Astor became so
preposterously rich. Few successful men gain a single million by
legitimate commerce. A million dollars is a most enormous sum of
money. It requires a considerable effort of the mind to conceive it.
But this indomitable little German managed, in the course of sixty
years, to accumulate twenty millions; of which, probably, not more
than two millions was the fruit of his business as a fur trader and
China merchant.

At that day the fur trade was exceedingly profitable, as well as of
vast extent. 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. All his ships escaped capture, and arriving
at a time when foreign commerce was almost annihilated and tea had
doubled in price, his gains were so immense, that the million or more
lost in the Astorian enterprise gave him not even a momentary
inconvenience.

At that time, too, tea merchants of large capital had an advantage
which they do not now enjoy. A writer explains the manner in which the
business was done in those days:--

"A house that could raise money enough thirty years ago to
send $260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon
capital, and this was the working of the old system. The
Griswolds owned the ship Panama. They started her from New
York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps $30,000
worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in
Spanish dollars. The ship goes on the