John Jacob Astor Part 1

John Jacob Astor.

by Elbert Hubbard.

JOHN J. ASTOR

The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course, going to bed does not make him rich--I merely mean that such a man will in all probability be up early in the morning and do a big day's work, so his weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues do their work at night.

Honest men work by day. It's all a matter of habit, and good habits in America make any man rich. Wealth is a result of habit.

--JOHN JACOB ASTOR

LITTLE JOURNEYS

Victor Hugo says, "When you open a school, you close a prison."

This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have in mind a theological school, nor yet a young ladies' seminary, nor an English boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a parochial inst.i.tute. What he was thinking of was a school where people--young and old--were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant and efficient--to care for themselves, to help bear the burdens of the world, to a.s.sist themselves by adding to the happiness of others.

Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education that serves is the one that increases human efficiency, not the one that r.e.t.a.r.ds it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, t.i.tles, position--immunity--may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race and its gain on the whole is nil.

Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service, gets great returns. Action and reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of the planets balances their attraction. The love you keep is the love you give away.

A b.u.mptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a hardware store and remarked, "Lemme see your razors."

The clerk smiled pleasantly and asked, "Do you want a razor to shave with?"

"Naw," said the colored person, "--for social purposes."

An education for social purposes is n't of any more use than a razor purchased for a like use. An education which merely fits a person to prey on society, and occasionally slash it up, is a predatory preparation for a life of uselessness, and closes no prison. Rather it opens a prison and takes captive at least one man. The only education that makes free is the one that tends to human efficiency. Teach children to work, play, laugh, fletcherize, study, think, and yet again--work, and we will raze every prison.

There is only one prison, and its name is Inefficiency. Amid the bastions of this bastile of the brain the guards are Pride, Pretense, Greed, Gluttony, Selfishness.

Increase human efficiency and you set the captives free.

"The Teutonic tribes have captured the world because of their efficiency," says Lecky the historian.

He then adds that he himself is a Celt.

The two statements taken together reveal Lecky to be a man without prejudice. When the Irish tell the truth about the Dutch the millennium approaches.

Should the quibbler arise and say that the Dutch are not Germans, I will reply, true, but the Germans are Dutch--at least they are of Dutch descent.

The Germans are great simply because they have the homely and indispensable virtues of prudence, patience and industry.

There is no copyright on these qualities. G.o.d can do many things, but so far, He has never been able to make a strong race of people and leave these ingredients out of the formula.

As a nation, Holland first developed them so that they became the characteristic of the whole people.

It was the slow, steady stream of Hollanders pus.h.i.+ng southward that civilized Germany.

Music as a science was born in Holland. The grandfather of Beethoven was a Dutchman.

Gutenberg's forebears were from Holland.

And when the Hollanders had gone clear through Germany, and then traversed Italy, and came back home by way of Venice, they struck the rock of spiritual resources and the waters gushed forth.

Since Rembrandt carried portraiture to the point of perfection, two hundred and fifty years ago, Holland has been a land of artists--and it is so even unto this day.

John Jacob Astor was born of a Dutch family that had migrated down to Heidelberg from Antwerp. Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and was more or less of a stone-age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by trade, in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A butcher's business then was to travel around and kill the pet pig, or sheep, or cow that the tender-hearted owners dare not harm. The butcher was a pariah, a sort of unofficial, industrial hangman.

At the same time he was more or less of a genius, for he climbed steeples, dug wells, and did all kinds of disagreeable jobs that needed to be done, and from which sober and cautious men shrank like unwashed wool.

One such man--a German, too--lives in East Aurora. I joined him, accidentally, in walking along a country road the other day. He carried a big basket on his arm, and was peacefully smoking a big Dutch pipe. We talked of music and he was regretting the decline of a taste for Bach, when he s.h.i.+fted the basket to the other arm.

"What have you in the basket?" I asked.

And here is the answer, "Noddings--but dynamite. I vas going up on der hill, already, to blow me oud some stumps oud." And I suddenly bethought me of an engagement I had at the village.

John Jacob Astor was the youngest of four sons, and as many daughters.

The brothers ran away early in life, and went to sea or joined the army. One of these boys came to America, and followed his father's trade of butcher.

Jacob Astor, the happy father of John Jacob, used to take the boy with him on his pig-killing expeditions. This for two reasons--one, so the lad would learn a trade, and the other to make sure that the boy did not run away.

Parents who hold their children by force have a very slender claim upon them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy, who had such disgust for his father's trade and hired him to work in his garden and run errands.

The intelligence and alertness of the lad made him look like good timber for a minister.

He learned to read and was duly confirmed as a member of the church.

Under the kindly care of the village parson John Jacob grew in mind and body--his estate was to come later. When he was seventeen, his father came and made a formal demand for his services. The young man must take up his father's work of butchering.

That night John Jacob walked out of Waldorf by the wan light of the moon, headed for Antwerp. He carried a big red handkerchief in which his worldly goods were knotted, and in his heart he had the blessings of the Lutheran clergyman, who walked with him for half a mile, and said a prayer at parting.

To have youth, high hope, right intent, health and a big red handkerchief is to be greatly blessed.

John Jacob got a job next day as oarsman on a lumber raft.

He reached Antwerp in a week. There he got a job on the docks as a laborer. The next day he was promoted to checker-off. The captain of a s.h.i.+p asked him to go to London and figure up the manifests on the way. He went.

The captain of the s.h.i.+p recommended him to the company in London, and the boy was soon piling up wealth at the rate of a guinea a month.

In September, Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-three, came the news to London that George Was.h.i.+ngton had surrendered. In any event, peace had been declared--Cornwallis had forced the issue, so the Americans had stopped fighting.

A little later it was given out that England had given up her American Colonies, and they were free.