voyage, reaches
Whampoa in safety (a few miles below Canton). Her supercargo
in two months has her loaded with tea, some china ware, a
great deal of cassia or false cinnamon, and a few other
articles. Suppose the cargo, mainly tea, costing about
thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on the average.

"The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost
of the tea, at least: so that a tea cargo of $200,000, when
it had paid duty of seventy-five cents per pound (which
would be $400,000), amounted to $600,000. The profit was at
least fifty per cent on the original cost, or $100,000, and
would make the cargo worth $700,000.

"The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say
eleven or twelve months after the ship left New York in May)
to wholesale grocers, for their notes at four and six
months,--say for $700,000. In those years there was _credit
given by the United States_ of nine, twelve, and eighteen
months! So that the East-India or Canton merchant, after his
ship had made one voyage, had the use of government capital
to the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China
ship.

"No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the
regular East-Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged
for grocers' notes for $700,000. These notes could be turned
into specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his
bonds for $400,000 duty, at nine, twelve, and eighteen
months, giving him time actually to send two more ships with
$200,000 each to Canton, and have them back again in New
York before the bonds on the first cargo were due.

"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 saga