made and the work began. It was
only a beginning, for barely three miles of line
were out before there was a hitch and a snap-
ping. Three miles was no great loss. Another
splice was made and another start. This time
forty miles of cable ran out well and then the
current ceased, no man ever knew why. It was
disheartening, but that piece of cable also was
CYRUS WEST FIELD 149
counted lost, the ships came back, the cable ends
were joined, and a third time the messages ran
well as the Niagara and Agamemnon slowly
separated. On they sailed, and hope almost
grew bright again, until they were about two
hundred miles apart, and then it died. It was on
the night of Tuesday, June 28th, that the current
ceased. The cable had broken about twenty feet
from the stern of the Agamemnon. Had the ves-
sels been nearer each other, a new trial might
have been made, but as it was, both gave it up
and sailed back to England.
The directors bravely determined to try again,
but it was almost with the courage of despair
that the needful preparations were made. So
completely had other men abandoned the wild
scheme that the cable fleet, when ready, steamed
away without having any notice taken of their
going. Even those on board the ships were
dull and downcast. It was afterward said by
those on the Niagara: "Mr. Field was the only
man on board who kept up his courage through
it all."
It was on Thursday, July 2gth, that a splice
was made and laying cable began. That very
evening: the current ceased for a while, and all
o
seemed lost, but it mysteriously returned and
the \vork went on. The next day the Niagara's
compasses went wrong on account of the mass of
attraction on board, and she wandered out of her
course until the British ship Gordon went ahead
as guide.
From that time onward there were checks and
150 MEN OF BUSINESS
anxieties one after another, with seemingly in-
surmountable difficulties to overcome as they
were met, with storms and contrary winds, with
perils even from merchant ships that crossed the
cable-laying course, one of them nearly running
down the Niagara. All were passed, and on
Thursday, August 4th, the Niagara anchored
in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, and the cable
seemed to be laid, for the Agamemnon was
already safe in Valentia Bay, Ireland. The next
day, the 5th, Mr. Field sent a long despatch to
the Associated Press, to suprise millions of
people who had only heard of the first failures
and had utterly given up any belief in him or his
enterprise.
There was a corresponding reaction in the
minds of men. Cannon salutes were fired ; bells
rang; crowds cheered; the news was received
as that of one of the greatest victories ever won
in peace, better than any victory won in war.
There was much to be clone upon the broken-
down Newfoundland land lines before a through
message could be sent. Mr. Field and a force
O
went into the woods at once to make the repairs
and then, although the cable was working well,
the doubters began to deride again.
The first message from shore to shore was
from the English directors to the American:
" Glory to God in the highest ; on earth peace,
good will toward men." The first through mes-
sages, however (August i6th) were one from
Queen Victoria to President Buchanan and the
President's reply. Then the enthusiasm broke
CYRUS WEST FIELD 151
out again. The flags everywhere went up, the
cannon thundered, and the church-bells rang
clamorously, while the name of Mr. Field was
greeted with boisterous cheering, as the hero of
the hour, fit to be named with Franklin and
Columbus. There seemed no limit and no ces-
sation in the all but tumultuous rejoicings.
On the evening of the i/th the city of New
York was illuminated, there was a great torch-
light procession of firemen, and a grand public
reception in honor of Mr. Field and his asso-
ciates, with the officers of the cable-ships.
As Mr. Field was entering his carriage to at-
tend the reception a despatch from the London
directors was handed him, and on reaching the
platform he at once stepped forward and read
it to the enthusiastic assembly.
The cheering was half frantic. It was the
culmination of a triumph won at untellable cost,
and yet it was the beginning of a long darkness,
for that was the last message received over the
cable of 1858. Down in the depths of the ocean
some inexplicable blow had been given and
something like a death had followed.
Almost excessive as had been the outburst of
rejoicing, the fever-heat of unexpected success,
correspondingly bitter and unreasonable was the
reversal and the harshness caused by disappoint-
ment. It was freely asserted, against all evi-
dence, that no messages had ever crossed the
ocean and that Mr. Field had but engineered a
stock-jobbing fraud. Bitter indeed was the cup
held out to him, and all previous trials seemed as
152 MEN OF BUSINESS
nothing compared to this. Even his brave asso-
ciates in England and America were at last dis-
mayed, although they stood firmly by him and
defended his personal character. This, indeed,
was sustained, as men grew calmer, but his fort-
une had disappeared and little seemed left ex-
cept the ghost of a great failure.
The real strength of the cable enterprise lay,
after all, in the vast results which were attainable
by its success. The British Government refused
to give it up, although when applied to for large
financial aid there were reasons for hesitation.
The following year, however, its Board of
Trade appointed a committee of experts to in-
vestigate the entire subject and report.
Two years later (1861) this committee made an
elaborate, somewhat bulky but favorable report,
but the times were out of joint for cable-laying.
The American civil war was at its height, the
relations between England and America were
strained, and there were many who declared
that, for military and political reasons, no cable
should be permitted. President Lincoln and his
Cabinet were wiser, for Mr. Seward, the cham-
pion of Mr. Field in the Senate, was now
Secretary of State. The real difficulty in the
way was one of capital and it seemed for a while
insuperable. In 1862 Mr. Field undertook to
meet it in person. He visited Boston, Philadel-
phia, Albany, Buffalo, calling together assemblies
of merchants, bankers, and other business men,
to address them on behalf of his project. They
came, they received him well, but they gave him
CYRUS WEST FIELD
153
no money. In New York he addressed such
bodies as the Stock Board, the Corn Exchange,
and the Chamber of Commerce. It was all in
vain until he went from man to man, asking for
subscriptions to start again with, begging from
door to door, until he obtained about seventy
thousand pounds and could go once more to stir
The Great Eastern Laying the Atlantic Cable.
up English liberality. He went and the prospect
seemed good, for in August, 1864, the London
directors advertised for proposals for a new
cable. A number were made to them and one was
so entirely satisfactory that Mr. Field returned
hopefully to America. It was only to wait lor
and receive news of delays which postponed the
cable-laying one year more,
154 MEN OF BUSINESS
There had been many notable advances in cable-
laying since the great disappointment of 1858, but
perhaps the best of all was now made when the
company secured control of the Great Eastern.
She offered the essential element of steadiness in
motion during the paying-out process. Even her
vast hull, however, required a great deal of chang-
ing and fitting up, and Mr. Field returned to
England late in the spring of 1865 to find her not
quite ready. The finances of the company, how-
ever, were now in very good condition, and all
preliminaries were ended in good season. On
the 23d of July the Great Eastern began her work,
the shore end of the cable being already laid.
Then, although all the paying-out machinery
worked perfectly, a new enemy was discovered.
Only a few miles out from shore the electric
tests indicated a fault, the cable was recovered
to find it, and a small wire was discovered driven
through its covering. A piece was taken out, a
splice was made, the ship sailed on, and all went
well until the 29th, when the same thing occurred
again in deeper water, with greater difficulty in
the recovery. It was now plain to all who ex-
amined the matter that treachery had been at
work, but none could imagine the agent. After
that a closer watch was kept, and further mis-
chiel was apparently out of the question. Twelve
hundred miles of cable ran out perfectly. Only
six hundred more remained to be run. Two or
three days would bring them to Newfoundland.
The problem was solved, if it had not been for
the breaking down of the too feeble machinery
CYRUS WEST FIELD
155
with which a discovered " fault ' was being at-
tended to. The cable wras fouled by the Great
Eastern herself, snapped like a thread and went
to the bottom. Days were spent in attempts to
grapple and raise it, which failed only for lack ol
Landing Shore End of the Cable at Heart's Content, Newfoundland.
sufficiently strong apparatus, and then once more
Mr. Field was carried back to England for a con-
sultation with the directors.
They again proved equal to the demand upon
their perseverance. They ordered a new cable
made with all improvements which could be de-
vised. On the 1 3th of July, 1866, the Great East-
ern again steamed out to sea with the new cable
156 MEN OF BUSINESS
passing over her stern, and this time there was
no failure to record. The current news of Europe
came from hour to hour unceasingly. A war was
raging between Austria, Prussia, and Italy, and
the battle tidings reached the cabin of the Great
Eastern, but when, on the 27th of July, Mr. Field
went ashore to send a telegram announcing
success, the latest news from the Old World
was of peace declared between the contending
powers.
The land lines, long unused, required repairs,
and Mr. Field went to work upon them, while
the Great Eastern steamed away to grapple for
and raise the lost cable of 1865. This was a se-
vere task, but after several failures it was accom-
plished in September.
Public opinion at home and abroad turned in
a great tide toward Mr. Field and honors were
heaped upon him, while full justice was clone to
his British and American co-operators. He him-
self for a time experienced a feeling of weariness,
and was willing to rest if he could be permitted
to do so.
At a banquet given him by the New York
Chamber of Commerce .he expressed his own
view of his achievement better than another could
do it for him. He said :
" It has been a long struggle. Nearly thirteen
years of anxious watching and ceaseless toil.
Often my heart has been ready to sink. Many
times when wandering in the forests of New-
foundland in the pelting rain, or on the decks of
ships on dark, stormy nights alone far from home,
CYRUS WEST FIELD 157
I have almost accused myself of madness and
folly, to sacrifice the peace of my family and all
the hopes of life for what might prove, after all,
but a dream. I have seen my companions, one
and another, falling by my side, and feared that
I might not live to see the end. And yet one
hope has led me on, and I have prayed that I
might not taste of death till this work was accom-
plished. That prayer is answered, and now, be-
yond all acknowledgments to men, is the feeling
of gratitude to Almighty God."
Time was required to recover from so long and
severe a strain, but he was only forty-seven years
of age, and he soon rallied. He had abundant stim-
ulus, for he was now once more in affluence, and
his separations from his family were ended. Con-
gress gave him a vote of thanks and a gold medal.
The Paris Exposition of 1867 gave him its highest
honor, a gold medal. The King of Italy gave
him the order of St. Mauritius. At every turn
and on every appearance in public he was met
by some hearty token of the universal apprecia-
tion of his fidelity in that long struggle for the
realization of a business man's dream.
He did not at once engage in other undertak-
ings, for there was much yet to be done in con-
nection with the business affairs of the cable. In
1869, however, he attended the formal opening of
the Suez Canal as representative of the New York
Chamber of Commerce, sfratifyinsr somewhat the
7 O J O
early longing for travel which had led him to his
tour in South America.
On his return he took an active interest in
158
MEN OF BUSINESS
varied business affairs, being received wherever
he went as one of his country's most distin
guished citizens. Most notable of all were his
efforts for the development of the system of
elevated railways of the city of New York, but
their general control and management passed
into other hands.
Shore End of Cable — exact size.
In 1874 Mr. Field's love ol travel carried him
to Iceland, accompanied by Bayard Taylor and
Murat Halstead. In iSSo-i he went around
the world by way of San Francisco, the Pa-
cific, Japan, China, India, and the Suez route
home.
It was at the end of another decade, after long
rest in honor and prosperity, that Mr. and Mrs.
CY3US WEST FIELD 159
Field, on December 2, 1890, celebrated their gol
den wedding.
It was almost the close of all. In the course
ot 1891 she faded from him, and other bereave-
ments followed. His work was done and he,
too, passed away July 12, 1892. To the very
last his mind had been busy with varied under-
takings, among which was a concession which he
had obtained for a Pacific cable, by way of the
Sandwich Islands, to Asia.
At the southern terminus of Broadway there
is a spot associated with all the earlier history
of the city. It was separated only by a pa-
rade-ground from the first rude fortification
which defended the Dutch settlers from the In-
dians, and which was replaced at a later clay by
the British Fort George. Here, at the out-
break of the war for independence, were the
headquarters of General Putnam, commanding
the first American garrison of New York. It
was and is " Number i Broadway," the very be-
ginning of the town. It fronts upon the Bowl-
ing Green, from which the angry patriots tore
down the leaden equestrian statue of King
George 111.
On this spot Mr. Field erected a vast office
building, a kind of landmark, visible from far
out on the Bay. He called it the " Washington,"
but most other men the " Field," Building. It
is not, nor could any structure in brick and stone
and iron become, nearly so enduring a monu-
ment to his memory as is provided by the ocean
cables which now, one after another, span the
160 MEN OF BUSINESS
Atlantic. It is more visible, however, and it
may be pointed out as recording a business suc-
cess which seemed to be won by a faith which
did not fail with the faith of weaker men, but
before which, at last, not a mountain, literally,
but the sea, was overcome.
-
Chauncey Mitchell Depew.
VIII.
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW.
IT may be that the several nationalities, large
and small, occupying- the area described upon
thfe maps as Europe, offer no other feature more
remarkable than the distinctness of their con-
tinued separation, after ages of neighborhood
and intercourse. A sufficient example is given
by the population of the British Isles, with
Welsh, English, Scotch, and Irish elements blend-
ing so slowly, generation after generation.
In strong contrast with this Old World charac-
teristic is the rapidity with which immigration
to America from so many origins melts into the
newly marked, composite American nationality.
The new type presents its most perfect examples
among the descendants of the earlier settlers, as
a matter of course. These were, for the greater
part, men and women of exceptional moral and
mental capacity, as well as physical force. They
laid a wonderfully good foundation for the new
political building. They transmitted a better in-
heritance than riches. The high qualities which
fitted them to become the founders of a great
nation are shown, undiminished, by a multitude
of their descendants. One of these characteris-
tics is the peculiar faculty for self-adaptation to
162 MEN OF BUSINESS
new or changing circumstances. It is not so
much versatility, however, as it is an inborn
power of growth.
On his mother's side, Chauncey Mitchell Depe w
is descended from the oldest and best colonial
stock of New England. Roger Sherman, one of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
was Mrs. Martha Mitchell Depew's granduncle.
The Depew family were French Huguenots, who
fled to America upon the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes in 1685. With others of their race and
faith who had preferred exile to submission to
tyranny, they made their first American home in
Westchester County, New York.
The entire country Avest of the Hudson, with
the exception of the Mohawk Valley settlements,
was at that time an unbroken wilderness. Fully
half a century later the lands still occupied and
firmly held by the Six Nations extended to the
river-bank above the Highlands. The very
roughness of the Catskill Mountain country,
however, offered exceptional protection from
Indian raids to such little communities as that
which before long began at what has ever since
been known as Peekskill. The majority of its
earlier settlers were of Dutch extraction. Here,
before the close of the seventeenth century, the
Depew family acquired property, and soon after-
ward built a dwelling so substantial that a part
of it remains, included in the homestead standing
to-day.
It was in this old homestead that Chauncey M.
Depew was born on April 23, 1834. Here he
CHAUNGEY MITCHELL DEPEW 163
passed the days of his boyhood and earlier youth,
amid the splendid scenery of the American Rhine,
surrounded by all the simple but solid advantages
of what is, for many reasons, the best rural life in
all the world. Of his home itself, aside from its
substantial comfort, little more need be said than
that its social as well as its religious tone were
of a high order. It was a place for the develop-
ment of self-respect ; for the formation of firm
principles ; for the acquisition of clear percep-
tions of right and wrong. The family traditions
were themselves important educational agents.
Habits of industry and economy came as matters
of course, for circumstances required them.
There was, in like manner, a plain indication
set before Chauncey from his childhood, that he
must expect to make his own way in the world.
No other fortune could come to him than such
as he might win for himself, and it is to his own
success that he owes the fact of owning to-day
the house in which he was born.
It is not often that trustworthy indications of
a boy's future attainments are to be discerned in
his treatment of his first text-books. There were
schools at Peekskill, and he was a regular attend-
ant season after season ; but he was not, it is said,
a distinguished young scholar, excepting on the
ball-ground. He was also noted, moreover, as a
fellow whom all the other fellows liked for the
genial good-will and the endless fun they found
in him.
That he did not actually neglect his tasks is
evident from the fact that in due season he pre-
164 MEN OF BUSINESS
pared for college, entering the freshman class at
Yale in his eighteenth year. Somewhat the
same features were to be found in the history of
his college course, but his time at Yale was in no
respect wasted. The vigorous, athletic, fun-
loving boy was developing into a man with a
strength and independence of character, very
imperfectly understood at first by the already
long list of men who liked him. There are, in-
deed, very many who fail to see how strong an
element is genuine "geniality " in the difficult art
of controlling or directing others.
Mr. Depew was graduated in 1856, and entered
at once the law office of Hon. William Nelson, in
Peekskill. It was a time of intense political fer-
mentation, and party spirit was at fever-heat. Of
the old political organizations, the Whig party
seemed to be passing away. It had become a
form without life. The Democratic party, while
seemingly all-powerful, was rent by factions.
Outside of both, as well as nominally within them,
were important political elements, especially in
the Northern States, which only required gather-
ing and shaping to constitute an entirely new
party. The processes of this combination were
at work, and in 1856, at the Pittsburg " mass-meet-
ing" and at the Philadelphia convention which
followed it, the People's party, soon to be known
as the Republican party, began to take its nota-
ble part in the history of the nation.
Mr. Depew's political career began with the
life of his party. A young law student just out
of college, he entered the campaign of 1856 with
OHAUNCET MITCHELL DEPEW 105
enthusiasm, and his ability as a stump-speaker at
once attracted attention. The party candidates,
Fremont and Dayton, were not elected. Few of
their supporters had expected so much as that,
but a great success was won in carrying eleven
States, with one hundred and fourteen votes in the
electoral college. Mr. Depew went back to his
law books, and two years later, in 1858, he was
admitted to the bar, in the very heat of another
political campaign. He gained a prominence
which brought him, in 1860, a nomination to the
State Assembly. It was the famous " Lincoln
campaign," so sharply, ably contested, with such
fierce excitements in every corner of the country,
and with such tremendous consequences almost
visible in the immediate future. During the
canvass, Mr. Depew did not confine himself to
the Hudson River districts, but spoke at many
points throughout the State, winning a rare ora-
torical reputation for so very young a speaker.
He was elected, and he took his seat in the
Legislature, but not to disappear among the
clever mob of young assemblymen in the some-
what customary way of newly fledged politicians.
It was a time when all the interests of the com-
monwealth, as of the nation itself, were calling
loudly for men of courage, energy, and capacity.
The sudden exigencies of the civil war threw
upon the Legislature, composed largely of new
men, duties for which its membership, young or
old, had no previous preparation. The attitude
and action of the Empire State were of vital
importance to all other States. She was to raise
166 MEN OF BUSINESS
and forward more troops than any other, and she
held the keys of finance. There were endless
questions both of law and of prudence requiring
prompt solution by her legislators. Timidities,
vacillations, criticisms, and even treacheries and
unconcealed disloyalties were to be dealt with
from day to day. There were many good and
able men in that Assembly of 1860. How deep
a mark must have at once been made, therefore,
by the young member from Peekskill, by his ad-
mirable mastery of the complex public business
brought before him, may be gathered from the
fact that when, two years later, he was re-elected,
he was speedily made Chairman of the Committee
of Ways and Means. This is distinctively the
business men's committee of any American legis-
lative body. He also was elected to serve as
Speaker of the House, pro tern. That Mr.
Depew's usefulness during his first term was
appreciated outside of the Assembly chamber
appears from the fact of his re-election at a time
when his party was suffering many disasters.
His success as Chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, and as, by that fact, leader of the
House on the Republican side, was also pointed-
ly recognized, for, at the expiration of his term,
he was tendered a public banquet by leading
citizens of New York City. He was soon to be
given a yet more striking assurance of the esti-
mate-placed upon him, for the next State con-
vention made him the Republican candidate for
Secretary of State.
The bodily toughness which had marked Mr.
GHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW 167
Depew in his schoolboy and college days had
again attracted attention, during the exhausting
days and nights of prolonged Assembly sessions
and frequent committee meetings. It was now
to undergo a test of more than ordinary severity.
The political campaign of 1863 was in many re-
spects remarkable. It was not a Presidential
campaign, in which all men are accustomed to
take an interest. There was not any State ques-
tion of importance before the people. The popu-
larity or otherwise of individual candidates had
little to do with its course at the outset. It was
a campaign which turned upon national issues,
and which was to prepare beforehand for the
Presidential contest of the next year, 1864. Mr.
Depew was called upon to stand forth as an ad-
vocate vindicating the Lincoln administration, on
trial for failure. It was as if he were a champion
defending defeat, for the people were weary un-
to sickness of heart of the long war, the burden-
some taxes, and the exacting demands for more
men and more money. What was called the
"conscription," the Draft Act, was taking men
and making soldiers of them, whether they would
or not, and there had been not only grumblings,
but terribly bloody riots in opposition. There
had been great victories, truly, during the sum-
mer, but these were as yet credited to the ac-
count of the generals and the army. The Repub-
lican party was declared to have no part in
them.
During six successive weeks Mr. Depew ad-
dressed large gatherings of the people, at prom-
168 MEN OF BUSINESS*
inent points throughout the State. He spoke
every day, and often twice in a day, with mar-
vellous power and effect. The result was phe-
nomenal. He was elected by a majority of thirty
thousand, running far ahead of his ticket, and
the cloud of popular disaffection seemed to have
rolled away. The next year, in the campaign
for the re-election of President Lincoln he took
an active part, but there was no need for another
such exhibition of extraordinary powers of phy-
sical endurance.
With the death of the great President, in the
spring of 1865, and the accession of Andrew
Johnson, a change took place in the relations of
many men to national politics, and Mr. Depew
was among them. There was an appearance of
political chaos, of which no man could foresee
the outcome, the future condition, and he will-
ingly turned his attention once more to the ex-
clusive practice of his profession.
But for the rapidly changing relations between
President Johnson and the leaders of the Repub-
lican party, Mr. Depew would have been Col-
lector of the Port of New York. One Sunday
morning President Johnson sent for the two
Senators from New York, Ira Harris and Edwin
D. Morgan, and for Thurlow Weed and Henry
J. Raymond. It was at a turning-point in Amer-
ican political history. During the conference
the President said : " I have appointed Chauncey
M. Depew Collector of New York," and showed
them the commission, already signed, and the
message to the Senate which was to accompany
CHAUNGET MITCHELL DEPEW 169
it, lying on his table. He requested Senator
Morgan to call at the Treasury next morning,
Monday, and obtain the completed commission.
The conference ended, Monday morning came,
but the message of appointment was not sent to
the Senate. A friend of the President had
counselled him that, if Mr. Depew should be
made Collector, and if then the veto of the Civil
Rights Bill should be overridden in the Senate,
the administration would be left without follow-
ing or power in New York. The commission
was therefore held until Wednesday and was
then cancelled, because Senators Morgan and
Harris had firmly sustained the bill and carried
it over the Presidential veto. An appointment as
Minister to Japan was actually given Mr. Depew,
and there were strong reasons in favor of its
acceptance, but, after thoughtful consideration,
he returned the tempting commission. He al-
ready had received suggestions of important
affairs soon to be placed in his hands, but could
hardly have imagined the breadth or fruitfulness
of his new field of labor. Here ended, however,
for a time, his activities as a political party
leader. Not at any time, nevertheless, has he
ceased to exemplify his own strongly expressed
doctrine that public affairs have a first claim upon
the thoughtful care of every American citizen.
As an illustration, he even served one term as a
Tax Commissioner for the city of New York.
The new field now tendered was itself some-
thing that required a process of creation. It was
a growth as well as a construction, and a number
170 MEN OF BUSINESS
of capable men grew with it. Among them, from
the beginning, was Mr. Depew. That really
great business man, Cornelius Vanderbilt, was
endowed with rare capacity for estimating other
men. He selected with almost unerring saga-
city the associates who were to work with
him in carrying out his plans. He had retained
many good lawyers before the year 1866, and he
knew the value of every man among them. He
was now about to enter upon a long campaign,
of unsurpassed magnitude and consequences,
and he was carefully choosing his company.
The practice of law is itself a school for the con-
tinual study of varied affairs, and the successful
practitioner must make himself familiar with a
wide range of subjects, of every kind and grade.
He can hardly fail to have excellent capacity for
business management. Now, however, there
was need for a man of first-class ability as a
lawyer, and who had also proved himself capable
of growing, of expanding to meet the severest
requirements, and such men are not numerous.
Versatility, readiness, endurance were essential,
even more than deep learning. The Commodore's
previous searches for the man he wanted are
said to have been more than once disappointed.
In 1886, however, he decided that Mr. Depew
was the right man to appoint as attorney for the
New York & Harlem Railroad Company. He
was himself its president — that is, its dictator—
and it was to be the entering wedge for his vast
plan of railway combination.
Two years which followed might, perhaps, be
CHAUNGEY MITCHELL DEPEW 171
described as a kind of trial trip, for up to the
date of his appointment Mr. Depew's knowledge
of railways and their working had been mainly
that of a passenger. He was henceforth to be
in nearly every-day consultation with a man who
almost intolerantly expected from others some-
thing like his own intimate and thorough ac-
o
quaintance with mechanical details, construction,
trade, traffic, and transportation. Associated with
them were experts in every department, men of
lifelong training, but not one of them knew more
than was necessary to meet the requirements of
the Commodore. They would, however, have
been quick to discover any defect in the mental
equipment of the counsel selected by their ar-
bitrary chief. If they found any, both he and
they were also compelled to take note of the
plain, common-sense boundary line established
by Mr. Depew, beyond which merely technical
acquirements were not to be expected of him.
The railways already connecting New York
City with the great lakes and the commerce
of the West had been built piecemeal. Those
within the State and in relation with the Hudson
River and the Erie Canal numbered nearly a
dozen distinct corporations. Seven of these had
united to form the New York Central Railroad
Company, to the great advantage of all con-
cerned. The Commodore had planned a union
of this and the river lines, in a combination which
should then reach its long arm and grasping
hand half-way across the continent. His next
advance, in 1869, required a watchful counsellor,
172 MEN OF BUSINESS
for it made one concern of the river roads and
the central line, under the name of the New
York Central & Hudson River Railroad Com-
pany. The opposition, in every form and method,
was of the most strenuous description, and the
criticism passed upon Mr. Depew's management
of his own share in the campaign was his ap-
pointment as attorney for the new organization.
With the achievement of his primary success,
new questions arose and numberless difficulties
presented themselves. Every mile of track was ex-
amined and was declared defective. The bridges,
depots, engines, cars, repair-shops, the system of
employment, all were inspected, reformed, or
rather renewed and increased. Actual recon-
struction work did not come to the hands of Mr.
Depew, but there were endless questions of law
involved, and he was under the necessity of
being prepared upon every point to encounter
able, adverse counsel in any court, State or
national. That he might do so successfully de-
manded of him a kind of general knowledge of
railway business, which began with a rail-spike
or a passenger's grip-sack and ended before the
Supreme Court. It was to be acquired, from
hour to hour, amid all the confusion and press-
ure of a movement which shortly crossed the
western boundary of the State and set out for
Chicago.
The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the
Michigan Central, and other roads soon belonged
to the new system, under one central manage-
ment. With them came vast questions related
CHAUNGEY MITCHELL DEPEW 173
to railway and lake transportation, permanently
affecting the national welfare. Some of them
were also international, for the lines of transit
were, for long reaches, as if they were the
American frontier, while at some points the
Canadian border seemed to have been carried
away by rail.
It was at this point that one of Mr. Depew's
distinguishing characteristics, always in opera-
tion, began to be better discerned and appre-
ciated. The new combination necessarily con-
tained within itself many interests, individual or
corporate. It also came into contact, which
might easily be also collision, with a large num-
ber of local interests, municipal or otherwise,
chartered or unchartered. Other lines of east
and west railway were offering competition,
sometimes wholesome, sometimes profitless or
absolutely pernicious. With reference to all
these it was discovered that the right man held
in his own hands, by appointment, what may be
described as the diplomacy of justice, cordially
exercised, and with it the peculiar faculty for
adjustment, which aided so many strong and
positive-tempered men to pull well together. It
was distinctly an administrative faculty, and it
grew to ripeness in a school of its perpetual ex-
ercise, as Mr. Depew became counsel of road
after road, and met, upon occasion after occasion,
the captious representatives of many and divers
interests.
With many other sagacious leaders of his
party, Mr. Depew had disapproved of several
174 HEN OF BUSINESS
features of its management in 1865-6. How
sharp had been his disapproval was not generally
understood. Few men will now, however, deny
the justice of the criticisms to which the party
subjected itself in the heat of the Johnson im-
peachment controversy. Nevertheless, there
could be no better proof of the completeness with
which the absorbing duties of a railway business
man had withdrawn him from a study of party
affairs than he gave in 1872. He permitted him-
self to be apparently drawn into the curiously
futile " Independent party ' Democratic nom-
ination of Horace Greeley for President, and
allowed his name to be used as a candidate for
Licutenant-Governor of New York. It was the
most unbusinesslike political enterprise in the
history of American politics. It had neither
sufficient capital, proper organization, cashier,
chief clerk, nor managing partner. It was well
enough advertised, but it failed, as a matter of
course, and all its membership returned to any
other occupation they might have. It is strictly
correct to say that in his relations to this brief
episode Mr. Depew did not really re-enter poli-
tics. It is needless to speculate upon any results
of an impossible success, placing in office men
who had no permanent party behind them and
would have been compelled to make one. There
were other and seemingly better uses which
came to him as if he were a magnet that attracted
o
them. In 1874 he was made a regent of the
University of New York, and his deep interest
in educational development was manifested by
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW 175
the fidelity and ability with which he attended
to the duties of that position. He was also, for
a time, a member of the commission in charge of
the new State capitol building at Albany, but
personal supervision, so much needed, was
simply impossible to a man already so fully
occupied.
Railways came into the Vanderbilt combina-
tion fast enough, as the positive benefits of its
system extended through the West and North-
Avest, while it joined, almost to unifications, with
lines that reached onward to the Pacific.
With all, and from the beginning, came yet
another subject which cannot henceforth be
ignored by any American man of business. It
may be imperfectly described as the labor and
employment question. Great railways are also
great manufacturers. Besides their train-hands
and freight-passers ot all sorts, they employ me-
chanics of many grades and of widely varied
specialties. Success in management, therefore,
requires a thorough understanding of the inter-
ests and even the opinions of the workmen. This
also involves a study and comprehension of deep-
lying social problems, some of which have been
imported with the constantly increasing Euro-
pean labor element, with its rooted prejudices
and its dense ignorance. Here, therefore, was
and is a peculiar field of administration for a
genius of justice in adjustment. It was after
a Avhile to be given to Mr. Depew in a much
greater fulness.
During all these years he was steadily increas-
176 MEN OF BUSINESS
ing, in case alter case, his already high reputa-
tion as a lawyer, but his triumphs before the
courts could have been won, perhaps, by learned
jurists altogether incompetent to deal with a
sliding scale of multiform rights, demands, or
even possible delusions. The politics of the pres-
ent and, much more, the future, begin to assume
new shapes at about this line. The entire labor
element of the United States is cut up into par-
ties, organized and unorganized, of which all
railway managers are necessarily members, how-
ever they may seem to be in opposition. The
brake belongs to the train which it pulls up at the
station.
Another side of Mr. Depew's versatile capacity
had not by any means been permitted to rust.
From his boyhood he had exhibited social facul-
ties oi a high order. It was not merely that he
could make an unsurpassed address or after-din-
ner speech. It was that at all times and places
he had perfected a natural power for so meeting
men and women that they went away from him
with a pleased, if not a grateful, sensation of hav-
ing been made to feel so entirely at ease concern-
ing themselves. It is a process which the most
skilful flatterer cannot perform, for the secret
of it is its genuine good-will, its kindly regard
for the feelings of others. Customers will flock
to the store of any man who is known to distin-
guish himself in this manner, and it is an exceed-
ingly valuable addition to the equipment of any
man in any business.
The nature of Mr. Depew's criticisms upon the
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW 177
management of his own party, no less than his
personal popularity, pointed him out as the
most available candidate for one of the United
States Senatorships made vacant, in 1881, by the
resignations of Senators Roscoe Conkling and
Thomas C. Platt. During the long, hotly con-
tested struggle which followed in the State Leg-
islature, in joint sessions of Senate and House,
Mr. Depew steadily gained votes until, on one
ballot, he required but ten more for an election.
Such might indeed have been the result but for
a blow which fell upon the party and the nation
like a stroke of lightning. More and more bitter
had grown the animosities of the contending fac-
tions on the Republican side of the contest at
Albany, while the Democrats, a numerical mi-
nority, stood firmly by their own candidates, Fran-
cis C. Kiernan and John C. -Jacobs. Into the
strife and turmoil came flashing, on the 2nd of
July, a telegraphic announcement of the assas-
sination of President Garfield by Guiteau. In an
instant all was quiet. It was a time for all men
to turn toward peace and unity. Mr. Depew
withdrew his name ; a party caucus was held ;
Hon. Warner Miller was nominated and a few
days later he was elected. So terminated a strug-
gle which had lasted during eighty-two days.
It was notable, during this memorable episode,
how often an attempt was made to employ
against Mr. Depew the fact that he was a rail-
way man, in alliance with the great capitalists of
the country, and how uniformly the reply was
made in substance : " He is so, and he is the
12
178 MEN OF BUSINESS
one man in the United States against whom the
workingmen will not raise that as an objection.
They would regard him as their own represen-
tative in the Senate."
Long before the death of Commodore Vancler-
bilt, which took place in 1877, his son, William
H. Vanderbilt, nominally as vice-president, had
been the dictator of the New York Central &
Hudson River Railroad Company with its imme-
diate connections. On the death of his father
he became president, Mr. Depew retaining his
old position, holding also a directorship in that
and several other railway corporations. In
1882 Mr. William H. Vanderbilt resigned and
Mr. James H. Rutter became president, Mr.
Depew taking the post of second vice-president.
In 1885 Mr. Rutter died, and Mr. Depew was at
once chosen in his place.
Perhaps it was worthy of notice that so im-
portant a fact was accepted by the Stock Ex-
change and the business world as a foregone
conclusion. There was hardly a ripple, so well
was it understood that there would be no jar in
the financial running of the greatest railway in-
terest on earth. It was safe in the hands of
trained experts, with a head whose qualifications
were not only known to them, leading to his
selection by them, but also well known and ap-
proved by other men.
About a year earlier, in 1884, a Republican
Legislature had been called upon to choose a
United States Senator. Prior to holding a for-
mal caucus, Mr. Depew's acknowledged relations
CHAUNCET MITCHELL DEPEW 179
to the party in his own State were indicated by
a sufficiently definite offer of the nomination,
equivalent to an election. In view of his other
duties and obligations he refused to be a candi-
date and Hon. William M. Evarts was chosen
instead.
Year after year has gone by since then, with a
manifest solidification, so to speak, of the position
so steadily grown into through the exercise of
business qualities which have hardly been sub-
jected to criticism. The vast machinery of the
railway management works with wonderful ease,
in admirable adjustment. The exceedingly great
ability of the membership of its central man-
agement may well be accepted as offering the
strongest possible tribute to the special capacity
of the man they have placed at the head of
their corporation. The outside community may
accept their reiterated verdict.
Nevertheless, other declarations of confidence
have been made. In the Republican National
Convention, held at Chicago in 1888, Mr. Depew
received the solid vote of New York, seventy
votes, as the party nominee for President, his
total vote being ninety-nine. Very rarely has
the Empire State delegation been a unit in favor
of a Presidential candidate. During the prepa-
rations for the Republican National Convention
of 1892, at Chicago, there seemed to be but one
important element of uncertainty as to the result
of its deliberations. Almost at the last moment
this was increased by the unexpected resignation,
by the veteran statesman, the old-time leader of
180 MEN OF BUSINESS
•
the party, James G. Elaine, of the portfolio of Sec-
retary of State in President Harrison's Cabinet.
Mr. Depew had intended taking an active part
in the coming canvass and was acting as leader
of the New York delegation at Chicago. He
had entertained no thought of public office up
to the moment when he was offered by the Presi-
dent the high honor of the first place in the Cab-
inet vacated by Mr. Elaine. It could not be put
away hastily, nor accepted at all without possi-
ble injustice to existing claims upon his services.
A few days, not more than a week, however,
sufficed for consideration, and the brilliant offer
Avas declined. The general public and the press
were not taken into consultation, but the fact of
the offer and refusal requires record. It is one
more proof of the growth and strength of char-
acter-forces greater than any mere personal am-
bition. In the convention, by ballot and other-
wise, and in many responsive utterances all over
the country, Mr. Depew wras indicated as being
himself an exceedingly probable candidate for
the Presidential nomination.
During the Presidential canvass he heartily sus-
tained the renomination of President Harrison.
There is little to be gained by attempts to
analyze more closely a business success and
a personal popularity obtained so very direct-
ly through means so commonly understood.
Speeches and addresses almost numberless
have given Mr. Depew his foremost place as
an orator. Endless papers and printed letters
of all sorts have established another kind of rep-
(.'HATNCEY MITCHELL DEPKW 181
utation. His powerful influence has been given
with all vigor against every form of vice, disor-
der, violence, or injustice. He has always been
a declared enemy of intemperance and an oppo-
nent of irreligion. One more point of character
has gradually made itself known somewhat to
the surprise of many men. It is that in all his
toils and achievements he has regarded money-
making as a secondary consideration. Wealth,
but not excessive, has come to him along with
his successes, and much of it has been expended
liberally. He has, however, performed all duties
simply as duties, and has transacted multiform
business for its own sake. Not many men have
done more or harder work of kinds to which
no idea of compensation attached. Even his
performance of public duties of a social nature
has been often severely exacting. He was pres-
ident of the Union League Club during seven
years, and was then elected an honorary member.
He was president of the Yale Alumni Association
two years. He is also president of the " Sons of
the American Revolution," and has given the aid
of his presence and his welcome eloquence at an
endless list of banquets, anniversaries, and other
gatherings of his fellow-citizens. There has, in-
deed, been a very complete, well-rounded growth
and development of original capacities, no mat-
ter what these were, that could enable any man
to perform so well so wide a variety of impor-
tant functions. It would not be easy to point
out another business success more universally
acknowledged.
IX.
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART.
THE great majority of men are born in a field
of action which they accept as sufficient for
them. The world of human life, however, has
been advanced from its old places to its new by
the men who went out and found or made some-
thing more than, and differing much from, the
narrowness in which they began. Of both classes
it is true, nevertheless, that the success attained
by each individual has been very nearly meas-
ured by his or her perception of the nature and
requirements of the situation. It is a truth which
may be expressed in shop terms by saying that
the lumber-rooms of innumerable failures are
choked with unsalable stock, of stuff unsuited to
the possible market or for which all demand had
died away. On the other hand, the list of success-
es, in almost every department of human effort,
presents, in endless repetition, illustrations of the
genius of perception. It is a genius which never
takes coals to Newcastle, nor struggles vainly
with the obvious drift of the current it is in. It
may not be the genius of the explorer or of the
inventor, but it is the absolute need of the suc-
cessful merchant or shop-keeper. No better ex-
ample could be asked for than is supplied by the
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART 183
business life and success of Alexander Turney
Stewart. He was born in Belfast, Ireland, Oc-
tober 12, 1803. As his name indicates, he was of
Scotch descent, and his family claimed the right
to the heraldic "arms" of the Stewarts. His
father, a farmer in moderate circumstances, pro-
posed to give his son a liberal education, with a
view to the ministry of the Church of England.
The earlier days of the future merchant were
therefore passed among books and tutors, and
here educational seed was sown which bore much
fruit in later years.
While he was away from home, at school, his
father died, leaving him under the care of a
guardian, with means for the completion of the
proposed course of study. One thing, however,
speedily became manifest to the boy himself.
Whatever was the parental ambition, the son
had not been destined by nature for the minis-
try. While his habits and tendencies were mor-
ally correct, he was eager for the great world of
enterprise and had no inclination for the quiet
life of a clergyman. So he told his guardian, and
that gentleman saw good reasons for agreeing
with him.
No idea was entertained of entering the
choked-up channels of the Old World, when the
new was holding out its continual invitation,
but it was upon an exploring expedition, alto-
gether, that young Stewart sailed for America
in 1823. He was only twenty years of age; he
had as yet no business training that anybody
knew of ; but only he himself knew how many
184 MEN OF BUSINESS
things related to trade and traffic he had studied,
better than his books, while making up his mind
to be a merchant.
On reaching New York, with no money to
waste, he found a city which required a pretty
thorough investigation before determining what
to do with it. It was reached in the summer,
and the arrival of autumn found the commercial
student acting as a temporary teacher in a re-
spectable private school on Roosevelt Street,
near Pearl. It was of some importance that this
was then a fashionable part of the city and that
hours out of school could be spent in scouting
expeditions through all the other streets, to dis-
cover the localities of business interests and how
and where they were moving.
It was not difficult to perceive that the exten-
sion of retail trade, much more than of wholesale
transactions, was already governed topographi-
cally. It would be more so in the future, for the
long, irregular area of Manhattan Island was
marked, centrally, by a street which was almost
like a backbone, from which the others radiated.
Shorter streets, like Pearl and its neighbors,
away down the island, must be deserted by fash-
ionable shoppers in due season, and the trade of
the next generation would be done largely along
Broadway. This, even at its lower end and
almost entirely above the City Hall, was as yet
a street of residences.
Mr. Stewart's one year as a teacher came to
an end and he returned to spend his vacation in
Ireland. In October following he became of age
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART 185
and his guardian was ready to transfer to him all
that remained of the inheritance. The amount
was not large, but time was required for settle-
ments and cash returns, during which certain
mercantile selections could be circumspectly
made. Much care had been given, therefore, to
the character of the stock of Belfast laces and
linens shipped to New York by Mr. Stewart in
the summer of the year 1825. He was able to
make a beginning by offering goods of undenia-
ble quality and at unquestionably fair prices, in
marked contrast with what he had perceived as
the most hurtful vice of the retail trade. It was
an imported evil, but its existence rendered
" shopping " a tedious process of beating down
prices, the seller asking, habitually, more than
was expected of a bargaining customer, and
deeming it a shop-keeper's triumph to work off
inferior or out-of-date goods. The contrast so
declared and maintained was an important ad-
vertisement, although a host of lady shoppers
rebelled vivaciously against the iron rule which
prevented them from having any reduction given
them at Stewart's.
The keen business perception which led him
to prepare in advance for the character he in-
tended to establish was coupled with another
which drew upon him caustic criticisms and also
the attention of all the people who believed his
store to be too far up-town, if not on the wrong
street. It was only a narrow-faced affair, at No.
283 Broadway, fronting City Hall Park, and all
the dry-goods concerns of any importance were
186 MEN OF BUSINESS
far below. Some of the largest were on Cedar
Street. The rent of the store was only $250 per
annum, and in obtaining a lease Mr. Stewart
gave as his reference a responsible citizen named
Jacob Clinch, whose friendship he had acquired
while teaching school. Not a great while after-
ward he married Cornelia, the daughter of his
first endorser.
The first stock was valued at but little over
three thousand dollars, but a very attractive
show was made with it, and other lines of goods
were added rapidly. A hit had been made, and
it was a surprise to all observers that the young
Scotch-Irish adventurer's business grew as it did.
Of course, importers and wholesalers were will-
ing to place fabrics in a store where they sold so
well. On the other hand, buyers accustomed to
chaffer put away their irritation on account of
Stewart's rules when they discovered how abso-
lutely safe it was to deal with him. He would
not offer anything at a shade above its intrinsic
value upon the existing market. At the same
time, if the market itself should go down, the price
would follow it, and the reverse process might
promptly be taken advantage of.
Only one year passed before the small place at
No. 283 became too small. It had been only
a large front room with a smaller in the rear,
where the proprietor slept at night. In 1826 a
larger store was secured at No. 262 Broadway,
and this was still " away up-town."
From this time onward the career of Mr.
Stewart was simply that of an admirable sales-
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART 187
man, instructing and employing other salesmen
as he could obtain the right sort of young men.
His unsurpassed faculty in this direction paral-
leled his apparently prophetic forecast of the
probable demands of purchasers. As time went
on he added a rare capacity for creating or di-
recting the very demand which he proposed to
supply, and he did not always permit other deal-
ers to avail themselves of a knowledge of his
plans or expectations.
The retail business widened until wholesaling
came as a matter of course, but as enhancing
rather than diminishing the importance of the
retail department. During a prolonged period,
in which the tendency of all business was to form
specialties, Mr. Stewart's house was pointed at
as the marked exception, for it offered, wholesale
and retail, whatever could be worn upon the per-
son or used in dress, excepting the ready-made
clothing of men. An incongruous article or per-
son would at once have disappeared after his
keen eye had fallen upon it. Nothing could
escape his searching inspection, as he quietly
strolled hither and thither, now and then paus-
ing to give a low-voiced bit of direction, eco-
nomical in words and sure of implicit obedience.
The past, present, and future of his stock in trade
walked around with him, and his knowledge of
details was something extraordinary.
At an early day — for he had begun by import-
ing his own goods — Mr. Stewart became a heavy
importer, having direct relations with important
concerns in various parts of the world ; but this
188 MEN OF BUSINESS
did not satisfy him, for even the manufacturers
who supplied the importers did not always pro-
vide the precise articles his own judgment indi-
cated. He became, therefore, a manufacturer on
his own account, and could place upon the New
York market unique lines of fabrics which could
not be duplicated by any other house.
There was something like an aim at monopoly
in this, as well as in other features of Mr. Stew-
art's policy, but the real animus was rivalry rather
than monopoly. This was repeatedly manifested
in his sharp collisions with competing houses, for
some of these battles were exceedingly costly
and without much prospect of other reward
than barren victory. This, too, was not always
won, for there were many daring and capable
merchants among his competitors.
Mr. Stewart's accrued profits from year to year
now amounted to large sums, and once more he
proved the accuracy of his judgment concerning
the development of the city. No other man ever
bought so many old churches, as their congre-
gations parted with them to build new ones " up-
town." No other man in America ever owned
so many hotels at the same time, and his were
not only in New York City, but at Saratoga and
elsewhere. His general purchases of real estate
were large, but the most important of all were
made with direct reference to the future of his
own business. The first notable result came in
1848. Piece after piece, year after year, Mr.
Stewart quietly bought the entire front on Broad-
way, between Chambers and Reade Streets. Ad-
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART
189
joining property on those streets was also ab-
sorbed until the holders took warning and put
up their prices to exorbitant figures. He had
enough, however, and on the land acquired he
built the huge marble structure now standing
there. At first it was sufficient for his entire
The Wholesale Store of A. T. Stewart & Co., built m 1848.
business, but afterward was surrendered to the
wholesale department. It is now an " office
building."
Hardly had the new dry -goods palace been oc-
cupied, in 1848, before Mr. Stewart himself de-
clared that it was a mistake. It would answer
for a while, but it was too far down town. It
did indeed " answer," and year after vear it was
j ^
190 MEN OF BUSINESS
a terminus or objective point to be reached by
fashionable and unfashionable shoppers, but the
pilgrimages required to reach it grew longer and
longer, as its builder had foreseen, and its useful-
ness as a " five-story salesroom ' passed away.
It was while this structure was in progress, in
1846, that the famine in Ireland appealed to the
charities of Americans. Mr. Stewart sent over
a ship-load of provisions, instructing his agents
to return with a ship-load of immigrants. They
were to select respectable persons, able to read
and write, and to give them free transportation
to America. The somewhat hard and calculating
spirit of the successful merchant showed itself,
even in the charity. He would have preferred
that the entire European immigration to Amer-
ica should be selected upon principles parallel
with those which governed his own offerings of
fabrics.
In a similarly kindly spirit, and without re-
serve, he sent a ship-load of flour to France, after
the disastrous war with Germany.
Another liberality brought to public notice Mr.
Stewart's strong personal objection to having
his portrait taken. Prince Bismarck sent his
own photograph to the American merchant-
prince, requesting an exchange, but received in-
stead a check for fifty thousand francs for the
sufferers by recent floods in Silesia, and the in-
formation that Mr. Stewart had invariably re-
fused to sit before a camera.
Among financiers, bankers, and merchants of
every name his credit stood deservedly high
ALEXANDER TURNET STEWART 191
from the very beginning. One peculiar element
of this strength was the fact that his losses, how-
ever severe, never seemed in any manner to dis-
turb the steady, almost icy serenity of his busi-
ness manner. Such losses did come at times,
for his long experience of financial vicissitudes
included the panics of 1837, 1857, and the lesser
disturbances intervening. If others as sweeping
were yet to come, men reasoned that his affairs
would be found in a state of prophetic prepara-
tion.
Related to Mr. Stewart's real estate investments
was the warm interest which he took in all mat-
ters relating to the permanent improvement of
the city: the widening of old streets and the
opening of new thoroughfares and the like. At
the same time he refused to take any active part
in municipal politics, other than as the quiet but
unflinching enemy of every form of corrupt ad-
ministration. During the domination of what
was called the "Tweed Ring," for instance, he
was approached with an assurance that an or-
dinance widening Laurens Street to its present
condition as South Fifth Avenue could be ob-
tained from the Board of Aldermen for fifty
thousand dollars. It would have greatly bene-
fited a mass of property owned by him, but
he replied : " No ; but I will give fifty thousand
this minute to know the names of the alder-
men who expect to get the money." The ring
went down in due season, and he was one of
the public-spirited citizens who helped pull it
dowTn.
192 MEN OF BUSINESS
There were good years and bad years, and the
retail dry-goods trade, as he had foreseen, was
drifting northward. He was therefore prepar-
ing to go with it and was buying a new place for
business. It was the entire block bounded by
Broadway and Fourth Avenue, between Ninth
and Tenth Streets. He succeeded in absorbing,
at liberal prices, all other titles, and then he built
upon it what was then said to be the largest dry-
goods establishment in the world. It was for his
retail trade only, the wholesale department re-
maining at Broadway and Chambers Street. It
cost, when completed, in 1862, nearly two and
three-quarters millions of dollars and was admir-
ably complete in all its architectural plan and ar-
rangements. Nearly two thousand persons found
employment in it, and it was at once a daily hive
of eager purchasers, but it was hardly opened for
business before its builder once more declared that
he had made a mistake. The city had moved
northward while he was buying the lots and
putting up the walls. He should have stepped
on in advance, he said, and taken his new position
further up the island. That was a glance into
the future, however, since all buyers of the pres-
ent took another view of the matter, andiiis trade
increased enormously. The year before the new
structure was completed, the war panic came.
Some of his strongest rivals succumbed to it, at
least temporarily, but A. T. Stewart & Co. held
their own firmly, in spite of enormous losses at
the North and West. The entire mass of their
extended Southern business, with its credits, dis-
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART 193
appeared as if in a fire, but somehow or other
there had been a previous contraction and prepa-
ration which avoided destructive consequences
to the main business. This, too, was greatly ex-
panded during the " flush times " caused by war
expenditures and the flood of paper money, but
Mr. Stewart was one of the first to see and to
declare in advance the inevitable perils which
would attend the restoration of business and
finance to a healthful peace basis. So distinctly
had he set forth his views and so deep an impres-
sion had they made upon the minds of a number
of capable men, that when General Grant became
President, in 1869, he at once offered Mr. Stew-
art the position of Secretary of the Treasury.
The offer was eagerly accepted, in a patriotic
readiness to do whatever could be done toward
avoiding or diminishing the evils so plainly fore-
seen. But for one barrier the Senate would
have consented at once, for the whole country
approved the nomination. The law, however,
excluded from holding the Treasury portfolio
any citizen interested in importations, and he
was ineligible. The President asked the Senate
to amend or repeal the law, and Mr. Stewart
offered to not only transfer his business to trus-
tees, but to devote his entire proceeds from it to
public charities during his term of office. The
Senate could not consistently change the law for
a personal reason, and counsellors declared the
other proposal inadequate. It may be that
neither Mr. Stewart nor any other man could
have accomplished what he hoped and desired,
13
194
MEN OF BUSINESS
but, four years later, after a continual tightening
of finances and an endurance of " hard times," the
predicted crash came, and the panic of Black
Friday brought the business world down ruin-
ously to its new level. The house of A. T.
Stewart & Co. was not in the list of those that
stopped payment.
In 1867 Mr. Stewart's peculiar personal posi-
tion had been recognized by his appointment
as chairman of the United States Government
Commissioners to the Paris Exposition. It was
generally accepted as an eminently fit appoint-
ment, even by the large class of men with whom
he had failed to find what is called popularity.
That was a thing which he had no perceptible
desire for. He made no effort whatever to ob-
tain it, not even
when, in 1871, he
sent fifty thousand
dollars to the suf-
ferers by the Chi-
cago fire. He was
roundly abused for
not sending more,
and w a s under-
stood to have quiet-
ly replied that no
more was really
needed, for the fire
was a good thing and the city would be rebuilt
better than ever.
Mr. Stewart's own residence, at Fifth Avenue
and Thirty-fourth Street, was the most costly
Mr. Stewart's House, Thirty-fourth Street and
Fifth Avenue, New York.
ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART 195
dwelling in the country at the date of its com-
pletion. It was indeed a palace, and its interior
was as one gallery of works of art, in painting,
sculpture, and artistic upholstery. Hardly less
expensive, however, was the Hotel for Women
which he built at Fourth Avenue and Thirty-
second Street, but both were in a manner fail-
ures. The Stewart palace ceased to be a dwell-
ing, and the other great building not answering
an existing demand, became a hotel for both sexes.
Business success increased in all directions
up to the very end, and minor errors or losses
were of no consequence. A very remarkable re-
sult came out of one of the many plans for im-
provement which came to the mind of the great
employer. Out upon Long Island, at no great
distance, lay the wide reach of semi-desert known
as Hempstead Plains. Useless for farming pur-
poses, it was "commons," and the town of Hemp-
stead, owning it from old colonial days, could
give a valid title. After protracted negotiations
this was obtained, to the great advantage of the
sleepy old village, and Mr. Stewart went ahead
with his plan. He proposed to change the
gravelly waste into the site of a town of resi-
dences for his own and other New York workers
and called it Garden City. Large amounts of
money were expended. School and other build-
ings were erected. It was soon seen that some
other kind of success might come, but not the
accomplishment of the original purpose, for this
costly gathering of villas was no place for wage-
earners.
196
MEN OF BUSINESS
Another change came first. On the loth of
April, 1876, Mr. Stewart closed his long and
busy career and his vast affairs passed into the
hands of his partners and associates with hardly
a disturbance in the steady movement of the
business machine which owed its existence to his
brain and hand. His wife proceeded with the
plan for Garden City. In the centre of it she
erected the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral
Church of the Incarnation. It is archi-
tecturally one of the most perfect speci-
mens of the Gothic style in this
country, and its tall spire is
visible for many miles
across the plain. It is
the monument of
Mr. Stewart, for his
tomb is under it.
It will endure, no
man may say how
long, but so will the
deep mark left
upon the methods
and principles of
the entire retail trade of this country by the
man who absolutely compelled buyers to trust
in the honesty of his goods and the justice of
his prices. So they grumbled while they pur-
chased, but went home entirely satisfied with
anything of which they could say, " I bought it
at Stewart's."
Memorial Church at Garden City.
Philip Danforth Armour.
X.
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR.
IT has been well said that the man who makes
two blades of grass grow where only one grew
before is a public benefactor. A very direct in-
terpretation of this doctrine makes it apply to
the man whose energy and enterprise, guided by
special faculties of his own, open new business
channels or increase the capacity of any already
existing. By the business success of such men
the business machinery is invented and builded
which thenceforth may be used by others. It is
through them that our resources of production
are made available. In literal truth, the blades
of grass are multiplied as uses are provided for
them, while all the grass that in the old time
withered where it grew changes its nature and
becomes a factor in the general prosperity.
There is a class of men found nowhere else
more frequently than in our own country, who
are endowed with something strongly resem-
bling a creative power, for in their hands forces
or materials unseen by others, or unmanageable
if seen, take on shape, system, and precision of
movement. What they really do is to construct
the business organism through which the primal
laws of supply and demand can operate. Every
198 MEN OF BUSINESS
department of our national development furnishes
abundant examples. Probably in no other, how-
ever, have the changes accomplished been of
greater importance to the general welfare of this
and other countries than in the organization of
capital, labor, and business functions which takes
care of our transportable food products.
The benefit accrues alike to the producer and
the consumer, for these are brought into relations
with each other which could not otherwise ex-
ist, and the man who sows wheat in Nebraska
becomes a helpful next - door neighbor to the
man who eats bread on the Rhine. The social
and political consequences are visible, at least in
outline, to the most casual observation. Every
toiler in the East has a cash interest in the fact
that the new States of the West have been settled
and that their countless farms have become prof-
itable, because of the varied business successes
which have brought their crops of all kinds
nearer to the rest of the world, at prices which
under the old order of things would have cut off
production.
Prominent among the Americans whose use-
fulness is in this way indicated, one man may be
instanced whose career would read like a romance
if it were not so deeply marked with common
sense and so utterly devoid of anything erratic.
Philip Danforth Armour was born at Stock-
bridge, Madison County, N. Y., May 16, 1832.
The family was of Scotch descent, but had been
among the earlier settlers of New England.
This branch of it removed from Connecticut to
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 199
New York in 1825, when the region they opened
their farm in was comparatively new. Most ot
it was still covered by forests in which no axe
had ever been plied. A Madison County pioneer
farmer, like Philip's father, might be a very in-
dependent and even prosperous man for the
times, but such a household as that of the Ar-
mours required to be managed with the strictest
economy, allied to the most untiring industry.
How this was well assured may in part be under-
stood from the fact that Philip's mother, whose
maiden name was Brooks, had been a school-
teacher, and deemed it her duty to bring with
her for home application the rigid discipline of
the school-room. No doubt she found this all the
more needful as her class of young Armours in-
creased until it contained six uncommonly sturdy
boys and three girls. Subsequent events make
it interesting now to consider the numberless
home industries in the performance of which
those vigorous young people were trained to
work together and held to a strict account at the
end of their work. It is evident that the secret
of organized co-operation and business partner-
ship was taught systematically through the va-
ried " chores " of the Madison County farm.
To such a family a fair degree of prosperity
was sure to come, but its younger membership
grew up with a clear understanding that they
could not always remain at home. As for Philip,
in addition to the invaluable training given him
by his father and mother, he was enabled to
obtain all that could be given him by the district
200 MEN OF BUSINESS
school of the neighborhood, and then he was sent
to the academy at Cazenovia for another step in
school-book education. He had already distin-
guished himself among his playfellows as a
boy of more than ordinary bodily strength and
courage. His brothers were very much like him
in this respect, and their overflowing animal
spirits had not always been in perfect control
when beyond the wholesome repression of their
home government. One of them, next older
than Philip, had managed to get himself into
a boyish scrape at the academy, much to his
father's mortification, and Philip felt under a
kind of bond for good behavior. It was true
that he could not help being a leader among the
boys, but he would have done very well if it had
not been for one of the girls. It was but a boy's
romance, an innocent affair, that would have
passed and left little impression upon a weaker
nature. To Philip, however, it was something
serious, and the otherwise probable course of
his life was changed. He was only seventeen,
tall and muscular for his age, and his mind also
was ready for the powerful stimulus in this way
given. He went home to tell his father that he
would go to school no more, and then he told his
mother that he was going to California to mine
for gold, but neither of them then knew precisely
why he refused to return to Cazenovia. As for
that matter, his brief courtship had indeed been
a violation of the social laws of the seminary,
but not otherwise to the disadvantage of the
two very young people engaged in it.
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 201
It was the year 1850, and the California fever
was at its heat. Wonderful tales were told of
the fortunes won and the prospects for more
among the placers of the Pacific Coast. Men
with money to pay their passage could get there
by sailing all the way around Cape Horn, or by
the Isthmus route, but Philip's father, even after
consenting to the proposed adventure, advocated
as it was by Mrs. Armour, had no considerable
sum to spare. Perhaps it was as well, for Philip
found three or four other stout farmer boys who
were ready to walk across the continent with
him. That is, they were carried part of the way
by rail and otherwise and walked the rest of it,
the entire journey taking a round six months.
There were privations and hardships to be en-
dured on such a march, and there were endless
adventures, for the path followed led among
Indian tribes and across deserts and through the
difficult passes of the mountain ranges. Philip
had little besides his own tough muscles for capi-
tal, when, at last, he saw his first placer and
found a spot where he could dig and wash for
dust and nuggets.
He worked with pretty good success and he
wasted nothing, for he kept the good habits he
had been trained in. He was also studying the
business opportunities of the country, however,
and it was not long before he persuaded his
friends to join him in purchasing and develop-
ing a " ditch ' -a rude aqueduct to convey water
for diggers and washers. It proved so profit-
able that his companions, otherwise wearied of
202 MEN OF BUSINESS
California life, were satisfied at the end of a year
to sell out to him and return home. Philip re-
mained to manage that and other water-powers
among the placers, until, in 1856, he too was sat-
isfied. When he left home he had dreamed of
mining gold enough to come back and buy a
farm in Madison County some day. There had
been another part of his dream, for he had ex-
pected that letters would follow him to the
mines. Some did at times, but not the ones he
had hoped for, although he wrote again and
again. He seemed to be unanswered, forgotten,
and he too ceased to write. It was not until
long afterward that he learned that only the de-
fective mail transportation of the mining region
had been to blame, so that he too had seemed
neglectful. Letters on both sides had failed to
reach their intended readers, and so the school-
day loves died out. Still, there was a reason
why, when the tall and brawny miner of twenty-
three went home to tell his father and mother
and the rest that he was now able to buy several
farms if he wished them, that he did not buy
any, but turned away. He himself afterward
declared that everything seemed so much smaller
than when he was a boy that it pained him. His
brothers and sisters had indeed grown up, and
some of them had left home. The house, the
trees, the hills were dwarfish, and Oneida Creek
was a mere rill. He had been living among
mountains and had seen the giant trees of Cali-
fornia. At all events, he spent only a few weeks
at home and then again went westward. The
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 203
East, with its settled ways and its seemingly oc-
cupied ground, was no place for him. He
travelled on and on until he reached Milwaukee,
Wis., then in its very first stages of growth. A
friend, Mr. Frederick S. Miles, was already car-
rying on a wholesale grocery and commission
business here, and the miner's capital was wel-
come. A partnership was formed which con-
tinued, with marked success, until 1863, but
Mr. Armour's business ambition was setting
steadily in one direction. He had been studying
the existing methods for moving the vast and
increasing food products of the West, and be-
lieved he had found a field that suited him. He
had capital, and he had also a well-earned repu-
tation as one of the strongest and most trusted
business men of the Northwest. It was a very
deep mark to have made in less than six years,
but other men seemed to have no question what-
ever of his financial capacity and sure success.
The old firm dissolved and Mr. Armour
bought what was then the largest elevator in
Milwaukee. This placed him in relations with
the grain movement, but he at the same time
went further. Mr. John Plankinton had been
established in Milwaukee during a number of
years, and, in partnership with Frederick Lay-
ton, had built up its most prosperous pork-pack-
ing concern. In 1862 Mr. Armour's brother,
Herman O. Armour, had established himself at
Chicago in the grain commission business,
which he now turned over to the care of another
brother, Joseph F. Armour, that he might go to
204 MEN OF BUSINESS
New York as a member of the new firm of
Armour, Plankinton & Co. The Chicago house
retained its former name of H. O. Armour & Co.,
but did not undertake "packing' until 1868.
Philip D. Armour remained in Milwaukee for a
while, but he had thus already constructed an
admirable piece of business machinery to which
all other improvements could be readily added.
It was of peculiar importance that the Milwaukee
and Chicago houses should be able to ship to
a house of their own, that is, to themselves, in
New York. Many risks were thereby avoided
and a certainty was assured of obtaining all that
the ever-changing markets could offer them.
Other things were changing, at startling rates
of progression. The West was growing fast and
its areas of production were astonishing all
observers by the results offered for handling and
shipment. Railway lines were reaching out in
new directions or were increasing their capaci-
ties while lowering their rates of transportation.
The very shipping on the lakes was changing its
character and multiplying its tonnage. It was
the time of times for the organization of the busi-
ness enterprise of which Mr. Armour was the
acknowledged head, however capable and trust-
worthy his associates undoubtedly were.
There had been other changes which rendered
possible the creation of such a food-gathering
and delivering system as that which Mr. Armour
and his partners had undertaken to form and
perfect. It was in the third year of the civil
war, and they had full faith as to what the end of
PHILIP UANFORTU ARMOUR 205
that must be, especially after the events of the
" battle summer ' marked by Vicksburg and
Gettysburg. The State banking systems had
passed away and had been replaced by the na-
tional banks, while the bank-notes issued by
these, with the legal-tender "greenbacks" of the
United States, provided a uniform currency,
everywhere available, instead of the miscella-
neous and often questionable paper which had
embarrassed produce purchasers in former times.
The system of exchanges between the East and
West had become greatly simplified. A great
stimulus had been given to all farming operations
by war prices and the war demand. Nothing
more was required than a steady day and night
watchfulness upon the New York and Western
markets, kept up by competent men in contin-
uous telegraphic communication with each other
and thoroughly acquainted with the legitimate
demand and supply. They were therefore able
to form generally correct opinions also concern-
ing the course and result of speculative move-
ments by whomsoever engineered.
As to these, the Armours doubtless bought and
sold with reference to any and all artificial fluc-
tuations in prices, but they were not gamblers.
They were the intelligent servants of a great
public use. To that end they were thoughtfully
adopting every attainable improvement, mechan-
ical or otherwise, in the methods and appliances
for handling every pound of grain or flesh with-
in their sphere of operations. In every depart-
ment of their business the widest liberality went
2U6 MEN OF BUSINESS
hand in hand with the closest economy. Any
hog, for instance, might be a loosely going fellow
up to the hour when he was sold to an agent of
Mr. Armour. From that time onward he might as
well have been one of the parts of a watch, so com-
pletely systematic were all his movements until,
in the forms given him at the packing-house, he
was offered upon the market. Not an ounce of
him for which science had discovered a use had
been wasted on the way. Something closely
parallel to this would be the story of a bushel
of wheat or corn passing through the Armour
elevators.
The last year of the war and the years imme-
diately following were marked by many and
sharp fluctuations in the provision trade, but
these were not permitted to work any harm to
the Armours. As a rule, the house was prepared
to profit by them, and the net result was a large
increase in cash capital. It was needed, for the
" plant ' of the concern was absorbing sums
which could not have been spared by any house
greatly dependent upon credit. As to this, how-
ever, financial men had acquired a degree of
confidence which almost released the Armour
paper from the ordinary consequences of re-
stricted money markets.
A great tide of migration westward took place
after the war, and it was necessary to follow it.
Another branch house was therefore established
at Kansas City, in 1871, under the name of Plank-
inton & Armour, and in charge of Simon E. Ar-
mour, one of Philip's older brothers. Two years
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 207
later the great panic of 1873 offered a sufficient
test of the solidity of the seemingly widely ex-
tended business connection, for it hardly ap-
peared to have undergone any special strain,
while large numbers of neighbor firms went down.
The last change of importance in the mere an-
nals of the firm took place in 1875. The failing
health of Mr. Joseph F. Armour unfitted him
for the heavy burden of the Chicago business.
Mr. Plankinton was therefore left at Milwaukee,
while Philip D. Armour removed to Chicago,
where he has since resided.
There were six of the brothers and one was
still at home, upon the old Stockbridge farm.
He had proved himself a capable business man,
however, and in 1879 the Armour Brothers
Banking Company was created at Kansas City,
and Mr. Andrew Watson Armour was made
president of it. There is probably no record in
this country of anything like a similar business
success won by six farmer boys. It cannot be
said to have come from the good fortune of one
of them in the California gold mines. No doubt
it is true, however, that the same integrity,
energy, and business ability which made more
money out of a ditch than other men were mak-
ing out of rich placers had continued to direct
the management of the capital brought back by
Philip D. Armour.
Chicago is the naturally central point of such
a business as that of Armour & Co., but it be-
came much more so after the office of the firm in
that city was taken in charge of the head of the
208 MEN OF BUSINESS
house. His brother indeed never recovered his
health, but passed away in 1881. The business
grew with the swift growth of the country, keep-
ing pace with every step of the general develop-
ment.
That it did so is a result due to the combined
intelligence of many working in perfect accord
with their acknowledged captain. Even the
workingmen regarded him as their friend as well
as employer. During a season of labor trouble,
when a general strike had been ordered, the new
men obeyed, but the old hands who knew Mr.
Armour refused, and no less than eight hundred
of them went along with their work. There was
no trouble between him and them, and so far as
he could prevent, there never would be. In this,
better than in another way, can be seen the
peculiar personal force of the man with and for
whom so many others of every grade and kind
have worked for common purposes during so
many years with hardly a recorded jar.
No doubt the faculty of cordial co-operation
was inborn and was judiciously fostered in
childhood, in a home where there was uncom-
mon unity and mutual confidence between par-
ents and children. Philip's mother had said to
him, when he spoke to her of the California
trip : " Philip, you can go. I can trust you ; I
know that you will do no discredit to us."
So said his father, and years after he had
passed away, old Mrs. Armour, living with
Philip, considered herself an active partner in
the concern and regularly examined critically
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 209
the reports and balance-sheets of all the houses
managed by her children, sons or sons-in-law.
She was a woman of excellent business judg-
ment, and her opinions and suggestions were
always heeded.
As the years went by, the great packing-house
became almost as one of the public institutions
of the West, so important was its agency in col-
lecting and forwarding the products of several
States. Mr. Armour long ago ceased to be
merely a buyer and seller, for the nature of his
business compelled him to become a manufac-
turer as well as a merchant. Bacon, for instance,
is a manufactured article, and it was strictly in
the line of the cattle trade that a vast glue-fac-
tory was added to the Chicago plant.
A very fair idea of the business success at-
tained may be formed by a study of the transac-
tions of Armour & Co. for the year ending
April i, 1893. Not counting other purchases or
sales, but the distributing business for consump-
tion only, these amounted to over $102,000,000.
The hogs killed were 1,750,000; the cattle were
1,080,000; the sheep were 625,000. Eleven thou-
sand men were constantly employed and the
wages paid them were over $5,500,000. The
railway cars owned by the firm number over
four thousand. The wagons are of many kinds
and of large number, drawn by 750 horses. The
glue -factory, employing 750 men, made over
twelve millions of pounds of glue.
Over all this business interest, with its branches
and with its relations to so many workmen and
14
MEN OF BUSINESS
their families and to so many farm-house homes,
still presides the hale and vigorous old man who
in his teens walked across the continent to Cal-
ifornia to make a fortune out of water instead of
gold. Every morning at seven o'clock he is at
his desk, cheerful, contented, and making others
feel the same by manner and example. He is
still a workingman and could not with comfort
be anything else, remaining at his task until the
eveninsf. The business is transacted for its own
o
sake, rather even than for its profits, large as
these are. Its manager has travelled far and wide
and has studied the business methods of his own
and other lands, bringing into his own counting-
room and factories every teaching or improve-
ment he could find for the benefit of all concerned.
He is well posted in the questions of the day, but
has refused to meddle with politics beyond per-
forming1 his duties as a citizen. He has not
o
called it " politics," however, to take an active
interest in all the legislation and diplomacy
called for in securing protection for the increas-
ing shipments of American meat products to Eu-
rope. It has been a matter of course that this
has brought him into consultation and personal
relations with many of our foremost statesmen
and diplomats, as well as with representatives of
parties and of the press.
The farmer's boy who, from the beginning,
showed so strong a tendency for taking other
boys along with him, and who kept it up until
the entire crowd numbers about twelve thousand
paid by his own business establishment, has by
PHILIP DANFORTH ARMOUR 211
no means lost his interest in young people of the
age of those whom he found and left at the Caze-
novia Academy. His deep interest in them and
in the general cause of education has been mani-
fested in many ways and most notably by the
founding and directing of the Armour Institute
at Chicago. This, too, promises to become a
monument to his peculiar faculty for improving
upon previously existing methods.
In 1862 Mr. Armour married Miss Malvina
Belle Ogden, of Cincinnati, and he has sons who
seem to have inherited their father's character
and capacity.
The Cazenovia girl whose letters were lost on
the way also married happily in due season, but
something of romance still attaches, on her ac-
count, to the remarkable career of the boy who
broke the rules of the school for her sake, walked
across the continent that he might win he knew
not what, and came back to find that nothing
would induce him to settle in that neighbor-
hood. It was too narrow, for more reasons than
one, but wide indeed was the other neighborhood
into which he went out that he might organize
in it, from the Atlantic shore to the lakes and the
Western plains and mountains, the business con-
nections and success of the Armours.
XL
HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFL1N.
AMONG the eternal truths long ago written
down for the guidance of men, is hardly any so
imperfectly understood as this : " The liberal
soul deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things
shall he stand."
The miserly ignore it altogether. The merely
ostentatious, the hypocrites of false charity and
the traders in giving, read only the promise and
misinterpret the condition.
It is a precept which peculiarly applies to the
conduct of business, to all the affairs of active
life, and its examples are more numerous than
the unthinking imagine. A business record,
therefore, which furnishes a complete illustra-
tion, known and read of all men, is worth pre-
senting as a study for those who wish to succeed.
Horace B. Claflin was born at Milford, Mass.,
December 18, 1811. It was a small place, bear-
ing only the ordinary marks of a New England
village. It had its district school and its acad-
emy, and the pervading tone among its thrifty
families was eminently moral and religious. The
boys who grew up there were likely to receive
precept upon precept and line upon line, and
with them such occasional corrective applica-
Horace Bngham Claflin.
THS
PU
AST r
TIL
HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFLIN 213
tions as were in that day supposed to be the in-
dispensable needs of boys at the hands of parents
and preceptors.
The father of Horace was Mr. John Claflin,
and he was a prosperous man, as times went.
He kept a country store, with the usual miscel-
laneous assortment of whatever goods were like-
ly to be called for, some that were unlikely and
some that ought not to have been called for.
He also owned and conducted a farm and held
the office of justice of the peace.
At school and at the academy, Horace seems
to have been better known for his love of fun
than for anything else, although he attended to
his books reasonably well. He acquired as much
from them as falls to the share of most bright,
merry boys, overflowing with animal spirits, but
he did not do more, and he formed no tastes
for further advancement in scholarship. Per-
haps his father's store aided more than was sus-
pected, in arousing and shaping his natural
genius, but he was himself the first to discover
his own bent and determine the path in life he
was to pursue. It was his father's ambition that
his son should take a college course and prepare
for one of the learned professions. He was a
wise parent, however, and decided not to em-
ploy too much pressure in such a matter. He
spoke to the academy principal about it, and he,
with whom Horace was something of a favorite,
brought before the fun-loving boy of sixteen the
grim subject of the Greek and Latin required to
pass a college examination. Horace listened,
214 MEN OF BUSINESS
thought about it, and promised to try the dead
languages " and see how it agrees with me."
It was a short trial. Before long he came
again to report a final result, saying to his friend
and preceptor :
" My purpose is to spend my life in trade, and
I do not see how the study of Greek and Latin
will be beneficial to me in that pursuit. I want
to be in business this minute. I am young, but
that is no objection. The younger I begin the
better."
The talk was reported to John Claflin and he
again showed the clear-minded common sense
which had probably been the most valuable ele-
ment in his son's early instruction, for he said :
" Sure enough, why should he study Latin and
Greek, if he is to be a merchant."
There was the store, however, and very soon
afterward the young merchant was serving his
apprenticeship behind his father's counter. He
had always been free of the place and felt at
home there, but now it had become his academy
and his college, in which he was to learn the
O '
arts and sciences of business life. He was but
twenty years of age when his father determined
to retire from store-keeping. He had another
son named Aaron, and a son in law named
Samuel Daniels. The three young men were all
apparently fitted to set out upon their own ac-
count. They each received one thousand dol-
lars, as capital to begin with, and the business
was turned over to them. It looked like a prom-
ising start in life, for the country in which John
HORACE BRIGHAM GLAFLIN 215
Claflin had prospered was growing richer
yearly, but his sons, at least, were not long con-
tented with their narrow quarters at Milford.
A year later, in 1832, Horace became of age, and
he and Aaron opened a branch store in Worces-
ter, Mass. This was devoted exclusively to dry-
goods, the old concern retaining its general
character. Another year went by with fair suc-
cess, and then a partition was agreed upon.
Aaron retained the established country-store
business at Milford, while Horace launched out
alone into the uncertainties and competitions of
the new enterprise.
He had made one important innovation in Mil-
ford, and he carried it with him to Worcester.
In that day almost all men were supposed to
make more or less use of alcoholic liquors.
Not only did all stores and groceries keep them
on hand for sale, but they were deemed indis-
pensable to the proper method of being polite to
customers. If a man bought anything worth
while it was meanness and rudeness not to treat
him. If he was a new-comer, a social glass
might draw him on to business. If he was a
hard dealer, sharp in his bargains, he might be
softened and the way to his pocket made easier.
About the first stroke of business energy per-
formed by Horace, however, on becoming a
partner in the young firm, was to bring up from
the cellar and out from the store every quart of
the liquor on hand, and pour it into the gutter.
No more was ever brought in, and when he
began his business career in Worcester, no bait
216 MEN OF BUSINESS
of that kind was employed to allure his custom-
ers.
He did attract them, however, and that by
methods which brought upon him the sharp dis-
pleasure of all his business rivals, who loved the
old-time ways and suddenly found him making
dashing inroads upon their trade. Even at this
early stage of his career he had discovered that
the sure road to success lay in doing business
for its own sake, without too eager an eye to the
profits of each bargain.
Since the old colony times there had been little
change in the dull routine of trade in that highly
respectable town. The old methods had some-
thing orthodox and sound about them, and it
was a sin to break them up, but young Claflin
laughingly did so. Perhaps his first open of-
fence— for giving up treating left that advantage
to others — was in the manner and vivacious char-
acter of his advertising. That important arm of
the business service was then in its infancy, but
he proved himself an adept in it from the begin-
ning. Worse than this, however, was his grave
heresy concerning large profits. He would not
have them, nor the name of them. When a
salesman came to him, one day, for praise for
the wide margin he had made in the disposal of
certain goods, he found himself kindly reproved
and was instructed not to do so again, for it was
contrary to the principles upon which the busi-
ness was to be run. The next element that he
undertook to introduce was that of perpetual
sunshine. Special attention and cordial wel-
HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFLIN 217
come was to be given to the first customers coin-
ing in the morning, that the day might begin
well. Perhaps the next point made was by his
own unfailing fund of humor and the cheerful,
kindly way in which he met all men and all
women. Even his rivals were forced to put
aside trade animosities whenever they met him,
and his customers became as his personal friends.
Not that he had no enemies. His credit was
good, but he was buying and selling on the
credit system and all men watched all other men
for any signs of financial weakness. Once a year
it was his custom to close his store while taking
account of stock, and almost as often as this hap-
pened a report of his failure travelled around the
town and then went to Boston, to be inquired
into, contradicted, and laughed over.
The store first occupied became too small for
the increasing business, and a larger place was
taken. At the same time, one of Mr. Claflin's
clerks and another young man were admitted as
" junior partners" of the youngest merchant in
Worcester. He already had the largest trade
in his line and was becoming widely known as
one of the most enterprising merchants in New
England outside of Boston. He was himself
the life of the concern, for his own clerks report-
ed of him that whenever he was away, buying
goods or otherwise, everything seemed dead
until he returned. There could be no dulness
with him in the store to stir things up.
Ten years of good success, with losses as well
as gains, went swiftly by. Mr. Clafiin was now
218 MEN OF BUSINESS
a married man, apparently well settled for life,
as the leading merchant of a prosperous town.
Upon all considerations of prudence, said all his
prudent friends, he should remain where he was
and continue to reap the harvests of the excel-
lent field which he had made his own. And yet
he talked of going to New York, where all the
business was already overdone and where he
would surely be crushed in competition with es-
tablished houses of vast wealth and able manage-
ment.
He had studied the matter and he had fully de-
termined upon being a merchant, in the wider
sense of the term, rather than a shop-keeper.
After closing out his Worcester business, he
had $30,000 in cash for capital. He had also
secured an excellent partner, Mr. William M.
Bulkley, and the new venture was undertaken
under the firm name of Bulkley & Claflin.
People at all familiar with the New York of
to-day may find a curious interest in the locali-
ties of its business in the year 1843, f°r the
dry-goods store to which the expected trade
was to come was away down at No. 46 Cedar
Street. Mr. Claflin's residence was on Pierre-
pont Street, Brooklyn, and there it continued
to be until his death, for when he grew rich he
did but move a short distance to his new and
costlier home.
The Cedar Street business prospered on pre-
cisely the same principles which had prevailed
at Worcester, and it was wonderful how rapidly
Mr. Claflin's personal acquaintance grew within
HORACE BRIQHAM CLAFLIN 219
the lines of commerce and finance. He did not
go into what is called society ; he did not be-
come a member of any club ; but in and around
his own home-circle he found, or drew together,
one of the very brightest of social coteries. It
left little need for any other means for enjoying
perfectly the out-of-business hours of a very
hard-worked business man. Added to this, how-
ever, were his relations with Plymouth Church,
in which, although not a member of the ecclesi-
astical body, but of the society, he became one
of the best-known associates, and was during
many years a trustee and a liberal supporter.
Through seven years the business grew, and
then a larger store was built by the firm at No.
57 Broadway, a region from which their kind of
trade has long since departed. In 1851 Mr.
Bulkley retired and a new firm was constructed,
under the title of Claflin, Mellen & Co., the com-
pany consisting of several juniors. The number
and character of this part of Mr. Claflin's busi-
ness management brings out strongly the dis-
tinguishing feature of his character. He had a
rare judgment of the qualities of other men. It
aided him in discriminating as to credits given,
as to business associates, and it was keen in his
selection of subordinates whom he could trust.
More than this as to the latter, however, was his
hearty delight in helping young men to a start in
life and older men who met with disasters to start
in life again. The instances known are too numer-
ous for mention or even for selection. The num-
ber of which no man knew but himself, and those
220 MEN OF BUSINESS
who were helped can only be surmised by reason
of so many being discovered.
Just above Trinity Church, on Broadway, is
the large building now known as the headquar-
ters of the real estate business. It is No. in,
and very few who pass or enter it would suppose
that it was built in 1853, to accommodate the
growing dry-goods business of Claflin, Mellen &
Co. There are now no silks or other fabrics
offered for sale so near the head of Wall Street.
By this time, Mr. Claflin's position among the
merchants of New York had become established.
His credit was excellent, for all men who dealt
with him acquired undoubting faith in his integ-
rity, while those who had bought of him once were
sure to come again. It was indeed considered
a success when it was known that his sales for
1853 footed up more than a million of dollars ; but
that sum was larger then than it seems to be now,
and the narrowing margins of profit required in-
creasing sales. There were other houses doing
as well or better. The wealth and trade of the
country was expanding with wonderful rapidity,
and it remained to be seen which among the
many capable competitors would carry off the
lion's share. Probably the keenest of all rivals,
at any and all times, was the house of A. T.
Stewart & Co., the head of which was a man
who never hesitated to take a loss upon any line
of goods, if by so doing he could keep or gain a
line of customers. Collision after collision, often
at heavy cost, convinced both houses, or should
have done so, that neither had any prospect for
HORACE BRIOHAM CLAP LIN 221
a permanent victory over the other. The least
pleasing part of the rivalry was the fact that
weaker concerns were sometimes crushed in the
combats of the stronger. Mr. Claflin never
actually made war — that is, he never began it,
but the very principles upon which he did his
business challenged such a dashing operator in
fabrics as was Mr. Stewart.
In the year 1860, the sales of Claflin, Mellen &
Co. reached the grand total of $13,500,000, and-
again there was a demand for wider quarters.
The wholesale dry-goods trade was steadily
drifting northward, but Mr. Claflin went beyond
its apparent outposts and bought land in a local-
ity that was then mainly occupied by the poorest
tenement-houses. A new building was erected
at the corner of Church and Worth Streets, run-
ning the whole length of the block to West
Broadway. The transfer of the business was ac-
complished, and a swift expansion followed, very
much as if every sail had been spread to catch
the gust of a great storm.
Mr. Claflin had openly avowed himself an anti-
slavery man, even when to do so was regarded
as a very detrimental thing for a business man
to dare. Beyond a doubt it hurt his Southern
trade, that he was known to be a warm supporter
of the Republican Party, although he was not at
all a man to cherish political bitterness. For that
precise reason, he underestimated the bitter-
nesses which rankled in the hearts of other men.
It was of no use to point out to him the clouds
in the political horizon, or to urge upon him the
222 MEN OF BUSINESS
many threatening signs that a hurricane was
near at hand. In common with some of our
ablest statesmen, he had no fear of a violent out-
break— it was to be only a shower, not a cyclone.
All the more shattering, therefore, was the effect
of the first breath of the Civil War, in 1861. All
credits suffered, for all the world of finance sud-
denly stood still, not knowing what to do. Dis-
counts almost ceased. The best of " customer's
paper " could not be used at the banks, except
within narrow limits. It was of no use to strug-
gle, and the successful house of Claflin, Mellen
& Co., saw nothing but a disastrous failure before
it, involving an utter wreck of their splendid
business.
It is said that Mr. Claflin hardly lost his
cheerfulness, but met his down-hearted business
friends with a brave and smiling face, and then
went home to be almost as full of humorous fun
as ever in the circle of which he was the life and
centre.
His genial courage was a powerful element
in tiding over the emergency. He called a
meeting of his creditors and proposed to settle
with them for seventy cents on the dollar, giving
long-time notes for the various amounts, and go
on with the business. All who could do so ac-
cepted his offer, but there were some who could
not, and paper with his name on it was selling on
the street at fifty cents on the dollar. He could
do nothing for this class of his creditors at that
o
time, but his friends bought up and held all the
claims they could find. It was a time for a man
HORACE BRIGHAM GLAFLIN 223
to have friends, and the liberal soul who had con-
tinually devised liberal things found that he was
standing while a host of others were falling like
wind-blown trees.
There was no permanent disaster ; nothing
but losses and a great jar, the effect of which
passed away. The war itself, with its numerous
activities, its vast expenditures, its issues of
greenbacks, caused a flood of business to follow
the temporary stoppage. The firm that had
been so wisely and liberally held up was in a po-
sition to profit by the swift expansion. The de-
velopment of its trade was like a feverish vision,
for during the year 1865-66, May ist to May ist,
the sales amounted to over $72,000,000. It is
said, with probable correctness, that the sales of
the most prominent rival during the same year,
while $30,000,000 less, were much more profita-
ble, because including so large a retail trade, but
the foundation principle of Mr. Claflin's manage-
ment was the acceptance of a moderate profit
for the benefit of all concerned. There were
large aggregate profits nevertheless, and there
were also endless recoveries of important sums
from debtors, East and West, who were in like
manner getting again upon their feet. Not
long after the compromise which set the busi-
ness wheels in operation, the house began to
take up the extended paper. The seventy cents
was paid first, and then the thirty cents required,
with interest, to bring all that class of payments
up to par. Next came the paper bought in at
half price, but following this was a hunt for the
224 MEN OF BUSINESS
original holders who had parted with it in dis-
tress. Mr. Claflin's friends had not purchased for
money-making, and they had transferred to him
without profit, except to their honor. He now
paid every first holder in full, with interest, and
no man could say that he had lost money through
trusting the great house. The extended paper
was paid off, discounted, long before the dates
of its maturity, and the credit of the firm, with
banks, importers, and manufacturers, at home
and abroad, stood higher than before the storm
of i86i,when the Bull Run defeat marked the
date of business suspension.
On January i, 1864, Mr. Mellen retired and
more juniors were admitted to form the reor-
ganization of H. B. Claflin & Co. In providing
for the prosperity of so many others Mr. Claflin
necessarily reduced his own prospects for accu-
mulation, but his profits were invested with
good judgment and his wealth grew.
From 1865 to the day of his death, the volume
of the firm's transactions exceeded those of any
other mercantile house in America, if not in all
the world. A large number of other concerns
including important manufacturing establish-
ments, were its feeders, and seemed almost to
belong to its machinery. His business connec-
tions extended to every land from which goods
could be obtained for his field in the American
market, and his counting-room was as a head-
quarters for the merchants of Europe who vis-
ited the New World.
Mr. Clatiin had always been plainly out-
HORACE BRIG HAM C LAV LIN 225
spoken in his views upon political questions, but
had never taken a part in politics more promi-
nent than that of a liberal contributor, or by his
welcome presence at public meetings and party
councils. In 1872, however, in the campaign for
the second election of President Grant, he
served as a Presidential elector, for the party
was in need of all the strength that any man
could give to it.
The aspect of the times then grew darker as
the months went by. The inflated, abnormal,
feverish condition of affairs created by the war
could not long continue under the processes of
contraction which began to operate with the re-
turn of peace.
Financiers and business men were well aware
that the country was in a perilous situation, but
there seemed no possible remedy until a very
sharp one came. This was nothing less than the
sudden panic which began upon Black Friday,
September 24, 1873, and swept everything before
it. Money, that is, legal tender money, seemed
to vanish. Banks and trust companies suspend-
ed payments. A host of houses closed their
doors and hundreds of them were not to open
again. The house of H. B. Claflin & Co., had
made no considerable effort at restricting its
operations. When the crash came and hardly
any more bank accommodations were to be had,
its name was said to be out, as maker or respon-
sible indorser, upon no less than $25,000,000 of
commercial paper. A better illustration could
not be sriven of the nature of the business it was
15
226 MEN OF BUSINESS
doing, or of the continual burden carried by its
head and financial manager. If he had been a
man of less capacity, or if other men had had less
confidence in him, there would have been a stu-
pendous wreck ; but there was not. All he asked
for from his creditors was an extension of time
for five months, and it was readily granted.
The panic passed away, the tides of business
moved again, and the time really required for
taking up all obligations was two months instead
of five, without loss to anybody. Nobody want-
ed to see H. B. Claflin fail. His personal char-
acter stood like a tower, and the entire business
community took a kindly pleasure in the fact
that he had " pulled through."
Two years later, in 1875, came a most vexa-
tious disturbance of another sort. Upon a tech-
nical misinterpretation of a law then on the stat-
ute-books, the house was sued by the United
States Government for large sums alleged to be
due in connection with asserted undervaluations
of imported goods. It was not said that they
had made money illegally, or otherwise, but that
they had become liable for the sins of other men.
It was a curious piece of work, in which there
seemed to lurk a thinly covered element of black-
mail and highway robbery. Popular sympathy,
after a brief hearing of the facts, ran strongly
with Mr. Claflin, so much so that propositions
for a compromise .were made. He could wipe
out the affair, for instance, for $50,000, so that
the agents and informers putting it in motion
should not fail to be paid for their industry.
HORACE BRIG HAM CLAFLIN 227
Flatly and firmly he refused to yield an inch.
It was not his method of being liberal, and he
fought it out, defeating the government in the
courts three times in succession. If he paid
more than $50,000 in expenses and law fees, he
did not pay a dollar in any other way, and he
won the battle. As an expression of the feeling
of his fellow-citizens and of their share in his
hard-won victory, thirty-two leading commercial
houses and banking institutions united in ten-
dering him a banquet of congratulation, while
the public press added its hearty approval.
Mr. Claflin was now becoming an elderly man,
but he did not actually slacken his activities.
He only took a little more time for his home
comforts. He now had a country-house, at
Fordham, where he could be more at ease than
in his elegant mansion on Pierrepont Street.
Particularly, he could keep more horses there,
and no reasonably fair day passed without a
drive of from ten to twenty miles behind fine
roadsters. He had a strong liking for horses,
and he had been one of Henry Bergh's warmest
supporters in that gentleman's noble crusade
against all forms of cruelty to animals. The
giving process went steadily on, reaching out in
every form of well-directed charity. No man
could follow it. Only by accident, for instance,
was discovered the secret of the long walks he
was accustomed to take on each New Year's
Day. He went out with his hat on his head, but
it was found to be packed with small checks for
distribution — no man ever knew how or where.
228 MEN OF BUSINESS
Year after year went by, and the veteran mer-
chant seemed to be as merry, as happy, as hu-
morous as ever, but he was compelled to take a
little more, and a little more time for rest and
recreation. Still he seemed so well, so vigorous,
that it was felt as a great and sudden shock
when, on the I4th of November, 1885, the news
went out that a stroke of paralysis had termi-
nated his long and honorable career.
The response was a marvellous expression of
the love and esteem he had won from all who
knew him. There were meetings of business
men, of churches, of charitable societies, of
financiers, for the formal expression of a feeling
which seemed to be almost universal. There
was one remarkable feature discoverable every-
where. The men who spoke at these gatherings
and the writers for the public prints did indeed
say much concerning his ability, his integrity,
and his vast success as a business man, but they
turned from that part of the general theme to
tell warm-hearted anecdotes- -incidents that
they knew of his ever-flowing liberality ; bright
sketches of the manner of his giving in all forms
of help, or how his liberal soul had devised its
liberal things. There is no doubt, although they
did not say so, that it was largely through the
strength which in this way came to him that in
his days of trial he stood so firmly.
Marshall Owen Roberts.
XII.
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS.
IT is not easy to express in one word our per-
ception that any man possesses more of life-force
and its related courage than does another. We
are nevertheless attracted irresistibly by the
brilliant figures of our chiefs and heroes of
every type as we see them going forward in ad-
vance of the front ranks of the general mass. It
is hardly less so at times when they are found
among the retreating remnants of some lost
battle, the last to give up the field and full of
grim determination to fight again. In any study
of them, however, it is of by no means small im-
portance to consider the surroundings in which
their careers began, as well as their later achieve-
ments. In the year 1814 the city of New York
had been without a British garrison for nearly
thirty-one years, but the history of its commerce
during all that time had prepared it for the pe-
culiar character it assumed upon the declaration
of war with England, June 18, 1812. Nearly all
the causes of the war had been felt with special
severity by our seaport towns, and their popula-
tions were pervaded by a spirit of retaliation and
reprisal which was not at all diminished by the
fact that British cruisers, regular navy and pri-
230 MEN OF BUSINESS
vateers, almost swept the seas at once of Ameri-
can merchant craft. It seemed as if every swift
ship owned in New York and for which guns
could be found was promptly fitted out as a pri-
vateer, and their success was such that before
long British insurance companies collected over
ten per cent, for insuring cargoes only to cross
the British channel. On land, along the New
York and Canada border, and on Lake Cham-
plain, occurred much of the severest fighting of
the war. It ended with the year 1814, but the
spirit of intense, aggressive patriotism did not
end with it, nor did a kind of semi-warlike pride
in American ships and commerce.
The boys of New York breathed an atmos-
phere full of patriotic traditions and of tales of
adventure, while the new wharves and ware-
houses along the water-front of Manhattan Island
were building and the ships increased in number
and in size before their eyes year after year.
Among the New York boys born in the year
1814 (March 22d) was Marshall Owen Roberts.
His father and mother were Welsh, and in his
own character, from step to step, appeared a full
share of the fire, vigor, quick imagination, and
even rashness which has always distinguished
the primitive race of Wales. They were of the
upper middle class, his father being a physician,
and their arrival in New York had been in the
year 1798. At that date, indeed, all the indus-
trial and commercial interests of the city were
still in the semi-chaotic or formative condition
left behind by the long war for independence.
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERT* '231
Dr. Roberts was able to give his son a good
education, and it was his intention to send him to
college in due season, and then to prepare him
for the medical profession. The foundations for
such a course of training were laid in the best
local schools, and young Roberts evinced abun-
dant capacity for dealing with his text-books.
As time went on, however, it was found that he
had an unconquerable distaste for the life of a
practitioner. The things he saw and the current
topics of discussion with the other boys were all
pulling him in another direction. Long years
afterward he would sometimes relate to inti-
mate friends how even in his childhood he used
to walk along the wharves and watch the ships
loading and unloading, and dream of where they
had been and where they were going, till he
knew the flags of nations and the different kinds
of vessels and the sailors. So he came to long
for ships of his own and for the stir and ex-
citement, the adventure and risk, the changing
profit-and-loss account of a merchant's life. He
was fond also, as his boyhood went on, of fishing
and boating excursions, and he knew every nook
and cranny of the Manhattan Island, New Jersey,
and Long Island shores of the port of New
York.
Very good use was made of the schools to
which his father sent him, but the college course
and the medical diploma were not to come, for
he was yet in his teens when he was permitted
to follow his own bent. His first employment
was as the youngest clerk in a wholesale gro-
'232 MEX OF BUSINESS
eery house. Here he could learn somewhat of
foreign trade and of business methods, but be-
fore long he won a step of promotion into a
regular ship-chandler's concern, where every-
thing smelled of the sea. He was able to obtain
good wages, as times went, and he was almost
parsimoniously saving, for he had great objects
in view. He hoped, of course, to do business for
himself some day, but he was also cultivating
tastes and tendencies which were remarkable in
one so young and with such other tastes. He
had no idea of ever becoming an artist, but he
was, nevertheless, passionately fond of art. In a
large show-window of a corner store that he
was compelled to pass frequently there was a
good -sized oil-painting by a native artist. Its
merits, really fair, were to him wonderful. He
was late in his return from more than one of his
business errands because of lingering before that
entrancing picture, and he determined to save up
money and buy it. That he persevered until he
succeeded in doing so was one of his earlier
victories, and to the day of his death it held a
post of honor in his crowded gallery, among the
masterpieces of both hemispheres.
The prize did not come at once, for his first
use of his savings was in another direction. On
becoming of age he launched out for himself,
with another young man of energy and ambi-
tion, in the general hardware and shipping-sup-
ply business.
The only store they could obtain in a suitable
locality was too large for their capital, and the
M A t^ 11 ALL OWEN ROKERT* 233
small stock they could purchase, for cash or
credit, seemed lost upon its too ample shelves
and counters.
" They look like samples ! ' exclaimed the dis-
gusted partner.
''That's it!" replied Mr. Roberts. "I'll go
and buy a load of bricks ! '
Each brick, nearly of the size of one of the
sales packages of screws, for instance, was neat-
ly done up as such a package, with a sample tied
at its end. It was art-work that was done with
closed doors, but the shelves now made a fine
appearance, and the dummies created a good im-
pression of the capacities of the new concern.
It was really astonishing how many customers
came for screws to the place which kept on
hand the largest stock of them.
During two years which followed there was
an almost day and night study of the markets
related to the business, and of all the channels of
supply and demand. The first important result,
other than a steady increase of sales to well-satis-
fied customers, came in the shape of a govern-
ment contract for the supply of the Navy De-
partment with whale oil. Mr. Roberts had made
connections which enabled him to become the
lowest bidder, and the subsequent course of the
market gave him yet a larger profit than he had
hoped for.
It has been considered worthy of note how
many mercantile successes seem to date from the
period of severe depression marked by the panic
of 1837, and somewhat similar is the record of
234 MEN OF BUSINESS
/
other sweeping financial disasters. It was from
that date that Mr. Roberts found the field of ac-
tion manifestly opened for him, as if the storm
had cleared away obstacles. It did not prove so,
however, to men who were not ready to seize
the opportunities offered them. Such as Mr.
Roberts saw and availed himself of, moreover,
were almost altogether those which he had
known and studied ever since he could remem-
ber. As he obtained a freer use of capital, he
looked across the North River to the long,
muddy, seemingly useless flats of the New Jer-
sey shore, and purchased for a merely nominal
price, while other men jeered at him, reaches of
water-front which in later years he sold for a
million and a quarter of dollars. He had been
familiar from boyhood with all the craft of the
Hudson, freighter passenger, and now he under-
took to meet the growing demand for something
better. He began with the very beginning of
river steamboat traffic, and his success in hand-
ling it enabled him at last to build and own the
steamer Hendrik Hudson, the floating palace of
her day.
The very nature of the several interests in the
hands of Mr. Roberts prepared him, on the out-
break of the war with Mexico, in 1845, to bid for
government contracts for army and navy sup-
plies and for the transportation of troops, but he
had seen more clearly than other men that the
war must come, and all his calculations had been
made before a gun was fired. That he was so
ready was afterward of more than a little im-
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS '235
portance to the war operations themselves, and
his own profits were large. The treaty of peace
between the United States and Mexico was
signed early in February, 1848, but the return of
troops was not completed until a later day. By
the treaty, not only Texas, but New Mexico and
Upper California, became United States terri-
tory, and hardly was it signed before a report
went out through the country that " gold dig-
gings " had been discovered along the river-beds
of California. It was said that the war volun-
teers, as a rule, marched for the Pacific slope
placers as soon as they were paid off. The gold
excitement was at its height in 1849, and the main
question seemed to be one of transportation for
the swarms of eager adventurers. Once more
Mr. Roberts was in position to meet the demands
of the hour, and he invested heavily, in ships and
money, in a company which proposed to run
lines of steamers on either coast in connection
with the Isthmus of Panama. Thousands of
would-be miners toiled across the continent over-
land ; others sailed wearily around Cape Horn;
the Nicaragua and Tehuautepec routes were
preferred by many, but the Panama transit more
than justified the first opinions formed of its
superior advantages. The overland route be-
came a stage line and then a railway, but of the
several waterways only the Panama continued
in operation after the gold fever subsided. It
was not altogether profitable to its projectors,
however. A contract for carrying United States
mails, from which much was expected, became
23f> MEN OF BUSINESS
rather a source of difficulties, and there were
other conflicts, rivalries, enmities of various
kinds. The company itself was forced into
bankruptcy, and Mr. Roberts's own losses were
severe, but he was determined not to be really
defeated. It was with more than a little exhibi-
tion of faith and courage that he purchased all
the sold-out claims of the bankrupt company
against the government under the mail contract.
They seemed to be of small value, but he pushed
them in the courts and before Congress, year
after year, until at last he obtained a just award
of over a million of dollars.
Other enterprises were going forward parallel
with these. Mr. Roberts was one of the advo-
cates of the New York, Lake Erie & Western
(" Erie") Railway before a pick was lifted for
its construction, and he was himself the projector
of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Rail-
road. Here and there truly he exhibited even
too much dash and energy, and there were two
sides to his exceedingly varied profit-and-loss ac-
count. His personal friendships were strong,
his political opinions were vehement, and he was
by no means always wise in his expressions of
either. Men Avhom he trusted did not always
turn out well, and political as well as commercial
antagonists were now and then turned into bitter
personal enemies. On the other hand, his out-
spoken frankness and his readiness to help made
him hosts of friends. He was a power in the
community, even during the long series of years
when, either as a Whig or a Free-Soiler, the
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 237
party he belonged to was in a hopeless minority.
In 1852 he was the Whig nominee for Congress
in his own district, but was defeated, almost as a
matter of course. That party was in its deca-
dence, and Mr. Roberts, moreover, held views
on the slavery question which deprived him of
the votes of the more conservative Whigs.
No better illustration could be offered of his
character, nor of the estimation in which he was
held by other enterprising and able men, than
was given in 1854. When Cyrus W. Field laid
before Peter Cooper his plan for an ocean tele-
graphic cable, they two went next to Moses Tay-
lor, and all three declared that their next choice
was Marshall O. Roberts. Chandler White made
up the number until, at his death, he was re-
placed by Wilson G. Hunt, and these five men
carried the burdens of the enterprise, so far as
American support was concerned, until the cable
was laid. Before a dollar of foreign capital was
secured, they had paid out over a million of dol-
lars, very nearly equally divided among them.
In spite of many losses and of having much
capital locked up in shapes which were com-
pelled to wait for the future, Mr. Roberts was
now a very wealthy man. He was distinguished
for the liberality with which he aided any object,
charitable or otherwise, in which he became
interested, so that he was almost compelled, as
he said, to fence himself in from innumerable
applications.
In one direction there seemed to be hardly any
limit other than his own very correct judgment,
238 MEN OF BUSINESS
now matured and critical, for the city contained
no other man whose open purse and hearty en-
couragement was doing so much for American
artists. He purchased works of art in Europe,
in many of which he took great pride, but his
gallery, for which he was at last compelled to
buy and reconstruct the house adjoining his own,
contained large numbers of the best creations of
his own countrymen, including those of more
than one struggling beginner whose merit he
was one of the first to recognize.
At no time did Mr. Roberts fail to take an
active interest in the questions of the day, muni-
cipal, State, or national. In the former he was
a well-known figure at public meetings, and his
name was almost as often seen in their printed
reports as it was upon the subscription lists, for
it was a period of many kinds of political and
social " reform ' fermentation. He was not a
writer, and his only claim to oratory was his
ability and tendency to express his views in the
briefest and most intelligible form with small
reference to consequences.
The anti-slavery agitation, more than met by
the correspondent turbulence of pro-slavery feel-
ing and action, was increasing day after day.
The longer continuance of either of the old
parties was manifestly becoming impossible.
Mr. Roberts was not an extremist, not what was
then described and generally condemned as an
''abolitionist," but he threw himself heart and
soul into the movement for the formation of a
new party, proposing to resist the extension of
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 239
human slavery into the new territories under
process of formation into States. He became a
trusted friend and supporter of the leaders of the
movement in New York, such as Morgan, his
business friend, Seward, Greeley, and their co-
workers. In 1856 he was sent as a delegate to
the first great gathering of forces at Pittsburg,
and then to the Philadelphia National Conven-
tion which organized the People's party ; after-
ward the Republican party, and nominated
John C. Fremont for President and William L.
Dayton for Vice-President. Without ceasing to
be a business man, or becoming in any wise a
politician in the ordinary sense of the word, he
took an intense and very busy interest in the
development of the new organization. It was
during the heat and excitement of this period that
his first great disaster befell him, for he was one
of the victims of the celebrated " National Hotel
poisoning case." At a dinner-party at that hotel,
in Washington, a number of guests were made
to suffer from some unknown agent in the food
set before them, some fatally and others to a
less degree. Various explanations were offered,
none satisfactory, but after Mr. Roberts re-
covered the first severe effects, something like
an undiscoverable poison remained in his system,
causing him intermittent suffering and undoubt-
edly shortening his days. It introduced, how-
ever, a new element into all his subsequent
dealings with business or with men. Those who
knew him could not but admire the kindly
patience with which he attended to multi-
240 MEN OF BUSINESS
form affairs and duties while tortured by
pains of the most racking, irritating character.
Many a time he would escape from his down-
town office, go home, and try to endure his tor-
ments the better as he walked up and down,
alone or with some friend, from one to another
of the chosen treasures of his picture-gallery.
He could almost put away an ache while discuss-
ing and admiring the genius of a master.
The next Presidential campaign, in 1860, the
Lincoln campaign, brought Mr. Roberts into al-
most as much political activity as if he had been
a party editor or a stump-speaker, and he con-
tributed considerable sums for the campaign
expenses of those who were so. With the elec-
tion of President Lincoln, however, something
almost like a new career opened before him.
The muttering thunder of the coming civil
war could be heard during all the following
winter, and hostilities had begun, in several places
and forms, before the inauguration. It was a
time when timid men held back and when even
brave men hesitated, but the hot Welsh blood of
Mr. Roberts was up and he was ready for action.
He was no soldier, but he could rally and arm
soldiers, only regretting that he was not to lead
them in person. He was not a sea-captain, but
he was a ship-owner, and the country a few days
later needed a swift steam transport to convey
supplies to the beleaguered garrison of Fort
Sumter. The Navy Department had no vessel
ready, nor funds to buy or charter one, but the
steamer Star of the West was instantly offered
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 241
by Mr. Roberts. Her mission failed, indeed, and
Sumter fell ; but an invaluable example had been
set, and the patriotism of other men took fire.
Few and scattered were the forces at the dis-
posal of the perplexed administration. It could
not properly garrison a single fort on the coast,
nor guard the approaches to the capital. There
were rumors that the all but vitally important
Fortress Monroe was in danger of sudden seiz-
ure. Its loss would have been irreparable ; but
Mr. Roberts had another steamer, the America.
He raised and equipped a thousand men, the
America transported them to man the threatened
fort, and the danger was over.
It was a busy time for the patriotic merchant,
for all his enterprises were demanding his ut-
most attention during the panicky and commer-
cially disastrous months of the spring of 1861.
His best energies, however, were given to the
needs of the government. It had no credit at
the first, nor money, nor lawful means of obtain-
ing money or men, but it could have anything
there was in the hands of Mr. Roberts. It was
precisely the kind of support needed in that
hour of terrible strain and peril. It came from
many men, of many kinds, and it came with the
strength of a rising tide. Even the Bull Run
defeat hardly checked it for a moment. After
that, however, there was a great army in the field
and many fleets upon the sea, and merchants,
ship-owners, like Mr. Roberts, were called upon
to provide and carry supplies and to furnish
transportations under due forms of law and by
16
242 MEN OF BUSINESS
contract. It was altogether in the righteous
process of events that the merchant who had
given ships and carried men without pay should
now be compensated as others, and should be
employed to his uttermost capacity. The patri-
otic fulfilment of his contracts could be utterly
relied on, and he received and performed many.
That his remuneration was very large before
the end of the long war was an almost inevitable
consequence not looked forward to by him, or
by anybody else, in the dark hour when the Star
of the West recoiled from before the Confeder-
ate batteries in Charleston' Harbor.
The war ended and the hour of rejoicing over,
the return of peace was darkened by the assas-
sination of President Lincoln. The feeling of
Mr. Roberts, to whom the murdered President
had been a personal friend, was partly expressed
in a draft for ten thousand dollars sent to the
Lincoln family.
In that same year, 1865, Mr. Roberts was the
Republican candidate for Mayor of New York,
but was defeated, for the city government was
overwhelmingly under the control of the political
opposition. There were especial reasons why
he was himself less than popular with certain
classes. Not only was he very rich and lived in
a magnificent house, but he had always been
outspoken in his views concerning every form
of social disorder. Everybody had heard the
story of his conduct during the horrible draft
riots of 1863. It was easy to use against him
the fact that when informed that a detachment of
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 243
the mob was coming to burn one of his steamers
at her wharf, he obtained a brace of brass can-
non, loaded them to the muzzle with slugs and
grape-shot, stationed them at the barricade he
built across the pier, and waited behind them
with a force of determined men, well armed,
ready to make the burning of that vessel a
bloody piece of work. The mob heard about it
and did not come, but it was not by any means
forgotten, nor were any of his other vehement
declarations on behalf of law and order.
One of his earlier enterprises was now coming
up in his mind in another form, or rather in sev-
eral forms. The routes to California had been
mightily developed both by land and sea, but
they were not yet perfected. On land Mr.
Roberts advocated the construction of the Texas
& Pacihc Railroad, invested two millions of
dollars in the enterprise, and induced other
capitalists to follow his example. Of the water
routes, he now selected the old Tehuautepec
line, over which Hernan Cortes had marched to
the Pacific, and proposed to construct not only
a railway, but a ship canal from shore to shore.
This was but part of a scheme which included
a ship canal across the Florida peninsula, from a
point on the St. John's River to the Gulf of Mex-
ico. Much money was expended in preliminary
surveys, a company was formed, its stock was
ready for issue, its bonds were printed and
partly signed and ready for the American and
European markets, when, in September, 1873,
the great panic suddenly swept through the
244 MEN OF BUSINESS
financial world, and all such schemes were shat-
tered.
The losses of Mr. Roberts were enormous.
He owed no debts, but much property had van-
ished and more was either shrivelled in nominal
value or made temporarily unavailable. An-
other man might have contented himself with
enforced retirement from baffled enterprises, but
there was an especial demand upon the remain-
ing financial abilities of the veteran merchant.
He was still very rich and numbers of his old
friends were in trouble. Sick, suffering, weary
in mind and broken in body, he came out from
among the wrecks of his shattered schemes to
hold up the men who had been his friends and
business associates, until the storm should pass
and they could stand alone. It passed, and
many things returned to their former condition,
but for others it was now getting too late in the
day. There were minor enterprises to which
attention could be given by Mr. Roberts, both
in the United States and the Canadas, but they
were and must be henceforth mainly in the
hands of other men, for the working days of the
old merchant were over. He could buy pict-
ures, encourage artists, help neighbors, but he
could not again undertake highways across the
continent, nor steamship lines on the sea.
His charities had taken permanent forms in
several instances, notably in the founding of the
Women's Christian Association and in the Home
for Girls, in New York City. His treasured gal-
lery had grown around the germ provided by
MARSHALL OWEN ROBERTS 245
boyish energy and economy, until it contained
pictures whose value in cash was over three
quarters of a million of dollars. He had gained
all that he had ever dreamed of gaining.
The end came, September 11, 1880, at Sara-
toga. During several years Mr. Roberts had
lived in semi-retirement, but his departure called
forth universal expressions of respect and regret.
Nevertheless, only a few of even those who
from time to time had seen him and thought
they knew him, were awrare how very remark-
able a character, how generous and brave a man,
had ceased to be numbered among the merchant
princes of New York.
XIII.
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN.
THE world contains a larger population than
ever before. No doubt the most interesting-
illustration of the increase is offered by the com-
posite millions collected, by birth or immigra-
tion, within the boundaries of the United States,
the latest constructed of the nationalities of the
first rank. A study of the American people,
grade for grade and class for class, reveals the
fact that their condition, as compared with cor-
responding grades and classes of any of the old-
time civilizations, is vastly improved. Every
description of human life above grovelling pau-
perism enjoys more and more varied comfort
and a more plentiful and regular support than
was formerly possible. Very similar is the state
of things to be discovered in most parts of Eu-
rope, and to a less degree even in wide areas of
Asia under European control. France, for in-
stance, supports, in generally prosperous condi-
tions, at the close of the nineteenth century, four
times the population that could with difficulty
be kept alive upon the same area only two cen-
turies earlier.
Whatever other causes may be credited with
any share in the manifest increase of the means
George Mortimer Pullman.
5L1
. LKNC
TILD&N FQUNi
K
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 247
of living, one is admittedly beyond dispute. It
is the marvellous increase in the varied occupa-
tions provided for skill and labor, that is, in the
employments by means of which men and women
earn the means of employing other men and
women. It has been unthinkingly remarked
that we have more needs than formerly, that new
wants have been created for us, and that so our
modern life is artificial, as compared with the
half-starved simplicity of the ancient times. It
is very much more near the truth to reply that
the wants of human nature have been discovered,
step by step, like new lands lying westward, and
that each newly found need and its provision
has led on to other discoveries. Sure it is that
but for the men who have opened new channels
for industry, new employments for busy thou-
sands, the unemployed multitudes must perish.
Each of these men is, therefore, in his place, a
public benefactor. He is so even more dis-
tinctly than the man who attains success, how-
ever eminent, in handling or directing means of
occupation already created. He is so in a yet
higher degree, if the new ideas by which he
operates and the new occupations which are
provided are themselves in the line of social ad-
vancement and elevation. It is not always,
however, that the originator adds to his inven-
tive genius the administrative and other busi-
ness faculties to be the master-machinist and
supervising architect of his own plans.
George Mortimer Pullman was born upon a
farm in Chautauqua County, New York, M arch
248 MEN OF BUSINESS
3, 1831. His family were in moderate circum-
stances and were able to give him no more edu-
cational advantages than were provided by the
local schools. These, however, were of good
quality. His home training was such as to aid
him in the formation of fixed habits of industry
and firmly settled principles of morality and in-
tegrity. While not large in frame, he possessed
an unusual degree of bodily toughness and ac-
tivity, which was well developed by the whole-
some work belonging to the daily " chores '
of a farmer's boy. On the whole, his primary
schooling of all sorts was peculiarly well de-
vised for the kind of life before him. At the
early age ol fourteen he began to look out
for himself, and his first service was as boy-
of-all-work in a country store. At seventeen
he went to Albion, N. Y., where an older
brother was already established in the cabinet-
making business. Here a very important ap-
prenticeship was served, for he learned what
couid be done usefully and ornamentally with
wood and woven fabrics, and obtained ideas
concerning the art and the varied appliances of
upholstering. All was to be of use to him at a
later day, but with his lessons in taste and the
like he acquired much information of another
kind. He learned something of engineering and
mechanics, and through a series of minor expe-
riences he acquired strong confidence in his own
ability for devising mechanical ways and means.
He even prospered pecuniarily, through constant
thrift and industry, so that upon becoming of
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 249
age he had a few dollars of his own to begin
business with.
The first good opportunity did not present
itself until a year later, but it was coming and
he was preparing for it. The Erie Canal was in
process of widening. The buildings of all sorts
which had been put up along the margins of
what was at first derisively described as DeWitt
Clinton's Ditch were to be torn down or moved
away. Many of them manifestly called for the
former process, but there were considerable
warehouses of brick as well as of wood that were
worth saving, and young Pullman made con-
tracts for their transfer to new positions. The
operation was less hazardous than it seemed,
and his complete success not only rewarded
him pecuniarily, but gave him experience and a
record which was shortly to be of great value.
Contract followed contract, and Mr. Pullman was
doing very well in other ways than house-mov-
ing, but this was for the time his specialty, and
the great field for it was not in New York. At
the foot of Lake Michigan a new city had sprung
up with such rapidity that it was there before
any suitable arrangements had been made for it.
Its lower floors were but little, in some places not
at all, above the level of the lake, and so Chicago
could have no sewers. It was necessary to be-
gin again, and the entire place must be lifted
several feet. There were great blocks of busi-
ness buildings, brick or stone, which must be
held up while new cellars and foundations were
put under them. Through the earlier stages of
250 MEN OF BUSINESS
the process Mr. Pullman's business detained
him in New York, but in 1859 ne removed to
Chicago to take his share in the general marvel
of new-city engineering. He had, however, an-
other idea growing in his mind, and had already
begun a series of practical experiments for its
accomplishment.
The railroad system of the United States was
yet in the first stages of its development. It had
begun timidly, experimentally, with short lines
between important places, and its management
had been marked, as a rule, by the most per-
nicious economy. It is true that improvement
began at once, for the first American locomo-
tives, designed and built by Peter Cooper at
Baltimore, were especially adapted to American
roads. The primitive "strap" rail, spiked upon
a log, had given place to the T heavy rail. The
later cars were not altogether so uncomfortable
as were the travelling cribs to which the term
" hyena ' had somehow attached. The process
of consolidation had begun, for the seven roads
across middle New York, for instance, had
become one corporation, as the New York
Central. The extension of Western lines was
going on rapidly and the days of " long-dis-
tance ' railroading were at hand. For that
reason so were the days of express companies,
through-freight lines, and improved passenger
cars, up to this time impossible.
During the year 1858 Mr. Pullman's attention
had been especially drawn to the long-distance
sleeping-car idea. He had often enough seen
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 251
such as were in use, but one comfortless night,
during a sixty-mile ride from Buffalo to West-
field, he was forced to lie awake and consider
the defects of such machines as he was carried
in. They were indeed unsatisfactory affairs, for
they were nothing but enlarged copies of the
night-bunks in the passenger boats of the Erie
Canal, three tiers of shelves on each side of the
car. They were to be slept in as a rule, and if
passengers were wise, without too much un-
dressing. They were peculiarly easy to get out
of in going around sharp curves or aided by the
sudden oscillations of cars with imperfect springs
on badly ballasted roads.
The thoughts which began to germinate dur-
ing that night ride, or earlier, did not come up
into sight until the following year. After Mr.
Pullman entered upon his Chicago business he
continued to study the subject. He began a
series of preliminary experiments by remodel-
ling two clay -coaches on the Chicago & Alton
Road, and afterward did the same on the old
Galena Road. He met with very little encour-
agement, for in a very strict use of the word he
was a pioneer. The sleeping-cars in use were
invariably the property of the road they ran on,
and their trips were limited to its own rails.
The fares charged varied from fifty cents a
berth, or a dollar for a double berth, to a dollar
and a half on longer runs, but they were not re-
garded as especially profitable. The simple fact
was that no attention had been given to the idea
of making long-distance railroading enjoyable.
252 MEN OF BUSINESS
Its fatigues, discomforts, positive miseries, its
detriments to health and its waste of working
energies, had been accepted as unavoidable, as
mere matters of course. A long journey was
known to be a long suffering, and its martyrs
must endure to the end, unless they should die
on the way.
An entirely different conception of the future
of American passenger transportation had now
taken possession of Mr. Pullman. With only
limited mechanical skill, he had acquired a large
fund of varied mechanical knowledge, much of
which, beginning with the Albion cabinet-mak-
ing shop, was in the direct line of his proposed
invention. He did his part in the elevation of
Chicago to its new level, adding considerably to
the capital required for other undertakings, but
it was 1863 before he was ready to elevate him-
self entirely to his new enterprise.
A suitable shop was now hired, a competent
master-mechanic was employed, with skilled
workmen under him, and they began the some-
what tedious task of constructing a new car to
meet the requirements of a man whose concep-
tion of what it should be grew while it was
building. He gave all the details his personal,
constant supervision during long months of toil.
The changes were radical, for he was not think-
ing merely of show.
The steadiness required for sleep was to be
obtained by powerful springs upon trucks with
sixteen wheels, altogether an innovation. As to
the beds, they were to be as those of a good
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN
253
a
o
Q_
CD
.5
CO
c
(0
hotel, and the general outfit was to be that of a
drawing-room. Only a faint idea of the im-
provement was ex-
pressed by the fact
that while one of
the old " rattlers "
cost $4,000, Car A,
the " Pioneer " of
the Pullman cars,
cost $18,000. Oth-
er men called it
uselessly extrava-
gant, but in his
eyes it was only
too plain, and it
still lacked many
of the conveni-
ences belonging to
the cars w h i c h
were building in
his mind. Relief
from fatigue ; pure
air secured by
good ventilation ;
greater safety of
life and limb from
accidents ; person-
al cleanliness;
special care of pas-
sengers in need of
care ; refreshments by the way, and at last a
complete hotel on wheels, rolling on over road
after road, across the continent, after roads and
OJ
•-
o
254 MEN OF BUSINESS
bridges should be provided ; all was taking form,
as the advantages and defects of the pioneer car
were studied, from day to day.
Other people were examining the matter, es-
pecially railroad men, and the president of the
Michigan Central Road, Mr. James F. Joy, was
nearly willing to try the experiment on his own
line. With a view to this, Mr. Pullman con-
structed four more cars, but each of these cost
$24,000, and even Mr. Joy was startled by such
manifest extravagance. It would divert travel
from his road if so high a rate as $2 per berth
were charged upon its sleeping-cars. In re-
ply to his objection, Mr. Pullman put in verbal
shape one of the leading ideas of his business
career, 'that the best was really the cheapest, and
that all people were willing to pay for it if they
could get it. The dispute ended in a compro-
mise, for the new cars were put upon trial on
the road, each with one of the cheaper cars for a
running mate. The problem was solved in a
few weeks, for the old cars were always empty
until the new were filled, and the public loudly
expressed the disgust occasioned by the unpleas-
ant comparison. Mr. Pullman had undoubtedly
made a great invention, but it was one for which
there was manifestly no patent. He could not
hope, men said, to obtain a monopoly of the con-
struction of his magnificent cars. Each road
might build its own and run them. Each car-
constructing concern would be a rival in the
business. It would, after all, be limited. Only
a few roads would undertake so great an inno-
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 255
vation. The idea was good enough, but there
was no money in it. It was absurd to suppose
that one central concern would be permitted to
manage the sleeping-car service of any consider-
able part of the roads in the country. Numerous,
indeed, were the cavils and objections which Mr.
Pullman was compelled to meet when he made
his next step forward. He could see, and won-
dered that others could not, that the very nat-
ure of long-distance railroading rendered neces-
sary a consolidation of the sleeping-car interests.
There might be, probably would be, indepen-
dent builders and independent lines, but to all
these would surely apply the severe doctrine of
the survival of the fittest.
There were several points in favor of Mr. Pull-
man's comprehensive scheme from the outset,
whatever were the obstacles. He had been able
to try his preliminary experiments at his own
expense, without losing control of the subse-
quent operations by selling " interests ' at too
early a day. He was, therefore, the one-man
power, unhindered.
The size of the country and the length of its
railway journeys was like a permanent founda-
tion for his enterprise. The very refusal of other
men, at first, to see as he did, kept the field clear
for his operations until he had securely occupied
it. Added to all this, and utilizing it, was his
own personal character and capacity. His ad-
ministrative faculties were of a high order, fit-
ting him for the selection and direction of ca-
pable associates and subordinates. His inven-
256 MEN OF BUSINESS
tive power enabled him to respond to each dis-
covered requirement with some sufficient device,
and of these inventions a number were patent-
able, protecting him to an important extent from
rivalries and interferences. Hardly of less im-
portance were his singular steadiness, freedom
from the fever of speculation or mere money-
getting ; patience under difficulties, and entire
devotion to his business for its own sake. It
was to be his life-work, and he was conscientious-
ly determined to do it well.
It would not be easy to form or give an ade-
quate idea of the diplomacy, tact, energy, or
financial ability displayed in the operations fol-
lowing the first success of 1863. Mr. Pullman
almost lived on the railroads, as he went from
one to another, without a car of his own making
to travel in. It was well for him that his natural
toughness had become increased rather than di-
minished in his ripe manhood. He was at this
time very well fitted for the kind of diplomacy
he was engaged in, with railway managers, finan-
ciers, even politicians, statesmen, and their het-
erogeneous associates. He was a quiet man,
of courteous manners, always well dressed and
always apparently in good humor. He was a
good talker, with an excellent faculty for making
other men talk and for listening well, and he
never seemed to be tired.
Success came step by step, and the Pullman
cars were an acknowledged institution of Amer-
ican railway travel. Year after year invention
after invention, comfort after comfort, the ideas
GKORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 257
of the inventor and manager, were made to take
shape in wood and metal or other fabrics, or in
the personal service of the system.
Yet another invention, however, had been
growing- toward completeness in the mind of
Mr. Pullman. He had established a successful
manufacturing company, and it had shops at
St. Louis, Mo. ; Elmira, N. Y. ; Detroit, Mich.,
and Wilmington, Del. It could command a great
deal of assistance, in cases of need, from other
manufacturers, but all was not enough to keep
pace with the swift growth of the demand. It
was with reference to this necessity for larger
and better shops and their workmen that Mr.
Pullman made his next achievement, for he in-
vented a new town and proceeded with its con-
struction very much as, in 1863, he had put
together the Pioneer.
With reference to all the objects proposed, the
best attainable locality for a new town would be
in or near Chicago, but the selling price of every
acre of land in that vicinity had been fixed with
reference to the values of the time to come. An
attempt to purchase any considerable area would
surely cause a speculative advance, and so the
entire project was kept secret while a cautious
purchasing process went on through another
hand than Mr. Pullman's. The spot chosen was
well beyond the city limits, as they were in 1879,
on the shore of Calumet Lake. About thirty-
five hundred acres of bare prairie were at last
secured, at an outlay of less than eight hundred
thousand dollars, and then, in 1880, the work of
17
258 MEN OF BUSINESS
construction began. The Chicago experience
was not to be repeated, for the first thing at-
tended to was the establishment of a permanent
" grade," sufficiently above the original prairie
and lake levels to provide for a system of drain-
age. The sewers came first, with a force of four
thousand men to put them in place. Then came
the water-mains and the other piping for which
it is customary to tear up city thoroughfares so
extensively. The streets and avenues were then
put on, and along the lines of these lay the orig-
inal levels, ready to be cut up into cellars and
filled up for back-yards and ornamental grounds,
as occasion might require. Of course, Mr. Pull-
man called in the best architectural and other
trained ability that he could obtain ; but no other
American town was ever created in precisely
this manner. Perhaps as near a historical par-
allel as any is that furnished by the Egyptian
seaport called into existence by the far-seeing
genius of Alexander.
Every shop previously put up elsewhere for
the operations of the Pullman Company had been
as an experiment, providing valuable suggestions
which were to be availed of now. No part of
them had been of more evident importance than
were such as related to the personal character
and conduct of the force of workingmen to be
employed. It was to this, therefore, that Mr.
Pullman's inventions largely related. It was to
be a town whose inhabitants should govern
themselves in the direction of good morals, in-
telligence, and prosperity. The very proposition
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 259
seemed to be ridiculous, but so had been the
palace sleeping-car and travelling-hotel system,
until its success revolutionized long-distance rail-
way travel. The idea of the new town was to
be the same — that men and women were quite
willing to have the best things if they could get
them at reasonable prices. Nothing was to be
given away. The false charity which fosters
any kind of pauperism was to be shunned as a
positive evil. Anything approaching the " pater-
nal" or lord of the manor supervision of free
Americans was to be studiously avoided. The
best opportunities for industry and thrift were
to be provided, but personal independence and
responsibility were not to be interfered with.
The domain of the Pullman Company, the
nucleus of the proposed city, was not to be sold
at any price, but to remain under absolute con-
trol, for here the prevailing tone and character
was to be established.
Shops for the manufacture of all kinds of rail-
way cars and their outfits were put up rapidly
but very solidly. So were admirably planned
dwellings, separate or in flats, homes or board-
ing-houses for workers. Stores and workshops of
all varieties common in an American town were
provided. In all, the useful and the attractive
were equally sought for, both in the buildings
and their surroundings. Leases were given to
acceptable occupants, each lease terminable upon
ten days' notice on either side. A dissatisfied
tenant, or one for any reason disposed to change,
was not bound to remain. On the other hand,
260 MEN OF BUSINESS
no structure owned by the company could be
used for detrimental purposes. No worthy ten-
ant has ever been disturbed, but a remarkable
result has been obtained, for here is now a town
of twelve thousand inhabitants in which there is
no drinking-saloon nor one house of ill repute.
Among the first buildings erected were two
churches, but these were not " given " to the con-
gregations meeting in them. Their use is paid
for. Only the public library, now of about eight
thousand volumes, is the individual gift of Mr.
Pullman, that it might be selected upon rational
principles and not collected hit or miss and lum-
bered with unreadable rubbish.
There are grounds for athletic sports, a great
" arcade " building for general shopping, an ad-
mirable market building, a public school-house
attended by over a thousand scholars, and at
every turn an observer is compelled to acknowl-
edge the operation of intelligent design, provid-
ing for the present and the future by omitting
the chance-medley blunders of the past in other
town-makings.
A channel, now dredging to the depth re-
quired, will shortly make Calumet Lake a harbor
of the great lake system, and Pullman will be a
port of entry. Outside of the original area a
continual building goes on, in strict relation to
the founder's plan, excepting that here over a
thousand dwellings are owned by workmen in
the employ of the company.
It was in the primal idea that good wages
should be paid, that all rents should be reason-
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN
ably low, that food - supplies should be of the
best and at fair prices, but there was something
more than this. Mr. Pullman believed that his
cars were an educational agency, positively im-
proving the tone of the people who rode in them
by the influence of surroundings.
In like manner he sought to foster
self-respect among the inhabitants
of his town. Whatever work they
might do to earn their wages, the
place they lived in must show
them nothing unsightly or un-
^"SA i
' ' '!>&^ !-? '.T S*
--a^Wl]!ill(J|((Vi., ,
«
«fe5--
A Viev/ of Pullman, III.
clean or pernicious, so far as he could prevent
it. Beauty, order, convenience were to be con-
tinual teachers, and their opposites were at least
to be crippled.
After a dozen years of practical working, the
question of the success of the invention is partly
answered in figures. Of the twelve thousand in-
habitants, 6,324 are employed by the company.
The average wrages of these, including boys and
women, are $2.26 per day. They have deposits
amounting to $632,000 in the savings bank, or an
average of $3 16 to each person. The eight miles of
HEX OF BUSINESS
paved streets in the town of Pullman are scrupu-
lously clean, and so is its moral character, and
workmen from its shops are sought for as men
who have a well-known certificate.
The car-shops are by no means the only indus-
try created. For instance, the clay under the
lake makes excellent bricks, and thirty million
of these are manufactured per annum.
Considered financially, the business success of
Mr. Pullman is hardly exceeded by that of any
other living man. Other men are his peers in
railway enterprises or exceed him in accumulated
wealth, but the distinguishing feature of his own
achievement is its originality. He saw a coming
demand, merely germinal at the beginning, and
he developed it by the manner in which he sup-
plied it. There is no other business career offer-
ing an exact parallel. As to numerical illustra-
tions, the gross earnings of the company in its
first fiscal year were $280,000, while for 1891-92
they were $10,002,356.04. Its dividends were
$2,300,000, and it added $3,250,389 to its surplus
fund. Upon all its roads the company employs
2,512 sleeping-, parlor-, and dining-cars, but this
does not include some that are running in other
lands, for instance, upon the roads of Australia.
During the year ending July i, 1892, Pullman
cars carried 5,279,320 passengers, and the rates
of speed, the safety, and the comfort must be
made factors in any estimate of the indicated use.
The number of miles run was 191,255,656, which
means that one Pullman car doing it all could
have visited the sun and returned, and then
GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN 2G3
gone more than half-way around the earth.
The longest regular, unbroken run made by
Pullman cars, however, is that of 4,332 miles,
from Boston to Los Angeles.
The shop-town of Pullman and the palace-
hotel-car system, taken together, present an ex-
ceedingly readable illustration of the great mar-
vel of human life and work : that is, of the man-
ner in which a mental picture, a conception,
arising in the mind of a capable man, may be
brought out and put into material shape for the
lasting benefit of other men.
XIV. "
PETER COOPER.
A GREAT evil, not unmixed with good, to the
great mass of the world's labor force is the man-
ner in which it has seemed forced to move on
along unchanging grooves, the deeply worn ruts
of old-time travel. Among Oriental nations, to
this day, we see the most perfect illustrations of
a tendency which divides labor, and with it life,
into fixed strata, which are castes in one place
and guilds in another. The specific faculties of
varied trades, as well as the individual right to
live by them, are declared an inheritance, de-
scending from father to son. In other parts of
the world — in Europe, for instance — there is a
plainly related state of things and there is an
evident danger of its importation to this coun-
try. Already we have the guilds, in one form
or another, with a manifest caricature of the
castes, and outside of them we have an increas-
ing multitude of pariahs destitute of trade con-
nections. It was not so in the beginning of our
national work; is not so now in our recently
formed communities, and it is one of the fossil-
isms which we do not need to copy from either
the Middle Ages, the Hindoos, or the Chinese.
Another illustration of the same natural ten-
Peter Cooper.
ASTOfl, JL AND
TIL£»i.N FOUNDATIONS
*t L
PETER COOPER 'Jttf
dency, or caused by the long operation of the
indicated evil, is seen in the helplessness with
which the lives of so many men run in their ac-
cidental trades or occupations as on tramways,
outside of which they can hardly run at all. A
contrast, if he is not also a result, is furnished by
the not uncommon character of whom it is said
that he is Jack of all trades and master of none.
There is, indeed, a well understood advantage
to be obtained by persistent devotion to one
wisely chosen field of thought and action, even
if the worker in it believes both himself and his
field to be narrowly fenced in. The men are few
whose natural capacities include that of a gen-
eral adaptability in any high degree.
The changing conditions and the rapid growth
of our own country have presented innumerable
object-lessons in successes and in failures. It
has been proved to be a sufficiently general rule
that a man going into a new place will do well
to take his trade with him, if he really has one,
and with it a species of watchful inquiry as to
what it can be improved into or changed for.
Strictly in accordance with the rule is the ap-
pearance, here and there, of men for whom each
new set of circumstances seems to call up and
set in motion within them something which had
not previously presented itself, but which meets
the demands of the occasion. They add to their
other capacities the genius of versatility and so
are able to win success among changing condi-
tions.
Peter Cooper was born February 12, 1791, in
2G6 MEN OF BUSINESS
the city of New York. This was, at that elate,
a fairly thriving community and was beginning
to recover from the disasters which had befallen
it, as a garrisoned military post, during the long
years of the war for independence. It had very
few manufactures, however, and all business
affairs were conducted under serious disadvan-
tages, owing to the disordered condition of com-
merce and the absence of a stable or uniform
currency.
Peter's father had been a hatter before the
war, but had left his trade to serve in the Conti-
nental army, rising to the rank of lieutenant. It
was a patriotic family, for Peter's grandfather
also was a soldier of the Revolution. On his
mother's side the same honorable record was
made. Her father, John Campbell, a successful
potter and at one time an alderman of the city,
left all to serve his country as a deputy quarter-
master-general, and there was no more difficult
post to fill among the forces under Washington.
From first to last their most dangerous enemy
was famine, rather than the British. It is related
that Mr. Campbell's cash advances for army sup-
plies, to a considerable amount, were refunded
to him at last in Continental currency — waste-
paper. It was owing to the war, therefore, that
the Cooper family was anything but prosperous.
The returned soldier tried to be again a hatter,
under difficulties, and his little son began to earn
something as soon as his head had risen to the
level of a work-bench. His earliest memory of
that " hard time ' was of pulling hair from rab-
PETER COOPER
bit skins, with some uncertainty remaining as to
what it was for. Men with larger capital and
better relations to the fur trade absorbed the
hatter business, and Mr. Cooper removed to
Peekskill. He had some knowledge of the brew-
O
ing business and set up a small brewery, but
Peter's schooling was sadly interfered with by
the duty now upon him of delivering the full ale-
kegs to customers and bringing home the empty
ones. The results of this experiment wrere dis-
couraging and there was another removal to
Catskill, where occasional employment as a
hatter could be alternated with brick-making.
Peter was getting older and stronger now, and
could carry and turn bricks, but there was no
great market for them, nor much profit in their
manufacture. There is something pathetic in
the bald outlines preserved of the successive
struggles of the old Continental soldier to
maintain his family. The next removal was to
Brooklyn, where the hatter's trade was once
more resorted to for a while, and then there
was another change, for a brewery was set up at
Newburg, and Peter did not go to work in it.
He was now, in the year 1808, seventeen years
of age, and his entire schooling was measured
by half-days of attendance at common schools,
such as they were, during one year. How
deeply he felt, then and afterward, the lack of
the teaching and discipline obtained by others
he was yet to record for the benefit of thousands.
Without teachers or books, however, the shifting
toil and trial of his earlier years had aroused and
Ob' BUSINESS
developed some of his faculties to a remarkable
degree. He was now apprenticed, until he should
become of age, to John Woodward, a carriage-
maker, to learn the trade, but he did much more
than that. He at once began to see and to
remedy the defective nature of the very tools he
was taught the use of. The days of labor-saving
machinery were but just beginning and there
was abundant room for improvements in almost
any direction. Peter Cooper was still a mere
apprentice-boy, when he invented a machine for
mortising hubs of wagon-wheels. The profit ac-
crued to his employer rather than to himself,
but at the expiration of the apprenticeship, in
1812, Mr. Woodward proposed to continue him in
the carriage business. Neither the terms nor the
prospect were satisfactory, however, and young
Cooper had seen yet another machine which had
aroused his interest. It was an improvement in
cloth-shearing machinery, and there was a sudden
impulse given at that time to the cloth industry
of the United States, for foreign goods were shut
out by the war with England. Cooper settled at
Hempstead, Long Island, to engage in the manu-
facture of the new machines, and he met with ex-
cellent success. He made money enough to buy
the right for the entire State ; he added important
improvements of his own invention, and he mar-
ried Sarah Bedell, of Hempstead, who was to be
his invaluable partner and helper during fifty-two
years that followed.
The war with England came to an end, and the
importation of British goods, renewed after so
PETER COOPER 269
long a suspension, very nearly ruined the young
manufactures of the United States. There was
to be no more demand for the shearing machines,
but the shop was there, with many appliances,
which made it easy for a keen inventor to change
it into a small factory of cabinet-ware and furni-
ture. By doing so, the severest losses threatened
by the return of peace and of British competition
were avoided. Nevertheless, it was plain that:
nothing important could be accomplished by a
cabinet factory in the dull old town of Hemp-
stead. He had only put his property into good
and salable condition, and sold it as soon as he
could find a purchaser. He had now a moderate
capital and was able to make a beginning in the
grocery business in the city of New York. It
was a time of financial prostration and distress
the world over, and there was small prospect for
success against the competition which struggled
hungrily for all the trade offering. No direct
success was won, but the very articles he bought
and sold brought their own suggestions to the
mind of Peter Cooper. As he handled them,
from day to day, he acquired knowledge to
which ideas of improvement at once attached.
Defective qualities and prices which hindered
consumption seemed to call for better sources of
supply and improved methods of manufacture.
A series of exceedingly valuable ideas, therefore,
may be regarded as the net profits of the grocery
business, at the date when Mr. Cooper went out
of it.
On the old " Middle Road/' away out of
270 MEN OF BUSINESS
town, as the town was then, and between
Thirty -first and Thirty - fourth Streets, as it is
now, there was a piece of land that was held on
a "twenty-one years' lease." It was obtained
upon easy terms, and a moderate beginning
was made of a factory for improved glue
and other matters, including isinglass, oil, whit-
ing, and prepared chalk. To each product
and to all the details of its manufacture Mr.
Cooper brought the peculiar acuteness of per-
ception or invention, which continually enabled
him to control the market by the quality of the
goods he presented. During a long period of
patient effort he actually did present them to
customers in person, but such a business was sure
to grow, and his day of prosperity finally came.
The old lease expired and the land returned to
its owner ; but that had been expected. Ten
acres on Maspeth Avenue, Brooklyn, had been
purchased, and here the factory was set up, to re-
main till the present day, with its many improve-
ments within and without.
If the numerous exhibitions of mental readi-
ness to meet the demands of the glue business
appeared to be all within old lines, the next
venture wrent widely out beyond them, for Mr.
Cooper had been studying the condition and
prospects of American iron mining and manu-
facture, with whatever other industries were
nearly related to them. The corporate limits of
the city of Baltimore extended over a wide
area, much of which was apparently beyond all
prospect of " city " development. In 1828, there-
PETER COOPER
271
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fore, Mr. Cooper was
able to obtain control
of not less than three
thousand acres within
the municipality. It
was not intended for
residences, but as the
eastern depot and
workshop of the coal
and iron field, about
to be reached by the
Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad, then build-
ing. It was a remark-
able instance of busi-
ness forecast, but it
was accompanied by
a yet more remark-
able exhibition of
mechanical and in-
ventive genius. The
science of railway
construction was in
its earliest infancy,
and there were no
railway engineers
such as would now
be intrusted with the
varied problems of a
proposed route. The
road which was to
connect the iron
mines and the West
21'2 MEN OF BUSINESS
with Baltimore must be constructed through
a rugged region where the probable cost per
mile threatened the enterprise with bankrupt-
cy. Between high grades or deep and costly
cuts, on the one hand, and short levels, sharp
curves, and difficult running, on the other, the
entire undertaking seemed a foredoomed fail-
ure. Something like disaster would, indeed,
have befallen it if it had not been for Peter
Cooper, who was busily erecting and perfecting
the Canton Iron Works upon his Baltimore
acres. He had intended to manufacture steam
engines there, and he had devised new ones
better adapted to American roads than were any
as yet attainable. From his own plans, and em-
bodying his own perception of what was needed,
he now constructed the first locomotive ever
made in the United States. It was a complete
success, and it saved the railway enterprise, for
it made the zigzag track available. At the same
time, however, the future prosperity of the Can-
ton Iron Works was assured. Not that Mr.
Cooper remained in Baltimore to manage them,
however, for he sold the works, taking a large
part of his pay in shares, at a nominal value of
$44, to hold until they were finally sold at $230.
There was, as he perceived, another important
iron centre at New York, and here he erected
works for the manufacture of wire and other
products, but at every step he discovered or ap-
plied some new idea. Perhaps the most impor-
tant of all was the first success, in the Cooper
works, after numberless failures elsewhere, in
PETER COOPER
273
COAL ecx
\A/
Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.
W
the use of anthracite coal for puddling purposes.
It rendered available many an otherwise useless
mountain of both coal and iron. The inventions
brought to him were in-
deed numerous, and the
experiments were end-
less, but there was some-
thing to be learned often
from failures, while ideas
that were crude when
brought to Mr. Cooper
were likely to develop
all the value in them
under his inspection. It was a matter of
course, perhaps, that a successful iron-master
should reach out into New Jersey, and, in 1845,
at Phillipsburg, N. J., near Easton, Pa., Mr.
Cooper built three blast-furnaces, the largest
then in the country, purchased the Andover
mines, and built eight miles of connecting rail-
way. Other men were building: furnaces here
J o
and there, and rolling-mills, but Mr. Cooper was
also investigating the important subject of fire-
proof buildings and the substitution of iron
beams and girders and other work for wood. At
his works, therefore, the first examples of the
new building materials were made, and a vast
amount of architecture was provided for that
was otherwise impracticable.
During all these years the busy mind of Mr.
Cooper did not content itself with the manage-
ment of his private business. He took a warm
interest in local politics, so far as these in any
18
274 MEN OF BUSINESS
way related to any manner of improvement. The
old pumps and wells which during so many
generations had supplied the people of New
York with water, were manifestly insufficient
either for the present or the future. The city
was almost at the mercy of fires. Its means for
quenching thirst threatened to become a source
and propagator of disease. Its manufacturers
had before them an impassable barrier at the
point where their water was measured for them.
North of Manhattan Island, on the Westchester
mainland, there were pure streams and lakes
among the hills, and if these could be utilized
the problem would be solved.
There were not only engineering difficulties in
the way, but legislative obstacles and slow stu-
pidities that now seem hardly credible. To the
entire subject, in all its parts and shapes, a vast
amount of intelligent attention was given by the
iron-master and factory-owner, who seemed to
have less time than other men for any business
but his own. He was memorably prominent
among the public-spirited citizens who had so
hard a struggle in carrying to success the plans
for the Croton aqueduct and for the accomplish-
ment of the novel idea, to New Yorkers, of " a
spring in every house."
Parallel with the efforts to obtain pure and
plentiful water, another work went on, with re-
sults which must be eternal. The city was
swarming with children for whom no suitable
means of obtaining even a primary education were
provided. The heart of a man whose own boy-
PETER COOPER 275
hood had been even less aided went out to them.
A society for the promotion of public schools
was organized, writh Peter Cooper as one of its
trustees and most vigorous working members.
The attention of the association was first given
to the existing schools, such as they were, and to
the study of better developed systems in opera-
tion elsewhere. Adequate legislation was then
obtained for the foundation upon which the
New York school system of the present day was
to be built up through successive advances.
Mr. Cooper's ceaseless activity at every stage of
the tedious movement made it almost a matter
of course that he should be named as one of
the city's first Board of Commissioners of Public
Schools. Thenceforward, there was a great deal
of what might almost be described as inven-
tion to be performed before the boys and girls
were endowed with the educational advantages
they required, but which had not been within
the reach of the first generation after the Revo-
lution.
It was in the direct line of his efforts for the
attainment of these results, and of other munici-
pal reforms, that Mr. Cooper was first elected
a Councilman, and then an Alderman, as his
grandfather had been in the old Colonial times.
It was as if the record of the family was to be
inseparably connected with that of the city
itself, but yet another memorial was in a process
of inventive creation. It wras one to the last
degree expressive of the character of the man
who devised it. It was simply impossible for
276 MEN OF BUSINESS
him to take hold of a piece of mechanism, hardly
of a manufactured article, without searching
for, if not always finding, a suggestion of some-
thing new. His study of and work for the gen-
eral school system led him to plan an institu-
tion which differed in many respects from any
other, but which promised to supply a want
that he perceived and the nature of which was
illustrated by his own experience. At every step
of his career he had felt his lack, not only of com-
mon-school but also of technical education, such
as the great mass does not absolutely require,
however much they might profit by it, but such
as would greatly enhance the usefulness of
those whose natural faculties and primary at-
tainments prepared them for its reception. Year
after year he pondered the idea of the school
he was inventing. He carefully sifted its objects
and its methods for accomplishing them, and a
clear perception of the future growth of the city's
population was shown in his choice of a locality.
He bought the piece of land bounded by Third
and Fourth Avenues, Eighth Street and Astor
Place. Here, in 1854, was laid the corner-stone
of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of
Science and Art. Five years later the com-
pleted building was transferred, in fee simple, to
a board of trustees, and with it a broad, liberal,
well-endowed plan for the perpetual education
of the young of both sexes, through the eye, the
ear, and the imagination, "in all branches of
knowledge through which men and women earn
their bread."
PETER COOPER 277
There were to be schools in art and design,
free lectures, free reading-rooms, collections of
works in art and science, and a continual growth
and addition of required appliances. So well
was the original invention thought out that each
succeeding year has testified to its practical
utility. Its cost, with improvements, exceeds
three-quarters of a million of dollars. It has a
further endowment of three hundred thousand
dollars, with a good income from parts of the
building rented for business purposes. So long
as he lived, its founder watched its working with
the keen, critical eye of a master-machinist
studying an experimental engine and enthusiastic
over its performance.
At an earlier day, in 1854, yet another great
problem of the future was brought to his atten-
tion. His next-door neighbor was a gentleman
named Field, a retired paper manufacturer, lately
returned from a long tour in South America.
One evening Mr. Field came in and laid before
his friend a remarkable scheme which he h^d
devised for laying a telegraphic cable from
America to Europe, across the oozy bed of the
Atlantic Ocean. Anything better suited to the
genius of Mr. Cooper could hardly have been
proposed, for the magnitude of the adventure
was hardly taken into consideration. It could
be done, it was wonderfully well worth doing,
and therefore it must be attempted. The idea
was by no means new, but he and Mr. Field be-
tween them invented new means for its accom-
plishment. Only three other men were called
278 MEN OF BUSINESS
in to organize the New York, Newfoundland &
London Telegraph Company, with Peter Cooper
as its president and Cyrus W. Field as its right
arm and hero. There were great difficulties to
be overcome at the outset. A brief apparent
success was then won, to be followed by failure
and by twelve long years of weary waiting, but
of continual endeavor. Mr. Cooper's faith and
courage did not waver, but he hopefully sus-
tained his heroic neighbor until at last a final and
permanent victory was obtained, with the same
president as at first still at the head of the com-
pany.
Mr. Cooper was now growing old and a large
part of his business had been turned over to his
son, Edward, and his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt,
two abundantly capable business men. They were
a relief in one direction, that endless activities
might go on in others. There was a long list of
societies, charitable mainly, in which Mr. Cooper
was trustee and general adviser as well as a
liberal-handed contributor. No man ever knew
how much money went out through these chan-
nels or in multiplied helps and givings of every
name and nature. Besides the regular perform-
ance of so many trusteeships there was a demand
which would not be denied. Mr. Cooper was,
by a general acknowledgment, the " first citizen "
of the municipality he had served so well. He
was not a politician, but any public meeting of a
general nature, of public trouble, or of popular
rejoicing was hardly complete without him upon
the platform, and his entrance was sure to be
PETER COOPER 270
recognized by a round of applause. The plain,
old-fashioned buggy in which he drove around
the city was a chariot before which all other
vehicles turned out. The children all grew up
to know him and to reverence his good, gray
head, and the long evening of his busy life was
spent in honor and in peace.
There was one small political episode in 1876.
Mr. Cooper had given attention to some phases
of the currency question, and had even printed
pamphlets setting forth his own ideas of im-
provements upon the existing system, which on
several occasions had failed to work well and
was manifestly insufficient. Other men who
were also busy with the subject organized what
was called the Greenback party, with a view
to a more liberal issue of paper currency, and
they named him as their candidate for the Presi-
dency. They gave him about a hundred thou-
sand votes, but they were really not an organized
political party, and it was only an expression of
opinion upon one subject.
The end of the long, useful, honorable life
came on the 4th of April, 1883. From every
quarter came tokens of the deep respect in which
Mr. Cooper had been held, but not all the votes
of societies or of financial and commercial insti-
tutions were so high a tribute as were the
earnest words which were uttered in the hasty
gatherings of the working men and women who
came to their places of meeting, as if by com-
mon consent, to say how strong a hold he had
won upon the popular affection. More than any
280 MEN OF BUSINESS
other living man, they had regarded him as their
friend. He had indeed done much for them and
for all his fellow-citizens of whatever name. It
would be difficult to point out among the busi-
ness men of America another success so com-
plete at every point. That it was so was in very
large part owing to the one controlling element
of his character; to his irresistible tendency
to attempt the improvement of anything and
everything, process or substance, mechanical de-
vice or human being, that came within the wide
horizon of his observation.
Years after he ceased to be seen in the places
which so long had known him, the grateful
memory in which he is held proposed to express
itself in a suitable monument, the funds for which
Avere provided by spontaneous popular subscrip-
tion. It is designed and executed by the sculp-
tor St. Gaudens, himself a pupil of the Cooper
Union. The model is finished and the completed
work will shortly be set up, as a visible, tangible
representative of the better monument - - the
kindliness and the honor with which all Ameri-
can men and women speak of Peter Cooper.
rm
PUBLIC
LENOX AND
i.
Marshall Field.
XV.
MARSHALL FIELD.
THERE is a certain subtle enemy of business
success which has proved itself difficult of analy-
sis. In attempts to search out the causes of
innumerable failures, the vast waste of the long-
credit system has been sufficiently demonstrated,
but has been set down as an inseparable factor
of the cost of our commercial transactions. With
equal fulness have many writers explained the
contractional losses which have been the sure
consequences of all artificial inflations of what-
soever kind. In any further search for a formu-
lation of the principles essential to success, per-
haps no more can be learned than by a scrutiny
of the business life of such successful men as
have firmly refused to bear the burdens or take
the risks which were assumed by the majority of
their competitors, successful or otherwise. It is
safe to say that the former will bear comparison,
if not in number, at least in character and
achievement, Avith the most brilliant commercial
records, in the making of which other methods
have operated. Beyond a doubt it may be
added that each of the classes indicated calls
for or develops its appropriate business genius.
The course of action which seems entirely natural
282 MEN OF BUSINESS
for one man appears to be almost beyond the
comprehension of another.
The dry-goods establishment which is, at this
day, doing the largest general business in the
United States, is not on the Atlantic Coast, but
in Chicago. It has the great West for its market,
and with reference to this, it is more centrally
located than it could be elsewhere. The lakes,
the rivers, the continually expanding railway
system seem to have agreed together to make
their headquarters at the foot of Lake Michigan.
Even with reference to importations from be
yond the Atlantic, there is offered a somewhat
striking commentary upon the dry remark at-
tributed to an enthusiastic Western man :
"New York? Yes, sir. Flourishing town,
sir. Has a fine future before it. New York is
the seaport of Chicago ! '
The house which seems to have best availed
itself of the advantages offered by this pivot-
point of distribution is that of Marshall Field
& Co. It has been managed, through a long
series of years, upon distinctly formulated busi-
ness principles, rigidly adhered to, through good
report and bad report. While it has been served
from its beginning by a number of rarely capable
men, any analysis of its success is rendered more
easily attainable from the fact that its guiding
spirit, its somewhat autocratic, unyielding mana-
ger, has not been changed. Its course, therefore,
has been exceptionally uniform, and so, through
stormy times and quiet times, has been its solid-
ity. The variations in its profit and loss account
MARSHALL FIELD 283
have at no time been traceable to any defect in
the working of its machinery.
Marshall Field was born, in 1835, near Con way,
Mass. His father was a farmer, in only moder-
ate circumstances, but able to give his son at least
the advantage of a thorough home training in
habits of industry and sound morals. Added
to this were good public schools and the Con-
way Academy. It was about as hopeful a be-
ginning as a boy could have, if he were capable
of profiting by it.
The boy days of a New England farmer's boy
are apt to be bright and healthy days, with
" chores " enough to do, but with a great deal to
awaken the adventurous spirit which, through
several generations, has all but stripped the
Eastern States of their energetic youths for the
benefit of the Western.
Young Field was of a somewhat quiet and
thoughtful disposition, but he was not fond of
books. Neither did he take to agriculture, nor
to any profession, for he was and felt himself to
be a born merchant.
Conway was a very pretty place, but it was
very small, even for a beginner, and when, at
seventeen, Marshall Field was permitted to set
out upon his chosen career, he went as far as
Pittsfield, Mass., a thriving business centre, and
obtained employment in what may be described
as a " country store." It was a good place to
learn in, but no more, for any considerable suc-
cess would have been larger than the town itself.
At the end of four years, therefore, little more
•284 MEN OF BUSINESS
had been attained than legal age, general in-
formation, business training, and a determina-
tion to go West, with Chicago as the point
selected for settlement.
Here, in 1856, Mr. Field became a salesman in
the wholesale dry goods house of Cooley, Far-
well & Co. It was already a flourishing concern,
but the business interests of Chicago had trials
and changes before them. The city itself was in
what might be called its boyhood. Its streets
and the buildings lining them were in process of
lifting up to the new grade, which would per-
mit the construction of adequate sewers, water
conduits, gas mains, etc. All had been, at first,
upon the prairie level. The wharves along
the lake-shore, the bridges, hotels, were in
a changing state, and getting from place to
place by the sidewalks was an intermittent get-
ting up and down stairs. The railway system
centring at the foot of Lake Michigan was in its
infancy, and the vast region it was yet to con-
nect with a great city was but opening to culti-
vation. Only a few miles beyond the corpo-
rate limits were wide reaches of bare prairie
yet untouched by the plough. In financial mat-
ters there were endless causes of perplexity. A
tide of immigration was setting Westward and
the future seemed assured, but the very newness
of all rural communities and settlements, larger
or smaller, rendered a knowledge of local sol-
vencies impossible. Still, it was what was called
" flush times," but with strong symptoms of
coming trouble. The old State banking system
MARSHALL FIELD 285
prevailed and the currency of each State, as to
exchangeable values, was a problem by itself
which interfered seriously with all mercantile
transactions. Crops were increasing, year by
year, almost in excess of facilities for handling
them. Speculation of every kind was rampant,
especially in real estate. Almost everybody was
heavily in debt, and the credit of Western houses
was subjected to sharp yet unavailing scrutiny
at the East, for there also the general condition
was perilous in the extreme. It was upon this
semi-chaotic state of affairs that the great panic
of 1857 burst like a hurricane. It seemed as if
everything had been swept away. The banks
and business houses closed their doors, and even
those who expected to open them again were
forced to sit still until the storm was over. The
streets of Chicago swarmed with men out of
employment, but no real injury had been done
to its prosperity. Only an unwholesome, fever-
ish, unbusinesslike growth had disappeared,
leaving the field clear for legitimate operations
followed by financial security.
The house of Cooley, Farwell & Co. was one
of the not very large number which survived
the panic in good condition. It was even able
to take up business which fell from the hands of
broken concerns ; but one of its best salesmen
had learned an important lesson at the outset of
his Western career. He had been compelled to
understand the nature of new country growth,
and to study the science of credit as applied to
such rapidly changing conditions. He had al-
286 MEN OF BUSINESS
ready made his mark as a young man of unusual
promise. During the three years following he
rose rapidly in the esteem of the firm, became a
necessity, and in 1860 he was admitted to a jun-
ior partnership. The financial disturbances of
1 86 1 were probably less severe in the West than
in the East, but they supplied a number of impor-
tant object-lessons upon the general subject, the
solution of which gave Mr. Field the main idea
of his subsequent career. Then followed the
remaining years of the civil war, with the swell-
ing volume of greenbacks, national bank-notes,
and State and national indebtedness, which again
produced exorbitant inflations in nominal values,
speculation, extravagance, "flush times," exceed-
ing any which had preceded.
The business of the house grew rapidly, but
there came a necessity for a complete reorgani-
zation in 1865. The impression made and the
success attained by Mr. Field, up to this date,
may be understood from the fact that he stepped
at once to the head of the new house of Field,
Palmer & Leiter. Only two years later other
business interests led to the withdrawal of Mr.
Potter Palmer, and the name of the house was
changed to Field, Leiter & Co., with a more per-
fect illustration of the " one-man power " at the
head of it.
The flush times following: the war were now at
o
their height. The West was filling up, State
after State, Territory beyond Territory, with
astonishing advances. The growth of the rail-
ways and of the commerce of the lakes was
MARSHALL FIELD 237
something magical and bewildering. Successive
crop figures challenged belief. The business of
Chicago was as if done at red heat, and the com-
petition for it was almost tumultuous. It was a
time when a man in charge of enormous pur-
chases and sales might easily have yielded to the
strong stimulus of trade which excited the great
mass. It was the severest possible test which
could be applied to a business character. But as
the heat around him increased, Mr. Field was
cooler than ever. Some said " harder." He
certainly was inflexible in maintaining the prin-
ciples and perfecting the system which to his
mind offered the one promise of permanent suc-
cess.
What these were may be vaguely outlined as
the adoption of the " cash " system, with a not
illiberal interpretation of its meaning.
Goods sold to customers of sufficiently ascer-
tained solvency, and not in amounts exceeding
their requirements or capacity, were " cash ' at
thirty and sixty days, and payments were sternly
exacted with absolute promptness. The cus-
tomers themselves became more prudent men,
with the certainty of so near and so sharp a set-
tlement. Their own sales were sure to be more
carefully made and their credits shorter. Mr.
Field's exactness was therefore a powerful con-
servative agency throughout the widening area
of his business relations.
On the purchasing side of the account the
principle involved was applied much more rig-
idly, for Mr. Field decided not to have any lia-
288 MEN OF BUSINESS
bilities. Such credits as he permitted were
purely nominal, covering little more than the
time required for transfer and delivery of goods
purchased. No purchase was to be made which
would call for a note, a promise to pay, and no
note of his was at any time to be found in a bank.
So buying for cash, moreover, a varying but im-
portant margin of advantage in prices paid was
sure to be obtained. The best bargains came to
the readiest payments as naturally as water runs
down hill.
It was a matter of course that a man so guid-
ing his affairs should keep out of the speculative
stock market, so far as dealing " on a margin '
might be concerned. Shares bought for cash, as
investments, involved no liability, whatever their
subsequent history of profits or losses. Pre-
cisely so with the real estate operations continu-
ally offering in so tempting a manner as the city
and the country grew. At the earliest possible
day there was no mortgage upon any property
owned by Mr. Field.
In close alliance with the cash system of pur-
chases, there was to be maintained an exacting
scrutiny of the quality of all goods purchased.
No allurement of proposed profit was to induce
the house to place upon the market any line of
goods at a shade of variation from their intrinsic
value. Every article sold must be regarded as
warranted, and every purchaser must be enabled
to feel secure.
That such a system, pursued with unrelenting,
machine-like precision, would call out carping
D 289
criticism was to be expected, and a great deal of
comment came. So did the customers, attracted
by the fairness of the prices and the soundness
of the goods offered, even if they grumbled at
the refusal of credits such as other houses gave
or they might deem themselves entitled to.
The next great test to which Mr. Field's busi-
ness capacity was subjected was sufficiently se-
vere, but it did not come by way of a financial
panic. There was no question of shorter or
longer credits raised, but an enormous mass of
property passed suddenly out of existence.
Stock on hand, business appliances of all kinds,
the commodious building itself, disappeared in
the great Chicago fire of 1871. The magnitude
of the transactions of the house at that date may
be imagined from the sum total of the fire losses,
for these footed up over three and a half millions
of dollars. So prudent a man as Mr. Field
had by no means neglected insurance. He was
indeed fully protected but for the fact that so
many insurance companies were wiped out, as
by a sponge, by their overwhelming disaster.
From solvent companies, in due season, the firm
recovered two and a half millions, but only a
fraction of this was speedily available.
The city itself seemed almost to have disap-
peared. Buyers coming to Chicago for goods
would find, it was said, only a blackened waste,
which would require long years to refit for busi-
ness purposes. The entire countrv sent sym-
pathy and help, and the citizens of Chicago faced
their difficulties with admirable courage, but
19
290 MEN OF BUSINESS
none did so Avith more imperturbable calmness
than was exhibited by the head of the burned-up
dry-goods house.
No buildings of brick or stone were left stand-
ing, suitable for his purposes, but at the corner
of State and Twentieth Streets were some great
shells of horse-car barns untouched by the fire.
The clouds of smoke were still going up from
the burned district when Mr. Field hired these
barns and began to fit them up for the wholesale
and retail dry -goods business. At the same
time gangs of men were at work clearing away
the ruins of the old place, that a better building
than the former might be put up as speedily as
possible. It was pushed to completion with all
energy and was taken possession of in 187.?.
The new city, built after the fire, was in many
respects improved. One of the business changes
in the house of Field, Leiter & Co. was the sepa-
ration of the retail trade from the wholesale.
For the latter a building was at once erected at
the corner of Madison and Market Streets.
This department expanded to such proportions,
however, that in 1885, to be finished in 1887, an-
other and really splendid business building was
begun, occupying an entire square of ground,
bounded by Fifth Avenue, Quincy, Franklin, and
Adams Streets. It is of granite and sandstone,
and its plain but substantial-looking exterior is
darkened by bituminous coal smoke, but its in-
terior arrangements are hardly surpassed, for
extent and facilities for business, by any other
similar structure in the world. The va^t variety
MARSHALL FIELD 291
of the demands of the trade to be supplied com-
pels the keeping on hand continually of an enor-
mous stock, but to many observers the most
interesting consideration, in any study of it,
would be the simple fact that it is all paid for.
To this, as the swarms of buyers for rural dis-
tributions come and go, might well be added the
other important fact, that as it is sent out to
hundreds of minor establishments all over the
Western country, it will all be again paid for
within sixty days, for the losses by Mr. Field's
plan have been reduced to an unimportant figure.
Only two years after the fire came the sweep-
ing panic of 1873, but it passed over the Chicago
"cash" dry-goods concern with but small injury,
while " long-credit houses " and such as were
under varied " liabilities " went down in all di-
rections. There could be no question raised as
to the solvency of a concern which had no debts.
In 1 88 1 Mr. Leiter withdrew, and the style of
the firm changed, as at present, to Marshall Field
& Co. It consists of its former head and eight
juniors, all of the latter having been brought up
in the house. Like Mr. Field himself, not one of
them brought in any outside capital and they are
themselves a vitally important part of his busi-
ness ideal. However large may be the amount
of cash employed, it is regarded as but an instru-
mentality. The men are the real capital of the
concern. No partners of another kind have at
any time been desired, and Mr. Field's rare judg-
ment of character has been finely illustrated by
his selection and advancement of those who,
292 MEN OF BUSINESS
under him, were to command in the several de-
partments of the concern, as brigadiers and
colonels under a major-general. Each, in his
place, holds it by reason of merit, for there has
been no favoritism. The same faculty of dis-
cernment and a like process of selection have se-
cured the most efficient assistants, women as
well as men, in all the grades of the more than
four thousand persons on the pay-rolls of the
house. It is noteworthy that by far the greater
part of them may be classed as educated as well
as intelligent, and that continued employment
by Marshall Field & Co. is regarded by other
houses as a test of fitness, a recommendation.
The present heads of more than one flourishing
establishment, not to speak of partners and
otherwise prosperous men, owe their present
positions to this stamp of approval. It may
seem strange to those accustomed to different
methods, that the list of employees includes no
" drummers," in the ordinary sense of the word,
although sales are made as far south as the Gulf
and as far west as the Pacific Coast. On the
other hand, the " buyers " are a large as well as
a carefully picked company of sharp-shooters.
While many of them are constantly on the watch
among the importers and manufacturers of the
Atlantic slope, not less than thirty go annually to
Europe, and some of them even further, for all
the looms of the earth send contributions to the
counters of the Chicago bazaar. For example,
in 1892 four experts visited Japan, to see what
they could find in the very farthest East.
MARSHALL FIELD 293
Twenty years ago it was deemed a startling
assertion that Field, Leiter & Co. had sold, in
one year, over $8,000,000 worth of goods. The
increase, at the present day, is to nearly five-
fold, or $40,000,000.
That the sales have been profitable, even at
low prices and liberal expenditure, is partly
known by the fact that Mr. Field's own real
J
estate in Chicago is valued at $10,000,000,
and by his very large holdings of railway,
palace-car, steel and iron stocks. The business
itself, however, is his greatest success, rather
than any wealth accruing from it, for he has con-
structed an enormous mechanism for the pur-
chase and sale, collection and distribution of
textile and related fabrics, at the smallest pos-
sible percentage of financial risk, waste, or loss.
He has so organized this mechanism, largely
consisting of human characters, selected and
educated and all directed by himself, that it
works from day to day and from year to year,
in all parts of the earth, but everywhere in rela-
tion to the centre at Chicago, with a smoothness
and uniformity which is one of the marvels of
the world's trade. He has accomplished a tri-
umph of system and of rigidly applied principles
and has presented a model well worthy the close
study of even political economists.
It would seem almost unnecessary to paint a
portrait of such a business man, and Mr. Field
is precisely the person thoughtful people would
expect. Not over the medium height and some-
what spare but active looking, as becomes a man
294 MEN OF BUSINESS
whose habits have been correct from boyhood.
Reserved and yet approachable and kindly in
manner to any person having any business to
encroach upon his time. In social life he is quiet
and modest in his tastes and goes little into so-
ciety. He has given much to charity. Though a
Presbyterian, he was one of the heaviest contrib-
utors to the Baptist University fund. Setting an
example of steady devotion to business, now as in
his younger days. While his tastes are altogether
those of a refined and educated man, he is not
inclined to display of any kind. He is a steady
churchgoer, but has always been averse to poli-
tics, beyond the regular performance of any
duties belonging to him as a private citizen.
He is a member of clubs and enjoys occasionally
meeting in them his friends and acquaintances.
In fact, his personal character may be taken as
in a manner representative of and belonging to
the steadfast idea of his business life. This, at
any point, sets forth the inestimable value of
correct principles, and of these the first to be
named is absolute integrity.
XVI.
LELAND STANFORD.
THE territory included within the present
boundaries of the United States was at one time
nominally ruled by three great European pow-
ers— England, France, and Spain ; really, by Ind-
ian tribes and by a vast wilderness full of ob-
stacles to civilized occupation. The successive
steps, in diplomacy or in war, by which the en-
tire area has been placed under one flag, have
been made under the direction of a series of re-
markable men, of whom it may be said that
their energy in any required action was only
equalled by their far-sighted sagacity in counsel.
The difficulties, physical or political, with which
they contended, were seemingly insurmountable.
There was no wilder dream of the future ever
set before the minds of men than the creation
and welding into unity of this republic. If it
should be said that the course of all human
events worked with them — the convulsions of
Europe and Asia ; the introduction of steam-
power and electricity ; the very uplifting of the
human race to higher planes of thought and
.purpose — then only the higher estimate is called
for by the characters of the men who were able
to handle and control the new forces which were
296 MEN OF BUSINESS
operating among such vastnesses of new ma-
terials.
The study of the careers of these strong men
is intensely interesting, and it is none the less
so because in every case it appears that the
powers born in them received their develop-
ment in long struggles with the ordinary obsta-
cles besetting other men. Their athletic train-
ing-school was the common battlefield of life.
<j
The latest addition to the territory of the
United States came at the close of the war with
Mexico. Prior to that the Columbia River
country had been a far-away possession con-
cerning which the nation took but moderate in-
terest, but it suddenly seemed nearer and of
greater value when the coast-line drew south-
ward to the Gulf of California and the future
commerce of the Pacific passed under American
control with the ownership of the harbor of San
Francisco.
The fierce excitement of the " gold fever ': fol-
lowed at once, and the California part of the
regions acquired from Mexico was peopled rap-
idly. It was done, however, in a manner which
seemed to create a new State, unique in charac-
ter, separated from the other States by long dis-
tances and the central mountain ranges, with in-
terests of its own which might never be brought
into unified relations with those of the older
commonwealths of the Atlantic slope, the Gulf
of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. Our
statesmen and politicians were already busy
with the perilous problems of division even
Leland Stanford.
I
LELAND STANFORD 299
among these, which were so soon to be settled by
the bloody arbitration of the civil war. The
future of the country, therefore, required that
the management of all questions relating to the
Pacific Coast should be in hands not only patri-
otic but competent, and no one east of the moun-
tains could so much as guess how statesmen were
to be provided for California. Ample provision
had been made, nevertheless, and one man who
was to hold a foremost position, as the trusted
counsellor of other men, had begun in his very
childhood his long, hard training for successful
leadership. As early as the year 1720 a family
named Stanford, of English extraction, had
made a home among the sturdy Dutchmen who
were the first settlers of the Mohawk Valley.
Matrimonial alliances followed, and succeed-
ing generations inherited the rugged strength
of mind and body belonging to such a parent-
age. One hundred years after the first Stanford
crossed the Hudson, one of his descendants was
a prosperous but very hard-working farmer, liv-
ing near Watervliet, about eight miles from Al-
bany. He had six sons, and one of them, whom
he named Leland, that name being in the family,
wras born March 9, 1824.
From his very cradle, Leland was a vigorous
fellow, and he had need to be, among a group of
brothers and other playfellows, every one of
whom was hardy and healthful even to rough-
ness. The home they were brought up in, how-
ever, was marked by rigid moral training, and
their mental discipline began early, as well as
300 MEN OF BUSINESS
their practical lessons in industry. They had
been born into a work-a-day world, they were
made to discover, and in the part of it near
Watervliet there were plenty of chores for boys
to do and schools to attend, but there was no
pocket-money.
The customary wages for grown men were
but " two shillings," or a quarter of a dollar per
day, for the prices of farm produce were largely
governed by the cost of "sleeping" it down the
Hudson.
Something could be done by a boy speculator,
however. When Leland was only six years old
the home garden was found to be overrun with
horseradish, to the detriment of everything
else. He and two of his brothers were set to
work digging it up, and when their hard task
was done, they carefully washed the pile of
roots, carried them all the way to Schenectady,
and sold them for six shillings. Leland's third
of that first financial success, as he afterward
declared, gave him more pride and pleasure
than many a large harvest of money garnered in
later years. It had its lasting influence, more-
over, and there were other boyish enterprises to
follow. One of these came when he was eight
years old. It had been a good year for chest-
nuts, and the Leland boys had taken advantage
of it from the first frost that cracked the burrs
and set the nuts dropping. They stored away
bins and bags of them, and one day a hired-man
of their father's returned from Albany with the
welcome news that the price of chestnuts was
LELAND STANFORD 301
high. Off to market hurried the boys, and their
autumn days in the woods resulted in a cash
profit of $25.
Mr. Stanford appears to have encouraged his
sons systematically in every effort to bring out
their business capacity, while he gave them such
other schooling as circumstances permitted.
Like most other farm-boys of that day, how-
ever, it was school in winter and work on the
farm in summer, with terms at the village acad-
emy after they had gone through the highest
classes at the " district school."
Leland Stanford was looking forward am-
bitiously to a higher education and to the study
of law, but the family finances did not permit
the idea of a college course. He could make the
best possible use of the academy and of all ob-
tainable books, but even then there seemed a
wall of difficulty between him and his proposed
legal studies. He had grown tall and strong, and
was a capital hand in a hay-field, behind a plough,
or with an axe in the timber ; but how could this
help him into his chosen profession? Neverthe-
less, it was a feat of wood-chopping which raised
him to the bar. When he was eighteen years of
age, his father purchased a tract of woodland,
wished to clear it, but had not the means for
doinsf so. At the same time he was anxious to
o
give his son a lift. He told Leland, therefore,
that he could have all he could make from the
timber, if he would leave the land clear of trees.
Leland took the offer, for a new market had lat-
terly been created for cordwood. He had saved
302 MEN OF BUSINESS
money enough to hire other choppers to help him,
and he chopped for the law and for his future
career. Over two thousand cords of wood were
cut and sold to the Mohawk & Hudson River
Railroad, and the net profit to the young con-
tractor was $2,600. It had been earned by
severe toil, in cold and heat, and it stood for
something more than dollars.
How long it required in the doing is not
recorded, but a further course of preparatory
studies followed, and it was not until the be-
ginning of the year 1846 that he went to Albany
and entered the law office of Wheaton, Doolittle
& Hadley as a student. Three years later, in
1849, ne was admitted to the Bar of the State
Supreme Court. His first long struggle had
ended in apparent success, but Albany was over-
crowded with young lawyers, and there was
nothing to be gained by remaining there. The
right thing to do was to go West, and he. still
had funds sufficient to sustain him while build-
ing the foundations of a practice in some new
and growing community. In the same year,
1849, three of his brothers went to California,
with the first rush of adventurers, and engaged
in the general business of furnishing supplies
to the miners. Perhaps there was an especial
reason why Leland did not go with them. The
Pacific Coast did not seem exactly the place to
make a home in, but he was just then thinking,
and somebody else was waiting for a home.
His first purpose was to settle in Chicago,
then in what has been called the " swamp stage '
LELAND STANFORD 303
of its earlier growth, and it is said the abundance
and fierceness of the mosquitoes did more than
anything else to prevent him. He could have
endured them himself, but it seemed better to
go on to another place. He found a promising
opening at Port Washington, on Lake Michi-
gan, above Milwaukee. Business came to him
at once, and it was not long before he went
back to Albany and married Miss Jane Lathrop,
daughter of a prosperous merchant named Dyer
Lathrop.
The professional career, for which so much toil
and preparation had been given, had opened
very well indeed. He even began to think of
politics, and took a leading part in the establish-
ment of a local newspaper. He was not to make
his home on the shore of Lake Michigan, how-
ever, nor to do his life-work in the Northwest,
for he was needed elsewhere. His house, Avith
his office, law library, and other property, were
destroyed by fire, and he was left almost a bank-
rupt. Now, however, the Golden State held out
to him a better invitation than at first. His
brothers were doing well there, and the signs of
social order were increasing rapidly. The ruins
of his first undertaking were therefore left be-
hind him, and he and his wife reached Sacra-
mento on July 12, 1852.
Any idea of a professional life, however, had
been burned up with his law library, and he be-
came a merchant, taking charge for his brothers
O O
of their branch establishment at Michigan Bluffs,
in Placer County.
304 MEN OF BUSINESS
He had made a great change in all his plans of
life, but so had every other man who was seek-
ing a fortune in California. The circumstances
were altogether different from those of an older
community. Swarms of men who were stran-
gers to each other were ready to accept, almost
as an old acquaintance, the burly, hearty, genial
young merchant from whom they made pur-
chases and heard the news as they came in from
the placers. His personal popularity became a
powerful element of business success, and all the
more so because it was discovered that he pos-
sessed uncommon sagacity and that any kind of
advice from him was pretty safe to follow. The
man to whom other men habitually come for
advice is sure to acquire the subtle, inscrutable
force recognized rather than named as " influ-
ence."
The other Stanford brothers were men of en-
terprise and capacity, and their business connec-
tions widened until they reached in every direc-
tion among the almost grotesquely developing
communities of the new State. They were not
long in learning, however, that the best head
among them was on the shoulders of Leland,
and, in 1856, he was called upon to remove to
Sacramento, with a full share in the interests of
the concern. He had made, in the meantime,
profitable mining adventures which gave him
private capital at his own disposal. He had done
something of much greater importance also, for
he had taken a deep interest in political matters,
and he had comprehended, better than other
LELAND STANFORD
305
men, the tremendous nature of the questions
which were soon to press for settlement.
A very large part of the adventurous migra-
tion to California had come from the slavehold-
ing States. There were no abler nor more dar-
ing men, and they had brought with them their
peculiar political doctrines and ideas concerning
State rights and the slavery question. Each suc-
355§^r^^._ ^-^J
*""'''" :^rmff^^^:^
Architectural motif of the buildings at Stanford University.
cessive political campaign grew hotter, as the
restless spirits of the Pacific Coast emulated the
rashness and repeated the utterances which were
producing such a perilous fermentation among
the Atlantic and Gulf States.
Strong local coteries were forming, in which it
was openly declared that if the South should se-
cede from the Union, so would California, or at
least its southern half, with slavery as an institu-
tion, and the old republic might split into all
20
306 MEN OF BUSINESS
the pieces vaguely indicated by its climate and
geography.
Mr. Stanford, now in the prime of his man-
hood, grasped the entire situation with a breadth
of thought and a courage of action which brought
him at once to the front as an acknowledged
leader. He saw distinctly that there were two
great agencies, neither of them yet in existence,
for the prevention of the vast calamities which
threatened the future of the nation and of Cali-
fornia. One, already organizing in 1856, was the
new Republican party. The other, in like man-
ner outlined but not yet made, was the proposed
railway line across the continent, bringing its too
widely separated parts together. To each of
what he deemed parallel and related move-
ments he gave all the energy that he could
spare from his increasing business affairs, until
these had almost to be put aside on behalf of the
greater burdens which came fast upon him.
The new party prospered well in the Presi-
dential campaign of 1856, in California, with
many incidents which were dramatic and some
that were tragical, and from that time onward it
gathered strength from day to day. So did the
railway enterprise, and a group of strong men,
unsurpassed in genius, patriotism, and daring,
stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Stanford.
In April, 1859, the State Legislature passed a
resolution calling for a railway men's conven-
tion, to meet in San Francisco in September of
that year. When it came together it consisted
of delegates from every part of the State and
LELAND STANFORD 307
from Oregon and Washington Territories. Every
feature of the project was fully discussed and a
committee was appointed to present to Congress
a memorial, indicating the route preferred and
asking for national aid in the construction of a
road to meet the proposed railway from the East
at a point on the California line. During the re-
mainder of that year the entire Pacific railway
idea was almost constantly before Congress, and
it had become a prominent factor of current
party politics. These were becoming more and
more feverish, for there was something like a
civil war in Kansas, and the clouds of coming
trouble were darkening for a storm.
When the Republican National Convention
met at Chicago, in 1860, Leland Stanford was
there, as a delegate from his own State, urging
the nomination of Abraham Lincoln in prefer-
ence to any other man. He returned to throw
himself into the canvass with enthusiasm, but at
the same time to push forward more eagerly
than ever the work of preparation for what he
regarded as the Union railway, more important
than an army corps.
In the spring of 1861, while the opposing
armies were gathering in the East, a meeting
was held at the St. Charles Hotel, Sacramento, at
which only the leaders of the railway enterprise
were present. The work before them related to
surveys, legislation, and finance. It was deter-
mined that efficiency could be best obtained by
concentration and unity of action. On the 28th
of June the Central Pacific Railroad Company
308 MEN OF BUSINESS
of California was organized under the State law,
with a nominal capital of $8,500,000. Enough
was subscribed, and enough money was paid in
to meet immediate expenses. Mr. Stanford was
chosen president; Collis P. Huntington, vice-
president ; Mark Hopkins, treasurer ; James
Bailey, secretary, and T. J. Judah, chief engi-
neer. These were also directors, with Charles
B. Crocker, John F. Morse, D. W. Strong, and
Charles Marsh.
The simple fact that such men selected Mr.
Stanford for the executive head of the undertak-
ing renders comment superfluous. They knew
him well, and their verdict may be accepted as
final concerning his relations to them and to the
seemingly impossible task before them. They
presented him to Congress and the nation as
their representative, and through all the long,
arduous struggle which followed he more than
justified the wisdom of their choice.
The difficulties to be overcome were manifold,
for there were all sorts of mountains in the way.
It was true that President Lincoln, the Republi-
can party, and so the National Government, were
pledged to the idea of a Pacific railway, but then
the Government itself was fighting for life and
its finances were in an exceedingly strained con-
dition. The four men, including Mr. D. O. Mills,
who were to bear the responsibility of success or
failure, had indeed been very successful in busi-
ness, but their cash capital free for use was by
no means large, and they were but little known
in the money markets of the East.
LKLANI) STANFORD 309
The first shovelful of dirt on the line of the
proposed road was thrown by Mr. Stanford him-
self February 22, 1861, before the organization
of the company. Surveys and work went on and
continual payments were made, in faith and in
hope, but it was not until July, 1862, that Mr.
Judah returned from Washington with the for-
mal proposition for the construction of the road,
authorized by Congress. Its provisions were
exacting, but they were accepted by the com-
pany December i, 1862. Two years were given
them for building the first fifty miles of road, but
forty miles were to be constructed and equipped,
telegraph line and all, before the issue of gov-
ernment bonds in aid. These were to be loaned
to the company at the rate of $16,000 per mile to
the foot of the mountains and §48,000 per mile
through them. That first forty miles offered a se-
vere test of all the capacity of every kind pos-
sessed by the adventurers. The toil was cease-
less, and the anxiety almost prevented sleep.
Even after that success was won and the aid
came, it was not always easy to realize upo.yi,
construction bonds, while the Treasury. -'itself
could with difficulty obtain funds to pa:y and feed
the army in the field.
Whatever credit is due to Mr. Stanford's asso-
ciates, he himself superintended* the construction
of five hundred and thirty miles of railroad in two
hundred and ninety-three days. It was a build-
ing-race against a very similar party of men
who were pushing forward the rails of the Union
Pacific Road from the East. On the last day of
-
View of the Buildings Comprising the Leland
the race, Mr. Charles B. Crocker, in immediate
charge of the work, laid the rails upon ten miles
of track, and the last spike was driven at Pro-
montory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869. Mr. Crocker
himself never recovered from the effects of the
terrific strain which he endured, although he
lived till 1888, but Mr. Hopkins died in 1876, and
it is said that all the other managers looked back
upon that race as an ordeal which took some-
what of life out of them.
Mr. Stanford had by no means neglected the
other field of his public duty, for he had taken a
firmer hold upon the politics of California. He
at first refused any suggestion of office-holding,
but in 1862 accepted the Republican nomination
for Governor of the State and was elected by a
plurality of twenty-three thousand votes. At
the close of his term he refused a renomination,
for the war for the Union was practically won and
the railway demanded his undivided attention.
With the year 1869 began a long era of almost
- -
r-S'-
Stanford, Jr., University, Palo Alto, California.
ideal prosperity. There was a continual press-
ure of work and responsibility, for Mr. Stanford
was still president of the Central Pacific and was
interested in other enterprises, railway and fi-
nancial, but he was now able to take from these
ample time for home life and for the gratification
of very strongly marked tastes and tendencies.
His home itself became a kind of special con-
tribution to the peculiar agricultural interests of
California. He owned the Palo Alto ranch, in
Tahama County, about thirty miles south of San
Francisco, one of the best and largest ranches in
the State. Here he had built a villa residence
of much architectural beauty, with ample and
well laid-out grounds, and supplied with all that
wealth could obtain for comfort, as well as with
treasures of art and literature.
As the home of such a man, it became an ob-
jective point in the plans of numberless distin-
guished people visiting California. It was the
very abode of cordial hospitality, but the estate
31 i! MEN OF BUSINESS
itself became something more. At a very early
day Mr. Stanford had taken a sagacious inter-
est in two, at least, of the most promising feat-
ures of Pacific-slope farming. One was the
peculiar advantages of both soil and climate for
fruit raising, and the Palo Alto ranch became
an experimental fruit farm on a large scale.
Hardly anything was left untried, but special
attention was paid to the vine, with such success
that in due time the largest vineyard in the
world was proving by its abundant productive-
ness the wisdom of its owner. In the year 1888
it contained 3,575 acres and the vines in bear-
ing numbered 2,860,000. At least an equal
importance attached in Mr. Stanford's mind
to what some men called his other hobby. He
had perceived that the breed of horses pro-
duced in California, from whatever derivation,
was assuming a pronounced type, with indica-
tions of peculiar value. Every other part of the
earth presents the same evidence of the tendency
and capacity of man's best four-footed com-
panion to adapt himself to his circumstances,
but Mr. Stanford proposed to aid and guide the
process manifestly going on. His great ranch,
therefore, contained, in lavish provision of all
appliances, an admirable horse-breeding farm,
and the results obtained soon made it famous.
The best imported stock was brought from
American and European stables, that the quali-
ties of all might be blended in the new develop-
ment. The Stanford stables sent out a long
list of swift and beautiful creatures, whose per-
LELAND STANFORD
313
formances, in the East as well as in the West,
were a source of unbounded gratification to their
breeder. He made their very anatomical struct-
ure a study, with reference to the relations of
bone, muscle, and tendon to the movements of
bodies and limbs. A curious series of experi-
ments in instantaneous photography enabled
him to illustrate effectively his ideas and obser-
m =g= 1
^i;f««- £
The Inner Quadrangle, Stanford University.
vations concerning equine action. The Palo
Alto ranch, therefore, became a kind of experi-
mental school in several important departments
of investigation ; but an increased and permanent
educational value was yet to attach to it.
As the years went by, the exceedingly busy
life, of which only so brief an outline can be
given, was varied by various tours of combined
business and pleasure; but in 1884 Mr. Stanford
was in Europe. With him were his wife and
their only son, Lelancl Stanford, Jr. The latter
314 MEN OF BUSINESS
was a young man who seemed to have inherited
the qualities of body and mind and character
which would fit him for the management of the
other estate which would some day pass into
his hands. He was the heir, and his father and
mother looked upon him as the continuation of
their own life. At Florence, Italy, however, he
was smitten by the deadly fever of the Roman
coast, and in a few days they were childless.
The saddened return to their California home
at once presented them with the question,
" What shall be done with all these millions,
and with the Palo Alto ranch ? ' It was
answered worthily. Young Stanford, like his
father, had been deeply interested in the general
subject of both technical and higher education.
Whatever he might have done in that direction,
if he had lived, should now be done in his name.
His parents, therefore, founded Leland Stanford,
Jr., University, endowing it with the ranch
itself and with other property of an estimated
prospective value in all of about $20,000,000.
The first announcement, in 1885, was met with
varied expressions of strong approval and of
captious doubt, but the latter ceased when the
peculiar character of the proposed institution
came to be generally understood. The corner-
stone of the university buildings, about half a
mile south from the Stanford residence at Palo
Alto, was laid May 14, 1887. In his address on
this occasion, Mr. Stanford referred to the ex-
pressions of dissent, but said, for himself and his
wife : " We do not believe there can be superflu-
LELAND STANFORD
315
cms education. A man cannot have too much
health and intelligence, so he cannot be too
highly educated." His meaning became clearer
upon an examination of the proposed university
course, and upon finding that it included teleg
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Northeast Tower, Stanford University.
raphy, type- writing, journalism, book-keeping,
farming, civil-engineering, and the general prep-
aration of human beings for success and useful-
O
ness. As was roughly expressed by one critic,
" It isn't to be just another Greek and Latin
mill."
Two years later, in 1887, Mr. Stanford was
310 MEN OF BUSINESS
elected a Senator of the United States from
California. From that time forward, during the
greater part of each year, his residence was
necessarily in Washington, and here again his
home became a social centre, noted for the re-
fined liberality of its entertainments. He Avas
as cordial, as genial as ever, and he was accepted
in political circles as the man whose counsel was
of greatest weight with reference to all ques-
tions affecting the country west of the Rocky
Mountains, but his capacity for work was leav-
ing him. Year after year there were increasing
tokens that the toils and anxieties of earlier days
had made hidden inroads upon his natural vital-
ity. The best medical skill, utter temperance,
changes of air and scene were of no avail for
the restoration of forces expended in the per-
formance of such a vast amount of exceedingly
hard work and endurance.
At the close of the session of Congress, in the
spring of 1893, he went back to his Palo Alto
home, well aware that he should never return to
Washington. It was entirely characteristic of
the man that when, on June 2Oth, as the clock
hands met for midnight, he quietly passed away,
and his death was telegraphed over the country,
it was speedily declared of him that all his
affairs were in such perfect order and prepara-
tion that there would be no shock nor any harm
resulting to any person, or interest, or enter-
prise. He left a very large estate, truly, but the
work to which he had set his hands was done
and he could safely leave it.
LELAND STANFORD 317
It has been said that great business careers
such as are outlined in this volume are no lon-
ger possible. The idea presented is, that in the
full development and organization of trade its
managers become somewhat like conductors of
railway trains whose finished mechanism runs
smoothly along tracks provided for them by
earlier enterprise. There is no T-rail track,
with perfect bridges, for the operations of Amer-
ican business. The truth is fairly presented by
an army in the field, and the time will never
come for a cessation in the demand for good
generals.
If competition itself were not continually
opening channels for new energy, there are rap-
idly recurring times of trial when the great
problems of success or failure are, like Abraham
Lincoln at the outbreak of the civil war, grop-
ing around among unknown men for the cour-
age and capacity fitted to lead a brigade, a di-
vision, or an army corps to something better
than defeat. The best men will surely step to
the front if they are at hand when the occasion
calls for them. The occasions are innumerable,
for the most encouraging truth, after all, is that
sufficient business success for the reward of
rational ambition is within the reach of the
million.
THE END.