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Updated: May 20, 2025
Irwin declared that Astor's purpose was to save his furs from capture by the British, and concluded: "Mr. Astor's agent brought the furs to Mackinac in company with the British troops, and the whole transaction is well known at Mackinac and Detroit." U. S. Senate Docs., First Session, Seventeenth Congress, 1821-22, Vol. I, Doc. No. 60:50-51.
The detention in the ice and the journey to New York almost exhausted Astor's purse. He arrived in this city, where now his estate is valued at forty millions, with little more than his seven German flutes, and a long German head full of available knowledge and quiet determination.
It is a fine and pleasant thing to prosper in business, and to have a store to fall back upon in time of trouble. The reader may learn from Astor's career how money is accumulated. Whether he can learn from it how money ought to be employed when it is obtained, he must judge for himself.
Astor's traders in New York, the Scottish and English merchants of the North-West Company in Montreal, the Spanish traders of the South-West, even the directors of the sleepy old Hudson's Bay Company all turned longing eyes to that Pacific north-west coast whence came sea-otter skins in trade, each for a few pennies' worth of beads, powder, or old iron.
Here Irving was a guest, and wrote Astoria, telling of Astor's settlement on the Columbia River and of scenes beyond the Rockies; here he met Captain Bonneville and his friends, and the journals of the one and thrilling tales of the other gave material for the Adventures of Captain Bonneville.
If there was any one serious crime at that time it was the supplying of the Indians with whisky. The Government fully recognized the baneful effects of debauching the Indians, and enacted strict laws with harsh penalties. Astor's company brazenly violated this law, as well as all other laws conflicting with its profit interests. It smuggled in prodigious quantities of rum.
In this respect his career affords one of the best models to be found in our history. Astor's employer was not insensible to his merits, and soon promoted him to a better place. In a little while the latter intrusted him with the buying of the furs from the men who brought them to the store, and he gave such satisfaction to his employer that he was rewarded with a still more confidential post.
But in John Jacob Astor's day there was some art about the millinery business, and he went to the millinery-store and said to them: "Now put into the show-window just such a bonnet as I describe to you, because I have already seen a lady who likes such a bonnet. Don't make up any more until I come back."
Later came Astor's captains from New York, taking sealskins in trade for goods supplied to the Russians. How did Baranof, surrounded by hostile Indians, with no servants but Siberian convicts, hold his own single-handed in American wilds?
With his incessant inflow of surplus wealth, Astor was in a position where on the instant he could take advantage of the difficulties of less rich men and take over to himself their property. A large amount of Astor's money was invested in mortgages. In times of periodic financial and industrial distress, the mortgagers were driven to extremities and could no longer keep up their payments.
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