John Jacob Astor
by . Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 1929. 8vo. 296 pp. Illus. $3.50.
MR. SMITH, having written of Cornelius Vanderbilt, now turns to John Jacob Astor, who was less spectacular as a person but infinitely more colorful as an American. Both men built great fortunes out of the spate brought down in the spring turbulence of the country; of the two, Astor did so with less exploitation of national misfortune. He was a trader, a merchant, a banker, and a dealer in real estate, but never a speculator or a promoter. His peasant virtues of geniality, humor, and industrious thrift carried with them a peasant meanness that became rapacity, and his real-estate holdings multiplied through his miserly handling of mortgages. But, though willing to ruin an individual whose notes he held. — which is, after all, good business ethics, — he never watered stocks for the wholesale drowning of the public. He was incapable of manipulating his corporations for speculative purposes or of wrecking a business to shear the lambs.
He is commonly thought of to-day as ‘the landlord of New York,’ the man who, more than all others, understood the potentialities of Manhattan real estate and backed his judgment. The basis of his fortune, however, the source of the money that enabled him to buy real estate, was the fur trade. He was the greatest figure that the trade produced, and his association with it is his only importance in American history. Mr. Smith, therefore, wisely devotes the greater part of his book to an account of Astor’s interests in the beaver trade and in the China trade with which he buttressed it.
The account is straightforward, comprehensive, objective, and circumstantial. There is here no attempt at psychological biography—few subjects were ever less fitted to it titan Astor. Mr. Smith treads expertly the intricate mazes of the fur trade. He makes unoriginal researches, and probably, for Astor, few are called for. His judgments are always acute, and nearly always in accord with the best available evidence. He explains Astor s ambiguous faith in Canadian employees on the basis of an alien’s dislike of American individuality and an instinct to keep the friendship of those with whom he was competing. He decides that the failure of Astoria, was due, ultimately, to Astor’s inability to comprehend the full possibilities of American expansion, his failure to see that national interests were his interests and national prosperity must necessarily make him prosperous. That is true, and Mr. Smith’s assertion that Cornelius Vanderbilt might have forced the venture through to success by main strength is suggestive. But more forces were at work in the failure of Astoria than have ever been adequately charted. It will be impossible to speak authoritatively about this and other ventures in the trade till much available material has been threshed out, and till material not now available, but locked in the state departments of at least four foreign nations, has been made public. Astor shared a national frustration — in the secret opposition of nations that were looking desirously at Oregon and the California coast.
Mr. Smith does not gloss over the methods of the American Fur Company in its dealing with rivals, though one might ask for authentic evidence that anyone ever induced the Blaekfeet to assault a caravan. Simply, the Blaekfeet did not need inducing: Mr. Smith will find the true story of the raid on Fitzpatrick in Bonner’s Life of Jim Beckwourth. His handling of the murderous competition for beaver is otherwise accurate and throughout realistic. He calls the American Fur Company the first trust, which is good perception, and is at his best in exploring the interrelations between it and the Canton trade. His account of this far-flung venture, a world commerce based on the pelts of beaver, is historical writing of the first class.
The book is not an essay in psyehography, and has no other distinction, perhaps, than its honest portrayal of a sturdy peasant’s rise to fortune through the progress of his country. That, surely, is enough: Astor’s interests were intricately woven with America and his life becomes fascinating because of the rich fabric it was part of. Mr. Smith’s biography will take its place as a permanently usable addition to our knowledge of our past.
BERNARD DEVOTO