CHAPTER XLVIIILARGE FORTUNES AND THEIR DISPOSITION.
How the Fortunes of the Astors were Made.—George Peabody and his Philanthropic Schemes.—Johns Hopkins and his Peculiarities.—A. T. Stewart and his Abortive Plans.—A Sculptor’s Opinion of his Head.—Eccentricities of Stephen Girard, and How he Treated his Poor Sister.—His Penurious Habits and Great Donations.—James Lenox and the Library which he Left.—How Peter Cooper Made his Fortune, and his Liberal Gifts to the Cause of Education.—Samuel J. Tilden’s Munificent Bequests.—The Vanderbilt Clinic.—Lick, Corcoran, Stevens and Catharine Wolf.
I shall take a short review in this chapter of some of the most prominent wealthy men who have been the architects of their own fortunes, and comment briefly on their methods of disposing of their estates.
In the United States, John Jacob Astor was one of the first to arrest public attention in the matter of large fortunes. Before his day there were few, if any, millionaires on this side of the Atlantic. Now there are thousands of these lucky individuals. It is true, George Washington, the Father of our country, was very comfortably fixed, and supported aristocratic style in his domestic life, but he probably never was worth more, all told, than $200,000. It is singular that none of his successors have ever been worth even this amount. It was believed at one time that Grant had accumulated a large amount of money and value, and was fast approaching the financial status of a millionaire, but this popular delusion was suddenly dispelled when he and his family were victimized by the first young Napoleon of finance, Ferdinand Ward.
The founder of the now wealthy house of Astor and of the Astor Library died in 1848, at the age of 85. He leftthe greater bulk of his estate to his son, William B. Astor. He bequeathed $400,000 to the Astor Library, also a few legacies, amounting in all, the library inclusive, to about $500,000. His wealth, at the time of his death, was estimated at twenty millions, a very large fortune at that time.
William B. Astor, who died in 1875, left $250,000 to the library, and the large balance of his estate to his sons and widow.
The Astors have been characteristic for their benefactions, in a quiet way, to a large number of public objects. Their estate is remarkable for the way it has been kept intact, and for its steady and considerably rapid improvement, and they are popular as landlords.
The elder Astor who came to this country from Waldorf in Germany, near Heidelberg, before he was 20 years of age, and who started in life dealing in furs, had a grand scheme on foot at one time for monopolizing the fur trade of the whole world, which he had calculated would then have brought him a million dollars a year. He was diverted from this purpose by the large profits which he found in real estate, by dealing in which he made most of his money; and the family has steadily adhered to this line of speculation and investment through two generations.
The native American who, perhaps, ranks above all others in the munificence of his gifts, and the beneficence of his purpose was George Peabody. He was a poor Massachusetts boy, who, by hard industry, arose to be one of the largest millionaires of his day. He was also a philanthropist in the highest sense of the term. His fortune at one time probably exceeded ten millions. His well-known benefactions, during his life, exceeded seven million dollars, and it is supposed that he gave away vast amounts in charity of which no definite account was kept.
Shortly before his death, in 1869, he bequeathed two and a half millions as a building fund for lodging houses for the poor of London, and devised for a Southern Education Fundtwo million one hundred thousand. In addition to these he left five millions to various relatives. J. S. Morgan, who was Mr. Peabody’s partner in the banking business, became, at his death, his successor, and is now supposed to be a richer man than Mr. Peabody ever was.
Johns Hopkins, who died at Baltimore in 1873, at the age of 78, was one of the most eccentric millionaires and philanthropists. Very few expected that he would bequeath the great university and the hospital which are called by his name. He was so wretchedly penurious that he hardly afforded himself the means of subsistence. His benefactions to these two institutions, however, exceed eight million dollars.
Alexander T. Stewart, the great dry goods merchant, who was reputed to be one of the three wealthiest men in the United States, Commodore Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor being the other two, died in 1876. He had no legitimate heirs, and his estate, estimated at one time between twenty and thirty millions, was left to his wife, with the exception of a million to Judge Hilton and $325,000 to his employes.
Mr. Stewart’s two great benefactions were failures, as he left nobody able and willing to carry out his intentions in regard to their arrangement.
They would probably have been failures in any event, as they seemed to the majority of people to be in a large measure Utopian. One was Garden City on Long Island, intended to be homes for industrious mechanics on a higher and more comfortable scale than the majority of the dwelling of these sons of physical and intellectual toil. A grand cathedral was built there in memory of the merchant prince, and a beautiful crypt for his mortal remains, which were stolen from St. Mark’s churchyard shortly after the interment.
The mechanics and laborers were not attracted to Garden City, and it is now making slow progress with tenants whose avocations are generally in the higher walks of life.
The other great enterprise was a home for girls and women at moderate expense. This was in the shape of a hotel on a large scale at Park Avenue and Thirty-third street. The restrictions and the prices were such that the home also failed to attract the class it was intended for. The public gift, therefore, reverted to the Stewart estate, or rather was taken forcible possession of by the trustees and transformed into the Park Avenue Hotel. To carry out the rather indefinite terms of the bequest would probably have involved the expenditure of a very large amount of the Stewart estate, and, perhaps, the enterprise would even then have been a failure. It is more than probable that if Mr. Stewart had lived a few years longer, he himself would have been satisfied with the impracticability of both his semi-philanthropic schemes.
There were great things expected in the shape of benefactions from Mr. Stewart at the time of his death. He had done so little in that respect while living that the public indulged the hope that he would make up for his charitable shortcomings when he found that his worldly accumulations could no longer be of any service or gratification to him, and that he could not take any of them away with him.
Hence, it was a considerable disappointment to the public when the will revealed the fact that nothing had been devised, out of the immense hoard of nearly half a century’s savings, to charitable purposes.
On the day of his death I had an engagement with my dentist, Mr. Dwinell, in Thirty-fourth street, and while I was seated in the chair Mr. Wilson MacDonald, the well known sculptor, came in to pay a visit to the dentist, with whom he was well acquainted. Having been introduced by the sculptor, we immediately entered into conversation on the prominent local topic of the day, the death of Mr. Stewart and the probable distribution of his wealth.
Mr. MacDonald invited me to go to his studio to see a bust in clay of Mr. Stewart that he had just about finished. He said, “I knew Mr. Stewart’s aversion to having any portraits or photographs taken of himself during his lifetime, so I provided for the emergency some time ago by taking close observation of him at various intervals. During the past two years I have frequently come in contact with him, going into his store and getting a good look at him from various points of view, so as to impress his likeness upon my mind. I have thus succeeded in getting a pretty good bust of him in clay.”
Mr. MacDonald was very anxious that I should call and see this bust, because, as I knew Mr. Stewart so well, he inferred that my judgment would be worth something, and he expressed a desire that I should criticise his work. I promised him I would call and see the bust as soon as I could spare the time.
On leaving the dentist’s office I made another engagement to go back the following week, and in the meantime I had been unable to call at the studio of the artist, but the latter happened to be in the office of the dentist when I called there again. The will of Mr. Stewart had been published in the interim, and in it all reference to charities and benevolent institutions had been carefully omitted.
Mr. MacDonald reminded me that I had not called to see the bust, and added, “If you had called that time you would hardly recognize any resemblance between what it is now and what it was then.” “How is that?” I inquired. “Because,” he replied (facetiously), “as soon as I saw the will published in the newspapers and none of that immense pile left to the public, from whom it had been collected, I set to work and toned down the bumps of benevolence, conscientiousness, sublimity, veneration and ideality, making those of acquisitiveness, inhabitiveness, amativeness and all the selfish and animal propensities prominent. I naturally concluded, if phrenology is not a fraud, that Stewart’s will wasa manifestation of the non-existence of the higher and more humane organs in his cranium. There certainly could be nothing there indicative of any generous emotions.”
I think everybody who knew the great dry goods merchant will be inclined to say that the judgment of the sculptor was neither rash nor uncharitable.
Stephen Girard was another of the great millionaires who arose from penury, and whose eccentricity took a philanthropic turn. Mr. Girard was a Frenchman, born near Bordeaux in 1750, who made his home in later years in Philadelphia. He bequeathed over two million dollars to found and endow Girard College in that city.
There is a good story told, which seems to be well authenticated, of the manner in which Mr. Girard rewarded the ingratitude of a sister. When he was a boy about ten he manifested very little disposition for hard work, and his family treated him harshly. One morning a rumpus arose about his idleness, and having said something that aroused the ire of his sister, she clutched the broom and flew at him in a rage. He retreated, receiving a few hard blows over the shoulders as he passed for the last time over the threshold of his paternal home. He went to sea, his father having been a seaman, and through various vicissitudes of fortune eventually turned up as a millionaire in Philadelphia.
After young Girard had gone through the preliminary course as cabin boy, trading between France, the West Indies and New York, he had saved up some money and became part owner of a small trading vessel. This was in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. His trading was suspended by the war with Great Britain. He then speculated in the renting of a number of stores in Philadelphia, and sub-let them at a large profit. Afterward he purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the old U. S. Bank in 1812, and became a private banker with a capitalof more than a million. Subsequently he loaned five millions to the Government to help defray war expenses.
In the meantime fortune, however, had not favored his irate sister, who had chastised him with the broom. She remained poor. She had heard of her brother’s wealth, however, but did not have money enough to pay her passage to this country. In this extremity she went to the captain of a Philadelphia vessel in a French port and told him that she was a sister of Stephen Girard, without money, and desired to go and see her brother, who was well known to the captain. She received the best accommodation that the vessel could afford. Having arrived in Philadelphia the gallant captain escorted her to the house of her wealthy brother. Leaving her in the hallway he went in to see Mr. Girard and told him that a lady outside wished to see him. The benevolent captain was prepared to behold a demonstration of joy, which he thought would be exhibited as soon as the long lost brother and sister should recognize each other. He was not kept long in suspense. Mr. Girard knew his sister instantly. “C’est vous.” “It is you,” he said. “Oui,” she replied. These were all the words that passed. There was no rushing into each others arms, but on the contrary, Mr. Girard plunged at the captain in a lively mood. “What authority had you to bring that woman here?” he said. The captain was dumbfounded and hardly knew what to answer. “Take her back again at your own expense,” he added.
The captain did not stand a minute on the order of his going, and the millionaire’s sister, without receiving one kind adieu, was conducted from the palatial mansion of her brother to the vessel, and thence to her pauper home in France.
This shows that the great philanthropist had a good memory and was resentful of injuries, yet it also betrays a narrowness from some taint of which the greatest minds are not entirely free. The Girard sister was unable to comprehendthe higher aspirations of her young brother and his intelligent convictions, which had, no doubt, taken form at that early period of his life, that a man can never become wealthy by hard manual labor. He was wrong, however, in giving her the cold shoulder. She was correct in one sense, from her point of view, although a narrow view, and his large charity should have condoned an error arising from her superficial conception of his early designs.
His narrow-mindedness, with all his genuine greatness, and his eccentricity were exhibited in a remarkable degree in some of the restrictions of his will regarding the college. Although he was exceedingly generous in his gifts to religious denominations, without distinction, as well as to charitable institutions generally, he was, though illiterate, a free thinker of the school of Voltaire and Rousseau. He, therefore, had inserted in his will a prohibitory clause to the effect that no clergyman should be permitted to have anything to do with Girard College, nor even be admitted as a visitor. The college is for orphans between six and ten years of age, who are put to a trade when they are sixteen, all expenses being defrayed until they are able to earn a living. There are now over 500 beneficiaries. Girard died in 1831, at the ripe age of four score and one. He was worth nine million dollars, of which but a very small pittance went to a few of his relatives, the great bulk of the estate having been distributed among charitable institutions. This great philanthropist was exceedingly close in money matters with men generally, and it is said that he never had a friend, except the friend in the pocket, which is by all odds the most genuine.
The late James Lenox takes rank with the great philanthropists of the age, in attempting to devote a large portion of his surplus wealth to the good of humanity. When he died, in 1880, at the age of eighty, he was supposed to be one of the five wealthiest men in New York. He spent a million dollars to found and endow the Presbyterian Hospitalat Seventieth street and Madison avenue, and over a half million in building the Lenox Library at Seventieth street and Fifth avenue.
The building and the library are both immense gifts, but admission to the latter is so hampered by red tape, forms and ceremonies that it is of little or no earthly use to the general public. As a piece of architecture the building may, according to the ideas of the famous John Buskin, help to educate the people, but in other respects they derive no benefit from it. The library, which is built on ten city lots, contains the choicest selection of books in the world, outside of the British Museum, besides valuable manuscripts and works of art, and its collection of American works is unsurpassed anywhere. That part of the collection, consisting of Mr. Lenox’s own private library of 15,000 volumes, contains books of rare value, many of which could not be duplicated. This is one reason why the general public are excluded.
In fact, there is a good deal to be said in favor of the fastidious care that is taken of some libraries and picture galleries, as a large portion of the general public don’t know how to appreciate their privileges, and therefore abuse them, some through the relic monomania and others actuated by pure mischief. Thus it was that Mr. William H. Vanderbilt was very reluctantly obliged to exclude the general public from his fine picture gallery, as certain visitors scratched the etchings with their canes and put their fingers on the pictures, while others were incessantly on the relic hunt and had to be carefully watched during their visit.
Peter Cooper was another of the philanthropists, with large means, who sought to distribute a considerable part of it where it would do the most good to humanity, especially to that portion of it who are in pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. Mr. Cooper had a hard time of it himself gettinga fair education, and he knew how to appreciate the boon. He was born in New York in 1791, and at the age of seventeen was apprenticed to a coachmaker. He tried his hand at several other occupations, was an inventor by nature, and the designer and builder of the first locomotive in this country, which had its trial trip on a part of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
Mr. Cooper experienced his great success in fortune building in the manufacture of glue. He afterwards erected extensive iron works at Baltimore, Maryland, and subsequently in Trenton, New Jersey. During his life he built the Cooper Institute, at a cost of $650,000, with a subsequent donation of $150,000. This institution is devoted to the instruction and elevation of the working classes. It consists of a large reading room and library and a public lecture hall. The building occupies a small block at the junction of Third and Fourth avenues and Eighth street. It has evening schools, attended by 2,000 pupils; a school of design for females, in which there are 200; also, a school of telegraphy for women, from which, in two years, over 300 operators have been sent out.
The rents from the building on the lower floor and the offices defray the greater portion of the expenses. Ample provision was made in Mr. Cooper’s will for the permanence of the institution. During his life he was a general donor to all kinds of charitable institutions, and almost every variety of labor organization. He ran for President in 1876 on the Greenback and Labor ticket, and was defeated by an overwhelming majority. He had an idea that a large issue of greenbacks would create universal prosperity and make everybody happy. He died in 1883, at the age of ninety-two, leaving five or six million dollars, the greater portion of which fell to his son and daughter, the latter being the wife of Mayor Hewitt.
One of the greatest of American philanthropists, especially as his princely bequest was rather unexpected, wasthe Hon. Samuel Jones Tilden, whose financial and political career I have referred to in another chapter. He was about seventy-three years of age at the time of his death, in August, 1886.
Mr. Tilden died worth about five millions, four of which he left to be donated to public and beneficent objects. The greater part of this is to be spent in the erection and endowment of a grand free library, which, if the terms of the bequest are properly administered, will be the greatest institution of its kind in this country.
The disposition of the Vanderbilt fortune, up to the present time, has been briefly described in the lives of the various members of the family in another chapter. The Clinic of the College of Physicians, however, which has recently been opened at Sixtieth street and Fourth avenue, is entitled to greater detail, as it is, perhaps, destined at some future day to become a great medical centre. Mrs. W. D. Sloane, daughter of Wm. H. Vanderbilt, subscribed $250,000 to build the Maternity Hospital, in connection with this institution, her father having, prior to that, donated the balance of the million necessary to finish the entire structure, which consists of the Clinic, the Maternity Hospital and the College Hospital. It is said that in all their appointments the different departments of this institution are superior to anything of a similar description in the world.
Among the men who disposed of great fortunes I may mention James Lick, of California, who devoted millions to charitable purposes; William W. Corcoran of Washington, who gave two millions for an art gallery and a home for old, decrepit and superannuated women; also, Mr. Stevens, of Hoboken, who devised two millions, one for the Stevens Battery and the other for the Stevens Institute at Hoboken. Miss Catharine Wolf, who died last year worth twelve millions, bequeathed largely of her estate to charitable purposes, and donated her magnificent art gallery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
What a lesson is taught in these examples of philanthropic celebrities to our fellow-beings—I was going to say fellow citizens, but that would not be appropriate in many instances—the Socialists. Those millionaires, who have all more or less been denounced as hard-hearted monopolists, have been among the hardest workers and thinkers all their lives, many of them denying themselves the luxuries and some of them even the full necessities of life. For what purpose? Simply to be the hard worked and poorly fed mediums of accumulating wealth to relieve the necessities and minister to the comfort of the less fortunate, the idle, the dissipated, the poor and the needy, and in general those who misunderstood and abused them on account of their good work.
It was good for those benefactors of humanity that virtue is its own reward.