JOHN JACOB ASTOR
From the little village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, Germany, came the head of the Astor family to America when he was twenty years old. Born July 17, 1763, the fourth son of a butcher, he helped his father until he was sixteen, and then determined to join an elder brother in London, who worked in the piano and flute factory of their uncle.
Having no money, he set out on foot for the Rhine; and resting under a tree, he made this resolution, which he always kept, "to be honest, industrious, and never gamble." Finding employment on a raft of timber, he earned enough money to procure a steerage passage from Holland to London, where he remained till 1783, helping his brother, and learning the English language. Having saved about seventy-five dollars at the end of three or four years, John Jacob invested about twenty-five in seven flutes, purchased a steerage ticket across the water for a like amount, and put about twenty-five in his pocket.
On the journey over he met a furrier, who told him that money could be made in buying furs from the Indians and men on the frontier, and selling them to large dealers. As soon as he reached New York, he entered the employ of a Quaker furrier, and learned all he could about the business, meantime selling his flutes, and using the money to buy furs from the Indians and hunters. He opened a little shop in New York for the sale of furs and musical instruments, walked nearly all over New York State in collecting his furs, and finally went back to London to sell his goods.
He married, probably in 1786, Sarah Todd, who brought as her marriage portion $300, and what was better still, economy, energy, and a willingness to share her husband's constant labors. As fast as a little money was saved he invested it in land, having great faith in the future of New York City. He lived most simply in the same house where he carried on his business, and after fifteen years found himself the owner of $250,000.
In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and established trade in furs with France, England, Germany, and Russia, and engaged in trade with China. He used to say in his old age, "The first hundred thousand dollars – that was hard to get; but afterward it was easy to make more."
He died March 29, 1848, leaving a fortune estimated at $20,000,000, much of it the result of increased values of land, on which he had built houses for rent. By will Mr. Astor conveyed the large sum, at that time, of $400,000 to found a public library; his friends, Washington Irving, Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, the poet, who was his secretary for seventeen years, having advised the gift of a library when he expressed a desire to do something helpful for the city of New York. He also left $50,000 for the benefit of the poor in his native town of Waldorf.
John Jacob Astor's eldest son, and third of his seven children, William B. Astor, left and gave during his lifetime $550,000 to Astor Library. His estate of $45,000,000 was divided between his two sons, John Jacob and William. The son of John Jacob, William Waldorf Astor, a graduate of Columbia College, ex-minister to Italy, is a scholarly man, and the author of several books. The son of William Astor, John Jacob Astor, a graduate of Harvard, lives on Fifth Avenue, New York. He has also written one or more books.
In 1879 John Jacob, the grandson of the first Astor in this country, a graduate of Columbia College, a student of the University of Göttingen, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, erected a third structure for the library similar to those built by his father and grandfather, and gave in all $850,000 to Astor Library. The entire building now has a frontage of two hundred feet, with a depth of one hundred feet. It is of brown-stone and brick, and is Byzantine in style of architecture. In 1893 its total number of volumes was 245,349.
Astor Library possesses some very rare and valuable books. "Here is one of the very few extant copies of Wyckliffe's translation of the New Testament in manuscript," writes Frederick K. Saunders, the librarian, in the New England Magazine for April, 1890, "so closely resembling black-letter type as almost to deceive even a practised eye. It is enriched with illuminated capitals, and its supposed date is 1390. It is said to have been once the property of Duke Humphrey. There is an Ethiopic manuscript on vellum, the service book of an Abyssinian convent at Jerusalem. There are two richly illuminated Persian manuscripts on vellum which once belonged to the library of the Mogul Emperors of Delhi; also two exquisitely illuminated missals or books of Hours, the gift of the late Mr. J. J. Astor. One of the glories of the collection is the splendid Salisbury Missal, written with wonderful skill, and profusely emblazoned with burnished gold. Here also may be found the second printed Bible, on vellum, folio, 1462, which cost $9,000."
Mrs. Astor gave a valuable collection of autographs of eminent persons; and the family also gave "a magnificent manuscript written with liquid gold, on purple vellum, entitled 'Evangelistarium,' of almost unrivalled beauty, but no less remarkable for its great age, the date being A.D. 870. This is probably the oldest book in America." Ptolemy's Geography is represented by fifteen editions, the earliest printed in 1478.
John Jacob Astor, the grandson of the first John Jacob, died in New York, Feb. 22, 1890. He presented to Trinity Church the reredos and altar, costing $80,000, as a memorial of his father, William B. Astor. Through his wife, who was a Miss Gibbs of South Carolina, he virtually built the New York Cancer Hospital, and gave largely to the Woman's Hospital. He gave $100,000 to St. Luke's Hospital, $50,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with his wife's superb collection of laces after her death in 1887. The paintings of John Jacob Astor costing $75,000 were presented to Astor Library by his son, William Waldorf Astor, after his father's death.
MORTIMER FABRICIUS REYNOLDS
"On the 2d of December, 1814, there was born, in the narrow clearing that skirted the ford of the Genesee River, the first child of white parents to see the light upon that 'Hundred-Acre Tract' which was the primitive site of the present city of Rochester. Mortimer Fabricius Reynolds was the name given, for family reasons, to the first-born of this backwoods settlement." Thus states the "Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester, N.Y.," published in 1888.
This boy, grown to manhood and engaged in commerce, was the sole survivor of the six children of his father, Abelard Reynolds. He was proud of the family name; but "his childlessness, and the consciousness that with him the name was to be extinct, had come to weigh with a painful gravity." Abelard Reynolds had made a fortune from the increase in land values, and both he and his son William had interested themselves deeply in the intellectual and moral advance of the community in which they lived.
Mortimer F. Reynolds desired to leave a memorial of his father, of his brother, William Abelard Reynolds, and of himself. He wisely chose to found a library, that the name might be forever remembered. He died June 13, 1892, leaving nearly one million to found and endow the Reynolds Library of Rochester, N.Y., Alfred S. Collins, librarian.
It is stated in the press that President Seth Low of Columbia College has given over a million dollars for the new library in connection with that college.
In "Public Libraries of America," page 144, a most useful book by William I. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst College, may be found a suggestive list of the principal gifts to libraries in the United States. Among the larger bequests are Dr. James Rush, Philadelphia, $1,500,000; Henry Hall, St. Paul, Minn., $500,000; Charles E. Forbes, Northampton, Mass., $220,000; Mr. and Mrs. Converse, Malden, Mass., $125,000; Hiram Kelley, Chicago, to public library, $200,000; Silas Bronson, Waterbury, Conn., $200,000; Dr. Kirby Spencer, Minneapolis, Minn., $200,000; Mrs. Maria C. Robbins of Brooklyn, N.Y., to her former home, Arlington, Mass., for public library building and furnishing, $150,000.
FREDERICK H. RINDGE
AND HIS GIFTS
Mr. Rindge, born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1857, but at present residing in California, has given his native city a public library, a city hall, a manual training-school, and a valuable site for a high school.
The handsome library, Romanesque in style, of gray stone with brown stone trimmings, was opened to the public in 1889. One room of especial interest on the first floor contains war relics, manuscripts, autographs and pictures of distinguished persons, and literary and historical matter connected with the history of Cambridge. The European note-book of Margaret Fuller is seen here, the lock, key, and hinges of the old Holmes mansion, removed to make way for the Law School, etc.
The library has six local stations where books may be ordered by filling out a slip; and these orders are gathered up three times a day, and books are sent to these stations the same day.
The City Hall, a large building also of gray stone with brown stone trimmings, is similar to the old town halls of Brussels, Bruges, and others of mediæval times. Its high tower can be seen at a great distance.
The other important gift to Cambridge from Mr. Rindge is a manual training-school for boys. Ground was broken for this school in the middle of July, 1888, and pupils were received in September. The boys work in wood, iron, blacksmithing, drawing, etc. The system is similar to that adopted by Professor Woodward at St. Louis. The boys, to protect their clothes, wear outer suits of dark brown and black duck, and round paper caps.
The fire-drill is especially interesting to strangers. Hose-carriages and ladders are kept in the building, and the boys can put streams of water to the top in a very brief time. Mr. Rindge supports the school. The instruction is free, and is a part of the public-school work. The pupils may take in the English High School a course of pure head-work, or part head-work and part hand-work. If they elect the latter, they drop one study, and in its place take three hours a day in manual training. The course covers three years.
Mr. Rindge inherited his wealth largely from his father. He made these gifts when he was twenty-nine years of age. Being an earnest Christian, he made it a condition of his gifts that verses of Scripture and maxims of conduct should be inscribed upon the walls of the various buildings. These are found on the library building; and the inscription on the City Hall reads as follows: "God has given commandments unto men. From these commandments men have framed laws by which to be governed. It is honorable and praiseworthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to administer these laws. If the laws are not enforced, the people are not well governed."
ANTHONY J. DREXEL
AND HIS INSTITUTE
The Drexel family, like a majority of the successful and useful families in this country, began poor. Anthony J. Drexel's father, Francis Martin Drexel, was born at Dornbirn, in the Austrian Tyrol, April 7, 1792. When he was eleven years old, his father, a merchant, sent him to a school near Milan. Later, when there was a war with France, he was obliged to go to Switzerland to avoid conscription.
He earned a scanty living at whatever he could find to do, but his chief work and pleasure was in portrait painting. When he was twenty-five, in 1817, he determined to try his fortune in the New World, and reached the United States after a voyage of seventy-two days.
He settled in Philadelphia as an artist, with probably little expectation of any future wealth. After nine years of work he went to Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and seems to have had good success in painting the portraits of noted people, General Simon Bolivar among them.
Returning to Philadelphia, he surprised his acquaintances by starting a bank in 1837. There were fears of failure from what seemed an inadequate capital and lack of knowledge of business; but Mr. Drexel was economical, strictly honest, energetic, and devoted to his work.
He opened a little office in Third Street, and placed his son Anthony, born Sept. 13, 1826, in the small bank. "While waiting on customers," says Harper's Weekly, "the boy was in the habit of eating his cold dinner from a basket under the counter." He was but a lad of thirteen, yet he soon showed a special fitness for the place by his quickness and good sense.
The bank grew in patrons, in reputation, and in wealth; and when Francis Drexel died, June 5, 1863, he had long been a millionnaire, had retired from business, and left the bank to the management of his sons.
Besides the bank in Philadelphia, branch houses were formed in New York, Paris, and London. "As a man of affairs," wrote his very intimate friend, George W. Childs, "no one has ever spoken ill of Anthony J. Drexel; and he spoke ill of no one. He did not drive sharp bargains; he did not profit by the hard necessities of others; he did not exact from those in his employ excessive tasks and give them inadequate pay. He was a lenient, patient, liberal creditor, a generous employer, considerate of and sympathetic with every one who worked for him…
"He was a devoted husband, a loving parent, a true friend, a generous host, and in all his domestic relations considerate, just, and kind. His manners were finely courteous, manly, gentle, and refined. His mind was as pure as a child's; and during all the years of our close companionship I never knew him to speak a word that he might not have freely spoken in the presence of his own children. His religion was as deep as his nature, and rested upon the enduring foundations of faith, hope, and charity.
"He observed always a strict simplicity of living; he walked daily to and from his place of business, which was nearly three miles distant from his home. I was his companion for the greater part of the way every morning in these long walks; and as he passed up and down Chestnut Street, he was wont to salute in his cordial, pleasant, friendly manner, large numbers of all sorts and conditions of people. His smile was especially bright and attractive, and his voice low and sweet."
Mr. Drexel inherited his father's artistic tastes, and in his home at West Philadelphia, and at his country place, "Runnymede," near Lansdowne, he had many beautiful works of art, statuary, books, paintings, bronzes, and the like. He was also especially fond of music.
He was a great friend of General Grant, and Dec. 19, 1879, gave him and Mrs. Grant a notable reception with about seven hundred prominent guests. He was one of the pall-bearers at Grant's funeral in 1885.
Mr. Drexel was always a generous giver. He was a large contributor to the University of Pennsylvania, to hospitals, to churches of all denominations, and to asylums. With Mr. Childs and others he built an Episcopal church at Elberon, Long Branch, where he usually went in the summer.
His largest and best gift, for which he will be remembered, is that of about three million dollars to found and endow Drexel Institute, erected in his lifetime. He wished to fit young men and women to earn their living; and after making a careful examination of Cooper Institute, New York, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and sending abroad to learn the best methods and plan of buildings for such industrial education, he began his own admirable Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in West Philadelphia. He erected the handsome building of light buff brick with terra-cotta trimmings, at the corner of Thirty-second and Chestnut Streets, at a cost of $550,000, and then gave an endowment of $1,000,000. At various times he gave to the library, museum, etc., over $600,000.
The Institute was dedicated on the afternoon of Dec. 17, 1891, Chauncey M. Depew making the dedication address, and was opened to students Jan. 4, 1892. James MacAlister, LL.D., superintendent of the public schools of Philadelphia, a man of fine scholarship, great energy, and enthusiastic love for the work of education, was chosen as the president.
From the first the school has been filled with eager students in the various departments. The art department gives instruction in painting, modelling, architecture, design and decoration, wood-carving, etc.; the department of science and technology, courses in mathematics, chemistry, physics, machine construction, and electrical engineering; the department of mechanic arts, shopwork in wood and iron with essential English branches; the business department, commercial law, stenography, and typewriting, etc.; the department of domestic science and arts gives courses in cooking, dressmaking, and millinery. There are also courses in physical training, in music, library work, and evening classes open five nights in the week from October to April.
The Institute was attended by more than 2,700 students in 1893-1894; and 35,000 persons attended the free public lectures in art, science, technology, etc., and free concerts, chiefly organ recitals, weekly, during the winter months.
The Institute has been fortunate in its gifts from friends. Mr. George W. Childs gave to it his rare and valuable collection of manuscripts and autographs, fine engravings, ivories, books on art, etc.; Mrs. John R. Fell, a daughter of Mr. Drexel, a collection of ancient jewellery and rare old clocks; Mrs. James W. Paul, another daughter of Mr. Drexel, $10,000 as a memorial of her mother, to be used in the purchase of articles for the museum; while other members of the family have given bronzes, metal-work, and unique and useful gifts.
Mr. Drexel lived to see his Institute doing its noble work. So interested was he that he stopped daily as he went to the bank to see the young people at their duties. He was greatly interested in the evening classes. "This part of the work," says Dr. MacAlister, "he watched with great eagerness, and he was specially desirous that young people who were compelled to work through the day should have opportunities in the evening equal to those who took the regular daily work of the Institution."
Mr. Drexel died suddenly, June 30, 1893, about two years after the building of the Institute, from apoplexy, at Carlsbad, Germany. He had gone to Europe for his health, as was his custom yearly, and seemed about as well as usual until the stroke came. Two weeks before he had had a mild attack of pleurisy, but would not permit his family to be told of it, thinking that he would fully recover.
Mr. Drexel left behind him the memory of a modest, unassuming man; so able a financier that he was asked to accept the position of Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, but declined; so generous a giver, that he built his monument before his death in his elegant and helpful Institute, an honor to his native city, Philadelphia, and an honor to his family.
PHILIP D. ARMOUR
AND HIS INSTITUTE
Philip D. Armour was born in Stockbridge, Madison County, N.Y., and spent his early life on a farm. In 1852, when he was twenty years of age, he went to California, and finally settled in Chicago, where he has become very wealthy by dealing in packed meat, which is sent to almost every corner of the earth.
"He pays six or seven millions of dollars yearly in wages," writes Arthur Warren in an interesting article in McClure's Magazine, February, 1894, "owns four thousand railway cars, which are used in transporting his goods, and has seven or eight hundred horses to haul his wagons. Fifty or sixty thousand persons receive direct support from the wages paid in his meatpacking business alone, if we estimate families on the census basis. He is a larger owner of grain-elevators than any other individual in either hemisphere; he is the proprietor of a glue factory, which turns out a product of seven millions of tons a year; and he is actively interested in an important railway enterprise."
He manages his business with great system, and knows from his heads of departments, some of whom he pays a salary of $25,000 yearly, what takes place from day to day in his various works. He is a quiet, self-centred man, a good listener, has excellent judgment, and possesses untiring energy.
"All my life," he says, "I have been up with the sun. The habit is as easy at sixty-one as it was at sixteen; perhaps easier, because I am hardened to it. I have my breakfast at half-past five or six; I walk down town to my office, and am there by seven, and I know what is going on in the world without having to wait for others to come and tell me. At noon I have a simple luncheon of bread and milk, and after that, usually, a short nap, which freshens me again for the afternoon's work. I am in bed again at nine o'clock every night."
Mr. Armour thinks there are as great and as many opportunities for men to succeed in life as there ever have been. He said to Mr. Warren: "There was never a better time than the present, and the future will bring even greater opportunities than the past. Wealth, capital, can do nothing without brains to direct it. It will be as true in the future as it is in the present that brains make capital – capital does not make brains. The world does not stand still. Changes come quicker now than they ever did, and they will come quicker and quicker. New ideas, new inventions, new methods of manufacture, of transportation, new ways to do almost everything, will be found as the world grows older; and the men who anticipate them, and who are ready for them, will find advantages as great as any their fathers or grandfathers have had."
Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the well-known journalist, relates this incident of Mr. Armour: —
"He is a good judge of men, and he usually puts the right man in the right place. I am told that he never discharges a man if he can help it. If the man is not efficient he gives instructions to have him put in some other department, but to keep him if possible. There are certain things, however, which he will not tolerate; and among these are laziness, intemperance, and getting into debt. As to the last, he says he believes in good wages, and that he pays the best. He tells his men that if they are not able to live on the wages he pays them he does not want them to work for him. Not long ago he met a policeman in his office.
"'What are you doing here, sir?' he asked.
"'I am here to serve a paper,' was the reply.
"'What kind of a paper?' asked Mr. Armour.
"'I want to garnishee one of your men's wages for debt,' said the policeman.
"'Indeed,' replied Mr. Armour; 'and who is the man?' He thereupon asked the policeman into his private office, and ordered the debtor to come in. He then asked the clerk how long he had been in debt. The man replied that for twenty years he had been behind, and that he could not catch up.
"'But you get a good salary,' said Mr. Armour, 'don't you?'
"'Yes,' said the clerk; 'but I can't get out of debt. My life is such that somehow or other I can't get out.'
"'But you must get out,' said Mr. Armour, 'or you must leave here. How much do you owe?'
"The clerk then gave the amount. It was less than $1,000. Mr. Armour took his check-book, and wrote out an order for the amount. 'There,' he said, as he handed the clerk the check, 'there is enough to pay all your debts. Now I want you to keep out of debt, and if I hear of your getting into debt again you will have to leave.'
"The man took the check. He did pay his debts, and remodelled his life on a cash basis. About a year after the above incident happened he came to Mr. Armour, and told him that he had had a place offered him at a higher salary, and that he was going to leave. He thanked Mr. Armour, and told him that his last year had been the happiest of his life, and that getting out of debt had made a new man of him."
When Mr. Armour was asked by Mr. Carpenter to what he attributed his great success, he replied: —
"I think that thrift and economy have had much to do with it. I owe much to my mother's training, and to a good line of Scotch ancestors, who have always been thrifty and economical."
Mr. Armour has not been content to spend his life in amassing wealth only. After the late Joseph Armour bequeathed a fund to establish Armour Mission, Philip D. Armour doubled the fund, or more than doubled it; and now the Mission has nearly two thousand children in its Sunday-school, with free kindergarten and free dispensary. Mr. Armour goes to the Mission every Sunday afternoon, and finds great happiness among the children.
To yield a revenue yearly for the Mission, Mr. Armour built "Armour Flats," a great building adjoining the Mission, with a large grass-plot in the centre, where in two hundred and thirteen flats, having each from six to seven rooms, families can find clean and attractive homes, with a rental of from seventeen to thirty-five dollars a month.
"There is an endowed work," says Mr. Armour, "that cannot be altered by death, or by misunderstandings among trustees, or by bickerings of any kind. Besides, a man can do something to carry out his ideas while he lives, but he can't do so after he is in the grave. Build pleasant homes for people of small incomes, and they will leave their ugly surroundings, and lead brighter lives."
Mr. Armour, aside from many private charities, has given over a million and a half dollars to the Armour Institute of Technology. The five-story fire-proof building of red brick trimmed with brown stone was finished Dec. 6, 1892, on the corner of Thirty-third Street and Armour Avenue; and the keys were put in the hands of the able and eloquent preacher, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, "to formulate," says the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 15, 1893, "more exactly than Mr. Armour had done the lines on which this work was to go forward. Dr. Gunsaulus had long ago reached the conclusion that the best way to prepare men for a home in heaven is to make it decently comfortable for them here."
Dr. Gunsaulus put his heart and energy into this noble work. The academic department prepares students to enter any college in the country; the technical department gives courses in mechanical engineering, electricity, and electrical engineering, mining engineering, and metallurgy. The department of domestic arts offers instruction in cooking, dressmaking, millinery, etc.; the department of commerce fits persons for a business life, wisely combining with its course in shorthand and typewriting such a knowledge of the English language, history, and some modern languages, as will make the students do intelligent work for authors, lawyers, and educated people in general.
Special attention has been given to the gymnasium, that health may be fully attended to. Mr. Armour has spared neither pains nor expense to provide the best machinery, especially for electrical work. "In a few years," he says, "we shall be doing everything by electricity. Before long our steam-engines will be as old-fashioned as the windmills are now."
Dr. Gunsaulus has taken great pleasure in gathering books, prints, etc., for the library, which already has a choice collection of works on the early history of printing.
The Institute was opened in September, 1893, with six hundred pupils, and has been most useful and successful from the first.