The Astor Dynasty.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 470, 10 May 1890, Page 5

The Astor Dynasty.

The death of Mr John Jacob Astor is made the occasion by the American newspapers for a good deal of talk about his enormous wealth. The Astor fortune, it is claimed, is undoubtedly the largest and probably the most solid private fortune in all the world. It is certainly the most remakable instance of modern times of what Mr Henry George would call ‘unearned increment,’ but it has been built up from the beginning on stricly legitimate business lines. It was founded nearly a century ago by a man of extraordinary capacity, one of the last of the race of great merchant adventurers. The First Astor. John Jacob Astor, a German, born at Waldaf, in the Black Forest, came to London before the close of the American Revolutionary War, to enter the firm in which his elder brother Henry was a partner, of Broadwood and Astor, musical instrument makers, John Jacob Astor, after the peace in 1783, went out to New York to establish an agency there for the sale of the Broadwood and Astor instruments. He lodged in Wall-street, now the Chapel Court of New York, married his landlady’s daughter, and very soon wrote to his brother in London that there was better business to be done in America than selling pianos and fiddles. Competing with Hudson Bay. With sufficient capital, he said, he could cut the throat of the Hudson Bay Company, which then controlled the fur market of the world. His brother furnished the required capital, and John Jacob Astor went to work to establish trappers and hunters throughout what was then the great wilderness of Western and Central New York. He established a North American Fur Company, extended its business rapidly, sent the first American ships round Cape Horn to the North West Coast and Russian America, and founded there near the Columbia River the town of Astoria. Washington Irving has written a most interesting account of the great enterprise. Astor the Second. His eldest son, William B. Astor, had been most carefully educated in France and Germany, and under the eye of his father had been trained to the management of an estate which his father meant should become what it now is, the greatest in the world. He left it as the policy to be pursued by his descendant, ‘ That they should live modestly and never make a dash.’ One of his rules was the regular investment every year of a certain portion of his income in British Consols, and in some Continental securities. Ten Million Sterling.

When he died his fortune was estimated to reach ten million sterling. It had certainly doubled in value on the death of his son William B. Astor in 1875, and it has increased more rapidly since that time, and the full fee simply of the"great bulk of the property now rests in his great grandson, William Waldaf Astor, so baptised in accordance with the direction of the original founder, given to perpetuate the name of his German birthplace. A Prince of Milliardaires. This gentleman now came into control of a property, mainly in real estate, which cannot be reckoned at less than thirty-five millions. Even in Paris Mr Astor would be recognised as the Prince, nob ol millionaires, butof * Milliardcaires.’ Likehisfather, he has been very well educated, and from 1880 to 1884 discharged the duties of United States Minister to Italy with good sense, discretion and ability. He married a lady of great beauty, Miss Paul, of Philadelphia, and while living within the injunction 4 not to make a dash,’ lives in a style not unbecoming his position and his responsibilities. . ... . •