"John Jacob Astor at one period of his life had several
vessels operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific
(Oregon) and carry from thence furs to Canton. These would
be sold at large profits. Then the cargoes of tea to New
York would pay enormous duties, which Astor did not have to
pay to the United States for a year and a half. His tea
cargoes would be sold for good four and six months paper, or
perhaps cash; so that for eighteen or twenty years John
Jacob Astor had what was actually a free-of-interest loan
from Government of over _five millions_ of dollars."[1]
But it was neither his tea trade nor his fur trade that gave Astor
twenty millions of dollars. It was his sagacity in investing his
profits that made him the richest man in America. When he first trod
the streets of New York, in 1784, the city was a snug, leafy place of
twenty-five thousand inhabitants, situated at the extremity of the
Island, mostly below Cortlandt Street. In 1800, when he began to have
money to invest, the city had more than doubled in population, and had
advanced nearly a mile up the Island.
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