It is estimated that about the year 1800 the number of
peltries annually furnished to commerce was about six millions,
varying in value from fifteen cents to five hundred dollars. When
every respectable man in Europe and America wore a beaver skin upon
his head, or a part of one, and when a good beaver skin could be
bought in Western New York for a dollar's worth of trash, and could be
sold in London for twenty-five English shillings, and when those
twenty-five English shillings could be invested in English cloth and
cutlery, and sold in New York for forty shillings, it may be imagined
that fur-trading was a very good business. Mr. Astor had his share of
the cream of it, and that was the foundation of his colossal fortune.
Hence, too, the tender love he felt for a fine fur.
In the next place, his ventures to China were sometimes exceedingly
fortunate. A fair profit on a voyage to China at that day was thirty
thousand dollars. Mr. Astor has been known to gain seventy thousand,
and to have his money in his pocket within the year. He was remarkably
lucky in the war of 1812.
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