PART 2:HISTORY OF THE GREAT AMERICAN FORTUNES,THE SHIPPING FORTUNES,GIRARD

HISTORY OF THE 

GREAT AMERICAN FORTUNES

BY GUSTAVUS MYERS

CHAPTER IV

THE SHIPPING FORTUNES

Thus is was that at the time of the Revolution many of the consequential fortunes were those of shipowners and were principally concentrated in New England.  Some of these dealt in merchandise only, while others made large sums of money by exporting fish, tobacco, corn, rice and timber and lading their ships on the return with negro slaves, for which they found a responsive market in the South.  Many of the members of the Continental Congress were ship merchants, or inherited their fortunes from rich shippers, as, for instance, Samuel Adams, Robert Morris, Henry Laurens of Charleston, S.C., John Hancock, whose fortune of $350,000 came from his uncle Thomas, Francis Lewis of New York and Joseph Hewes of North Carolina.  Others were members of various Constitutional conventions or became high officials in the Federal or State governments.  The Revolution disrupted and almost destroyed the colonial shipping, and trade remained stagnant.

FORTUNES FROM PRIVATEERING.

Not wholly so, for the hazardous venture of privateering offered great returns.  George Cabot of Boston was the son of an opulent shipowner.  During the Revolution, George, with his brother swept the coast with twenty privateers carrying from sixteen to twenty guns each.  For four or five years their booty was rich and heavy, but toward the end of the war, British gun-boats swooped on most of their craft and the brothers lost heavily.  George subsequently became a United States Senator.  Israel Thorndike, who began life as a cooper’s apprentice, and died in 1832 at the age of 75, leaving a fortune, “ the greatest that has ever been left in New England,”1 made large sums of money as part owner and commander of a privateer which made many successful cruises.  With this money he went into fisheries, foreign commerce and real estate, and later into manufacturing establishments.  One of the towering rich men of the day, we are told that “ his investments in real estate, shipping or factories were wonderfully judicious and hundreds watched his movements, believing his pathway was safe.”  The fortune he bequeathed was ranked as immense.  To each of his three sons he left about $500,000 each, and other sums to another son, and to his widow and daughters.  In all, the legacies to the surviving members of his family amounted to about $1,800,000.2

Another “ distinguished merchant,” as he was styled, to take up privateering was Nathaniel Tracy, the son of a Newburyport merchant.  College bred, as were most of the sons of rich merchants, he started out at the age of 25 with a number of privateers, and for many years returned flushed with prizes.  To quote his appreciative biographer :  “ He lived in a most magnificent style, having several country seats or large farms with elegant summer houses and fine fish ponds, and all those matters of convenience or taste that a British nobleman might think necessary to his rank and happiness.  His horses were of the choicest kind and his coaches of the most splendid make.”  But alas! this gorgeous career was abruptly dispelled when unfeeling British frigates and gunboats hooked in his saucy privateers and Tracy stood quite ruined.[So these folks are a cross between pirates and self appointed Navy's DC]

Much more fortunate was Joseph Peabody.  As a young man Peabody enlisted as an officer on Derby’s privateer “ Bunker Hill.”  His second cruise was on Cabot’s privateer “ Pilgrim ” which captured a richly cargoed British merchantman.  Returning to shore he studied for an education, later resuming the privateer deck.  Some of his exploits, as narrated by George Atkinson Ward in “ Hunt’s Lives of American Merchants,” published in 1856, were thrilling enough to have found a deserved place in a gory novel.  With the money made as his share of the various prizes, he bought a vessel which he commanded himself, and he personally made sundry voyages to Europe and the West Indies.  By 1791 he had amassed a large fortune.  There was no further need of his going to sea ;  he was now a great merchant and could pay others to take charge of his ships.  These increased to such an extent that he built in Salem and owned eighty-three ships which he freighted and dispatched to every known part of the world.  Seven thousand seamen were in his employ.  His vessels were known in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, St. Petersburg and dozens of other ports.  They came back with cargoes which were distributed by coasting vessels among the various American ports.  It was with wonderment that his contemporaries spoke of his paying an aggregate of about $200,000 in State, county and city taxes in Salem, where he lived.3  He died on Jan. 5, 1844, aged 84 years.

Asa Clapp, who at his death in 1848, at the age of 85 years, was credited with being the richest man in Maine,4 began his career during the Revolution as an officer on a privateer.  After the war he commanded various trading vessels, and in 1796 established a shipping business of his own, with headquarters at Portland.  His vessels traded with Europe, the East and West Indies and South America.  In his later years he went into banking.  Of the size of his fortune we are left in ignorance.

A GLANCE AT OTHER 

SHIPPING FORTUNES.

These are instances of rich men whose original capital came from privateering, which was recognized as a legitimate method of reprisal.  As to the inception of the fortunes of other prominent capitalists of the period, few details are extant in the cases of most of them.  Of the antecedents and life of Thomas Russell, a Boston shipper, who died in 1796, “ supposedly leaving the largest amount of property which up to that time had been accumulated in New England,” little is known.  The extent of his fortune cannot be learned.  Russell was one of the first, after the Revolution, to engage in trade with Russia, and drove many a hard bargain.  He built a stately mansion in Charleston and daily traveled to Boston in a coach drawn by four black horses.  In business he was inflexible ;  trade considerations aside he was an alms-giver.  Of Cyrus Butler, another shipowner and trader, who, according to one authority, was probably the richest man in New England 5 — and who, according to the statement of another publication 6 — left a fortune estimated at from three to four millions of dollars, few details likewise are known.  He was the son of Samuel Butler, a shoemaker who removed froth Edgartown, Mass., to Providence about 1750 and became a merchant and shipowner.  Cyrus followed in his steps.  When this millionaire died at the age of 82 in 1849, the size of his fortune excited wonderment throughout New England.  It may be here noted as a fact worthy of comment that of the group of hale rich shipowners there were few who did not live to be octogenarians.

The rapidity with which large fortunes were made was not a riddle.  Labor was cheap and unorganized, and the profits of trade were enormous.  According to Weeden the customary profits at the close of the eighteenth century on muslins and calicoes were one hundred per cent.  Cargoes of coffee sometimes yielded three or four times that amount.  Weeden instances one shipment of plain glass tumblers costing less than $1,000 which sold for $12,000 in the Isle of France.7

The prospects of a dazzling fortune, speedily reaped, instigated owners of capital to take the most perilous chances.  Decayed ships, superficially patched up, were often sent out on the chance that luck and skill would get them through the voyage and yield fortunes.  Crew after crew was sacrificed to this frenzied rush for money, but nothing was thought of it.  Again, there were examples of almost incredible temerity.  In his biography of Peter Charndon Brooks, one of the principal merchants of the day, and his father-in-law, Edward Everett tells of a ship sailing from Calcutta to Boston with a youth of nineteen in command.  Why or how this boy was placed in charge is not explained.  This juvenile captain had nothing in the way of a chart on board except a small map of the world in Guthrie’s Geography.  He made the trip successfully.  Later, when he became a rich Boston banker, the tale of this feat was one of the proud annals of his life and, if true, deservedly so.8

Whitney’s notable invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had given a stupendous impetus to cotton growing in the Southern States.  As the shipowners were chiefly centered in New England the export of this staple vastly increased their trade and fortunes.  It might be thought, parenthetically, that Whitney himself should have made a surpassing fortune from an invention which brought millions of dollars to planters and traders.  But his inventive ability and perseverance, at least in his creation of the cotton gin, brought him little more than a multitude of infringements upon his patent, refusals to pay him, and vexatious and expensive litigation to sustain his rights.9  In despair, he turned, in 1808, to the manufacture in New Haven of fire-arms for the Government, and from this business managed to get a fortune.  From the Canton and Calcutta trade Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a Boston shipper extracted a fortune of $2,000,000.  His ships made thirty voyages around the world.  This merchant peer lived to the venerable age of 90 ;  when he passed away in 1854 his fortune, although intact, had shrunken to modest proportions compared with a few others which had sprung up.  James Lloyd, a partner of Perkins’, likewise profited ;  in 1808 he was elected a United States Senator and later reëlected.

William Gray, described as “one of the most successful of American merchants,” and as one who was considered and taxed in Salem “as one of the wealthiest men in the place, where there were several of the largest fortunes that could be found in the United States,” owned, in his heyday, more than sixty sail of vessels.  Some scant details are obtainable as to the career and personality of this moneyed colossus of his day.  He began as an apprenticed mechanic.  For more than fifty years he rose at dawn and was shaved and dressed.  His letters and papers were then spread before him and the day’s business was begun.  At his death in 1825 no inventory of his estate was taken.  The present millions of the Brown fortune of Rhode Island came largely from the trading activities of Nicholas Brown and the accretions of which increased population and values have brought.  Nicholas Brown was born in Providence in 1760, of a well-to-do father.  He went to Rhode Island College (later named in his honor by reason of his gifts) and greatly increased his fortune in the shipping trade.

It is quite needless, however, to give further instances in support of the statement that nearly all the large active fortunes of the latter part of the eighteenth and the early period of the nineteenth century, came from the shipping trade and were mainly concentrated in New England.  The proceeds of these fortunes frequently were put into factories, canals, turnpikes and later into railroads, telegraph lines and express companies.  Seldom, however, has the money thus employed really gone to the descendants of the men who amassed it, but has since passed over to men who, by superior cunning, have contrived to get the wealth into their own hands.  This statement is an anticipation of facts that will be more cognate in subsequent chapters, but may be appropriately referred to here.  There were some exceptions to the general condition of the large fortunes from shipping being compactly held in New England.  Thomas Pym Cope, a Philadelphia Quaker, did a brisk shipping trade, and founded the first regular line of packets between Philadelphia and Baltimore ;  with the money thus made he went into canal and railroad enterprises.  And in New York and other ports there were a number of shippers who made fortunes of several millions each.

THE WORKERS’ MEAGER SHARE.

Obviously these millionaires created nothing except the enterprise of distributing products made by the toil and skill of millions of workers the world over.  But while the workers made these products their sole share was meager wages, barely sufficient to sustain the ordinary demands of life.  Moreover, the workers of one country were compelled to pay exorbitant prices for the goods turned out by the workers of other countries.  The shippers who stood as middlemen between the workers of the different countries reaped the great rewards.  Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that the shippers played their distinct and useful part in their time and age, the spirit of which was intensely ultra-competitive and individualistic in the most sordid sense.

CHAPTER V

THE SHIPPERS AND THEIR TIMES

Unfortunately only the most general and eulogistic accounts of the careers of most of the rich shippers have appeared in such biographies as have been published.

Scarcely any details are preserved of the underlying methods and circumstances by which these fortunes were amassed.  Sixty years ago, when it was the unqualified fashion to extol the men of wealth as great public benefactors and truckle to them, and when sociological inquiry was in an undeveloped stage, there might have been some excuse for this.  But it is extremely unsatisfactory to find pretentious writers of the present day glossing over essential facts or not taking the trouble to get them.  A “ popular writer,” who has pretended to deal with the origin of one of the great present fortunes, the Astor fortune, and has given facts, although conventionally interpreted, as to one or two of Astor’s land transactions,1 passes over with a sentence the fundamental facts as to Astor’s shipping activities, and entirely ignores the peculiar special privileges, worth millions of dollars, that Astor, in conjunction with other merchants, had as a free gift from the Government.  This omission is characteristic, inasmuch as it leaves the reader in complete ignorance of the kind of methods Astor used in heaping up millions from the shipping trade — millions that enabled him to embark in the buying of land in a large and ambitious way.  Certainly there is no lack of data regarding the two foremost millionaires of the first decades of the nineteenth century — Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor.  The very names of nearly all of the other powerful merchants of the age have receded into the densest obscurity.  But both those of Girard and Astor live vivifyingly, the first by virtue of a memorable benefaction, the second as the founder of one of the greatest fortunes in the world.

COMMERCE SURCHARGED 

WITH FRAUD.

Because of their unexcelled success, these two were the targets for the bitter invective or the envy of their competitors on the one hand, and, on the other, of the laudation of their friends and beneficiaries.  Harsh statements were made as to the methods of both, but, in reality, if we but knew the truth, they were no worse than the other millionaires of the time except in degree.  The whole trading system was founded upon a combination of superior executive ability and superior cunning — not ability in creating, but in being able to get hold of, and distribute, the products of others’ creation.

Fraudulent substitution was an active factor in many, if not all, of the shipping fortunes.  The shippers and merchants practiced the grossest frauds upon the unsophisticated people.  Walter Barrett, that pseudonymic merchant, who took part in them himself, and who writes glibly of them as fine tricks of trade, gives many instances in his volumes dealing with the merchants of that time.

The firm of F. & G. Carnes, he relates, was one of the many which made a large fortune in the China trade.  This firm found that Chinese yellow-dog wood, when cut into proper sizes, bore a strong superficial resemblance to real Turkey rhubarb.  The Carnes brothers proceeded to have the wood packed in China in boxes counterfeiting those of the Turkey product.  They then made a regular traffic, importing this spurious and deleterious stuff and selling it as the genuine Turkey article at several times the cost.  It entirely superseded the real product.  This firm also sent to China samples of Italian, French and English silks ;  the Chinese imitated them closely, and the bogus wares were imported into the United States where they were sold as the genuine European goods.  The Carneses were but a type of their class.  Writing of the trade carried on by the shipping class, Barrett says that the shippers sent to China samples of the most noted Paris and London products in sauces, condiments, preserves, sweetmeats, syrups and other goods.  The Chinese imitated them even to facsimilies of printed Paris and London labels.  The fraudulent substitutions were then brought in cargoes to the United States where they were sold at fancy prices.[See,Made in China,not a new problem DC]

MERCHANTS THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY.

This was the prevalent commercial system.  The most infamous frauds were carried on ;  and so dominant were the traders’ standards that these frauds passed as legitimate business methods.  The very men who profited by them were the mainstays of churches, and not only that, but they were the very same men who formed the various self-constituted committees which demanded severe laws against paupers and petty criminals.  A study of the names of the men, for instance, who comprised the New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1818-1823, shows that nearly all of them were shippers or merchants who participated in the current commercial frauds.  Yet this was the class that sat in judgment upon the poverty of the people and the acts of poor criminals and which dictated laws to legislatures and to Congress.[such hypocrites,or 2 faced if you will, still.. DC] 

Girard and Astor were the superfine products of this stem ;  they did in a greater way what others did in a lesser way.  As a consequence, their careers were fairly well illumined.  The envious attacks of their competitors ascribed their success to hard-hearted and ignoble qualities, while their admirers heaped upon them tributes of praise for their extraordinary genius.  Both sets exaggerated.  Their success in garnering millions was merely an abnormal manifestation of an ambition prevalent among the trading class.  Their methods were an adroit refinement of methods which were common.  The game was one in which, while fortunes were being amassed, masses of people were thrown into the direst poverty and their lives were attended by injustice and suffering.  In this game a large company of eminent merchants played ;  Girard and Astor were peers in the playing and got away with the greater share of the stakes.

POST-REVOLUTIONARY CONDITIONS.

Before describing Girard’s career, it is well to cast a retrospective fleeting glance into conditions following the Revolution.

Despite the lofty sentiments of the Declaration of Independence — sentiments which were submerged by the propertied class when the cause was won — the gravity of law bore wholly in favor of the propertied interests.  The property less had no place or recognition.  The common man was good enough to shoulder a musket in the stress of war but that he should have rights after the war, was deemed absurd.  In the whole scheme of government neither the feelings nor the interests of the worker were thought of.

The Revolution brought no immediate betterment to his conditions ;  such slight amelioration as came later was the result of years of agitation.  No sooner was the Revolution over than in stepped the propertied interests and assumed control of government functions.  They were intelligent enough to know the value of class government — a lesson learned from the tactics of the British trading class.  They knew the tremendous impact of law and how, directly and indirectly, it worked great transformations in the body social.  While the worker was unorganized, unconscious of what his interests demanded, deluded by slogans and rallying-cries which really meant nothing to him, the propertied class was alert in its own interests.

PROPERTY’S RULE ENTRENCHED.

It proceeded to entrench itself in political as well as in financial power.  The Constitution of the United States was so drafted as to take as much direct power from the people as the landed and trading interests dared.  Most of the State Constitutions were more pronounced in rigid property discrimination's.  In Massachusetts, no man could be governor unless he were a Christian worth a clear £1,000 ;  in North Carolina if he failed of owning the required £1,000 in freehold estate ;  nor in Georgia if he did not own five hundred acres of land and £4,000, nor in New Hampshire if he lacked owning £500 in property.  In South Carolina he had to own £1,500 in property clear of all debts.  In New York by the Constitution of 1777, only actual residents having freeholds to the value of £100 free of all debts, could vote for governor and other State officials.  The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property.  In his “ Reminiscences “ Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious class which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his few shillings a day.

Theoretically, religious standards were the prevailing ones ;  in actuality the ethics and methods of the propertied class were all powerful.  The Church might preach equality, humility and the list of virtues ;  but nevertheless that did not give the property less man a vote.  Thus it was, that in communities professing the strongest religious convictions and embodying them in Constitutions and in laws and customs, glaring inconsistencies ran side by side.  The explanation lay in the fact that as regarded essential things of property, the standards of the trading class had supplanted the religious.  Even the very admonition given by pastors to the poor, “ Be content with your lot,” was a preachment entirely in harmony with the aims of the trading class which, in order to make money, necessarily had to have a multitude of workers to work for it and from whose labor the money, in its finality, had to come.  In the very same breath that they advised the poverty-stricken to reverence their superiors and to expect their reward in heaven, the ministers glorified the aggrandizing merchants as God’s chosen men who were called upon to do His work.2[Church whoring itself out nothing new in the pope being in bed with this ages pond scum DC]

Since the laws favored the propertied interests, it was correspondingly easy for them to get direct control of government functions and personally exercise them.  In New England rich shipowners rose at once to powerful elective and appointive officers.  Likewise in New York rich landowners, and in the South, plantation men were selected for high offices.  Law-making bodies, from Congress down, were filled with merchants, landowners, plantation men and lawyers, which last class was trained, as a rule, by association and self-interest to take the views of the propertied class and vote with, and for, it.  A puissant politico-commercial aristocracy developed which, at all times, was perfectly conscious of its best interests.  The worker was regaled with flattering commendations of the dignity of labor and sonorous generalizations and promises, but the ruling class took care of the laws.[See people,it has always been so,the rich running the government,there has never been a government for the people,all propaganda DC]

By means of these partial laws, the propertied interests early began to get tremendously valuable special privileges.  Banking rights, canal construction, trade privileges, government favors, public franchises all came in succession.

THE RIGORS OF LAW ON THE POOR.

At the same time that laws were enacted or were twisted to suit the will of property, other laws were long in force oppressing the poor to a terrifying degree. Poor debtors could be thrown in jail indefinitely, no matter how small a sum they owed.  In law, the laborer was accorded few rights.  It was easy to defraud him of his meager wages, since he had no lien upon the products of his labor.  His labor power was all that he had to sell, and the value of this power was not safeguarded by law.  But the products created by his labor power in the form of property were fortified by the severest laws.  For the laborer to be in debt was equal to a crime, in fact, in its results, worse than a crime.  The burglar or pickpocket would get a certain sentence and then go free.  The poor debtor, however, was compelled to languish in jail at the will of his creditor.

The report of the Prison Discipline Society for 1829 estimated that fully 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United States and that more than one-half of these owed less than twenty dollars.3  And such were the appalling conditions of these debtors’ prisons that there was no distinction of sex, age or character ;  all of the unfortunates were indiscriminately herded together.  Sometimes, even in the inclement climate of the North, the jails were so poorly constructed, that there was insufficient shelter from the elements.  In the newspapers of the period advertisements may be read in which charitable societies or individuals appeal for food, fuel and clothing for the inmates of these prisons.  The thief and the murderer had a much more comfortable time of it in prison than the poor debtor.

LAW KIND TO THE TRADERS.

With the law-making mercantile class the situation was very different.  The state and national bankruptcy acts, as apply to merchants, bankers, storekeepers — the whole commercial class — were so loosely drafted and so laxly enforced and judicially interpreted, that it was not hard to defraud creditors and escape with the proceeds.  A propertied bankrupt could conceal his assets and hire adroit lawyers to get him off scot-free on quibbling technicalities — a condition which has survived to the present time, though in a lesser degree.4

But imprisonment for debt was not the only fate that befell the property less.  According to the “ Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in New York City,” there were 12,000 paupers in New York City in 1820.5  Many of these were destitute Irish who, after having been plundered and dispossessed by the absentee landlords and the capitalists of their own country, were induced to pay their last farthing to the shippers for passage to America.  There were laws providing that ship masters must report to the Mayors of cities and give a bond that the destitute's that they brought over should not become public charges.  These laws were systematically and successfully evaded ;  poor immigrants were dumped unceremoniously at obscure places along the coast from whence they had to make their way, carrying their baggage and beds, to the cities the best that they could.  Cadwallader D. Colden, mayor of New York for some years, tells, in his reports, of harrowing cases of death after death resulting from exposure due to this horrible form of exploitation.

Now when the immigrant or native found himself in a state of near, or complete, destitution and resorted to the pawnbrokers’s or to theft, what happened ?  The law restricted pawnbrokers from charging more than seven per cent on amounts more than $25, but on amounts below that they were allowed to charge twenty-five per cent, which, as the wage value of money then went, was oppressively high.  Of course, the poor with their cheap possessions seldom owned anything on which they could get more than $25 ;  consequently they were the victims of the most grinding legalized usury.  Occasionally some legislative committee recognized, although in a dim and unanalytic way, this onerous discrimination of law against the property less.  “Their [the pawnbrokers’] rates of interest,” an Aldermanic committee reported in 1832, “ have always been exorbitant and exceedingly oppressive.  It has from time to time been regulated by law, and its sanctions have (as is usual upon most occasions when oppression has been legalized) been made to fall most heavily upon the poor.”  The committee continued with the following comments which were naive in the extreme considering that for generations all law had been made by and for the propertied interests :  “It is a singular fact that the smallest sums advanced have always been chargeable with the highest rates of interest. . . . It is a fact worthy of consideration that by far the greater number of loans effected at these establishments are less than one dollar, and of the whole twelve-fifteenths are in sums less than one dollar and a half.”6

On the other hand, the propertied class not only was able to raise money at a fairly low rate of interest, but, as will appear, had the free use of the people’s money, through the power of government, to the extent of tens of millions of dollars.

THE PENALTIES OF POVERTY.

If a man were absolutely destitute and took to theft as the only means of warding off starvation for himself or his family, the whole force of law at once descended heavily upon him.  In New York State the law decreed it grand larceny to steal to the value of $25, and in other States the statutes were equally severe.  For stealing $25 worth of anything the penalty was three years in prison at hard labor.  The unfortunate was usually put in the convict chain-gang and forced to work along the roads.  Street-begging was prohibited by drastic laws ;  poverty was substantially a crime.  The moment a property less person stole, the assumption at once was that he was prima facie a criminal ;  but let the powerful propertied man steal and government at once refused to see the criminal intent ;  if he were prosecuted, the usual outcome was that he never went to jail.  Hundreds of specific instances could be given to prove this.  One of the most noted of these was that of Samuel Swartwout, who was Collector of the Port of New York for a considerable period and who, at the same time, was a financier and large land-speculation promoter.  It came out in 1838 that he had stolen the enormous sum of $1,222,705.69 from the Government,7 which money he had used in his schemes.  He was a fugitive from justice for a time, but upon his return was looked upon extenuatingly as the “ victim of circumstances ” and he never languished in jail.

Money was the standard of everything.  The propertied person could commit any kind of crime, short of murder, and could at once get free on bail.  But what happened to the accused who was poor ?  Here is a contemporaneous description of one of the prisons of the period :

“ In Bridewell, white females of every grade of character, from the innocent who is in the end acquitted, down to the basest wretch that ever disgraced the refuges of prostitution, are crowded into the same abandoned abode.  With the white male prisons, the case is little altered. . . . And so it is with the colored prisoners of both sexes.  Hundreds are taken up and sent to these places, who, after remaining frequently several weeks, are found to be innocent of the crime alleged and are then let loose upon the community.”8

“ Let loose upon the community.”  Does not this clause in itself convey volumes of significance of the attitude of the propertied interests, even when banded together in a pseudo “charitable” enterprise, toward the poverty-stricken ?  While thus the charitable societies were holding up the destitute to scorn and contumely as outcasts and were loftily lecturing down to the poor on the evils of intemperance and gambling — practices which were astoundingly prevalent among the rich — at no time did they make any attempt to alter laws so glaringly unjust that they practically made poverty a distinct crime, subject to long terms of imprisonment.

For instance, if a rich man were assaulted and made a complaint, all that he had to do was to give bail to insure his appearance as a witness.  But if a poor man or woman were cheated or assaulted and could not give bail to insure his or her appearance at the trial as a complaining witness, the law compelled the authorities to lock up that man or woman in prison.  In the debates in the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846, numerous cases were cited of this continuing barbarity in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states.  In Maryland a young woman was assaulted and preferred criminal charges.  As she could not give bail she was locked up for eighteen months as a detained witness.  This was but one instance in thousands of similar cases.

MASTER AND BONDED MAN.

For an apprenticed laborer to quit his master and job was a crime in law ;  once caught he was forthwith bundled off to jail, there to await the dispensation of his master.  No matter how cruelly his master ill-treated him, however dissatisfied he was, the apprenticed laborer in law had no rights.  Almost every day the newspapers of the eighteenth, and the early part of the nineteenth, century contained offers of rewards for the apprehension of fugitive apprentice laborers ;  from a survey of the Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and other colonial and state newspapers it is clear that thousands of these apprentices had to resort to flight to escape their bondage.  This is a specimen advertisement :

TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.

RAN away from the subscriber, an Apprentice Boy, named William Rustes, about 18 years and 3 months old, by trade a house carpenter, of a dark complexion, dark eye brows, black eyes and black hair, about 5 feet, 8 inches high, his dress unknown as he took with him different kinds of clothes.  The above reward will be paid to any person that will secure him in gaol or return him to his master.

GEORGE LORD,
No. 12 First Street.9

In contradistinction to the scorpion-like laws which worked such injustice to the poor and which made a mockery of doctrines of equality before the law, the propertied interests endowed themselves, by their control of government, with invaluable exemptions and peculiarly profitable special privileges.

Even where, in civil cases, all men, theoretically, had an equal chance in courts of equity, litigation was made so expensive, whether purposely or not, that justice was really a one-sided pastime, in which the rich man could easily wear out the poor contestant.  This, however, is not the place for a dissertation on that most remarkable of noteworthy sorcerer’s arts, the making of justice an expensive luxury, while still deluding the people with the notion that the law knows no preferences.  The preferences which are more to the point at present are those in which government force is used to enrich the already rich and impoverish the impoverished still further.  At the very time that property was bitterly resisting enlightened pleas for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, for the enactment of a mechanic’s lien law, and for the extension of the suffrage franchise it was using the public money of the whole people for its personal and private enterprises.  In works dealing with those times it is not often that we get penetration into the underlying methods of the trading class.  But a lucid insight is inadvertently given by Walter Barrett (who, for sixty years, was in the mercantile trade), in his smug and conventional, but quaintly entertaining, volumes, “ The Merchants of Old New York.”  This strong instance shows like a flashlight that while the success of the shippers was attributed to a fine category of energetic qualities, the benevolent assistance of the United States Government was, in a large measure, responsible for part of their accumulations.

THE SHIPPERS’ HUGE GRAFT.

The Griswold's of New York owned the ship, “Panama.”  She carried spelter, lead, iron and other products to China and returned with tea, false cinnamon and various other Chinese goods.  The duty on these was extremely high.  But the Government was far more lenient to the trading class than the trader was to the poor debtor.  It generously extended credit for nine, twelve and eighteen months before it demanded the payment of the tariff duties.  What happened under this system ?  As soon as the ship arrived, the cargo was sold at a profit of fifty per cent.  The Griswolds, for example, would pocket their profits and instead of using their own capital in further ventures, they would have the gratuitous use of Government money, that is to say, the people’s money, for periods of from six months to a year and a half.  Thus the endless chain was kept up.  According to Barrett, this was the customary attitude of the Government toward merchants :  it was anything but unusual for a merchant to have the free use of Government money to the sum of four or five hundred thousand dollars.

“ John Jacob Astor,” says Barrett in a view of admiration, “ at one period of his life had several vessels operating in this way.  They would go to the Pacific and carry furs from thence to Canton.  These would be sold at large profits.  Then the cargoes of tea 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 the Government of over five millions of dollars.”11

“ One house,” continues Barrett, “ was Thomas H. Smith & Sons.  This firm went enormously into the Canton trade, and, although possessing originally but a few thousand dollars, Smith imported to such an extent that when he failed he owed the United States three millions and not a cent has ever been paid.”  Was Smith imprisoned for debt ?  Not at all.

It is such revelations as these that indicate how it was possible for the shippers to pile up great fortunes at a time when “ a house that could raise $260,000 in specie had an uncommon capital.”  They showed how the same functions of government which were used as an engine of such oppressive power against the poor, were perverted into highly efficient auxiliary of trading class aims and ambitions.  By multifarious subtle workings, these class laws inevitably had a double effect.  They poured wealth into the coffers of the merchant-class and simultaneously tended to drive the masses into poverty.  The gigantic profits taken in by merchants had to be borne by the worker, perhaps not superficially, but in reality so.  They came from his slender wages, from the tea and cotton and woolen goods that he used, the sugar and the coffee and so on.  In this indirect way the shippers absorbed a great part of the products of his labor ;  what they did not expropriate the landlord did.  Then when the laborer fell in debt to the middleman tradesman to jail he went.12

UNITE AGAINST THE WORKER.

The worker denounced these discrimination's as barbarous and unjust.  But he could do nothing.  The propertied class, with its keen understanding of what was best for its interests, acted and voted, and usually dragooned the masses of enfranchised into voting, for men and measures entirely favorable to its designs.  Sometimes these interests conflicted as they did when a part of New England became manufacturing centers and favored a high protective tariff in opposition to the importing trades, the plantation owners and the agricultural class in general.  Then the vested class would divide, and each side would appeal with passionate and patriotic exhortations to the voting elements of the people to sustain it, or the country would go to ruin.  But when the working class made demands for better laws, the propertied class, as a whole, united to oppose the workers bitterly.  However it differed on the tariff, or the question of state or national banks, substantially the whole trading class solidly combated the principle of manhood suffrage and the movements for the wiping out of laws for imprisonment for debt, for mechanic’s liens and for the establishment of shorter hours of work.

Political institutions and their offspring in the form of laws being generally in the control of the trading class, the conditions were extraordinarily favorable for the accumulation of large fortunes, especially on the part of the shipowners, the dominant class.  The grand climax of the galaxy of American fortunes during the period from 1800 to 1831 — the greatest of all the fortunes up to the beginning of the third decade of that century — was that of Girard.  He built up what was looked up to as the gigantic fortune of about ten millions of dollars and far over topped every other strainer for money except Astor, who survived him seventeen years, and whose wealth increased during that time to double the amount that Girard left.

CHAPTER VI

GIRARD—THE RICHEST 

OF THE SHIPPERS

Girard was born at Bordeaux, France, on May 21, 1750, and was the eldest of five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner.  When eight years old he became blind in one eye, a loss and deformity which subjected his sensibilities to severe trials and which had the effect of rendering him morose and sour.  It was his lament in later life that while his brothers had been sent to college, he was the ugly duckling of the family and came in for his father’s neglect and a shrewish step-mother’s waspishness.  At about fourteen years of age he relieved himself of these home troubles and ran away to sea.  During the nine years that he sailed between Bordeaux and the West Indies, he rose from cabin-boy to mate.  Evading the French law which required that no man should be made master of a ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was twenty-five years old, Girard got the command of a trading vessel when about twenty-two years old.  While in this service he clandestinely carried cargoes of his own which he sold at considerable profit.  In May, 1776, while en route from New Orleans to a Canadian port, he became enshrouded in a fog off the Delaware Capes, signaled for aid, and when the fog had cleared away sufficiently for an American ship, near by, to come to his assistance, learned that war was on.  He thereupon scurried for Philadelphia, where he sold vessel and cargo, of which latter only a part belonged to him, and with the proceeds opened up a cider and wine bottling and grocery business in a small store on Water street.

Girard made money fast ;  and in July, 1777, married Mary Lum, a woman of his own class.  She is usually described as a servant girl of great beauty and as one whose temper was of quite tempestuous violence.  This unfortunate woman subsequently lost her reason ;  undoubtedly her husband’s meannesses and his forbidding qualities contributed to the process.  One of his most favorable biographers thus describes him :  “ In person he was short and stout, with a dull repulsive countenance, which his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye almost made hideous.  He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.”1

During the British occupation of Philadelphia he was charged by the revolutionists with extreme double dealing and duplicity in pretending to be a patriot, and taking the oath of allegiance to the colonies, while secretly trading with the British.  None of his biographers deny this.  While merchant after merchant was being bankrupted from disruption of trade, Girard was incessantly making money.  By 1780 he was again in the shipping trade, his vessels plying between American ports and New Orleans and San Domingo ; not the least of his profits, it was said, came from slave trading.

A troublous partnership with his brother, Captain Jean Girard, lasted but a short time ;  the brothers could not agree.  At the dissolution in 1790 Stephen Girard’s share of the profits amounted to $30,000.  Girard’s greatest stroke came from the insurrection of the San Domingo Negroes against the French several years later.  He had two vessels lying in the harbor of one of the island ports.  At the first mutterings of danger, a number of planters took their valuables on board one of these ships and scurried back to get the remainder.  The sequel, as commonly narrated, is represented thus :  The planters failed to return, evidently falling victims to the fury of the insurrectionists.  The vessels were taken to Philadelphia, and Girard persistently advertised for the owners of the valuables.  As no owners ever appeared, Girard sold the goods and put the proceeds, $50,000, into his own bank account.  “This,” says Houghton, “was a great assistance to him, and the next year he began the building of those splendid ships which enabled him to engage so actively in the Chinese and West India trades.”

From this time on his profits were colossal.  His ships circumnavigated the world many times and each voyage brought him a fortune.  He practiced all of those arts of deception which were current among the trading class and which were accepted as shrewdness and were inseparably associated with legitimate business methods.  In giving one of his captains instructions he wrote, as was his invariable policy, the most explicit directions to exercise secretiveness and cunning in his purchases of coffee at Batavia.  Be cautious and prudent, was his admonition.  Keep to yourself the intention of the voyage and the amount of specie that you have on board.  To satisfy the curious, throw them off the scent by telling them that the ship will take in molasses, rice and sugar, if the price is very low, adding that the whole will depend upon the success in selling the small Liverpool cargo.  If you do this, the cargo of coffee can be bought ten per cent cheaper than it would be if it is publicly known there is a quantity of Spanish dollars on board, besides a valuable cargo of British goods intended to be invested in coffee for Stephen Girard of Philadelphia.

By 1810 we see him ordering the Barings of London to invest in shares of the Bank of the United States half a million dollars which they held for him.  When the charter expired, he was the principal creditor of that bank ;  and he bought, at a great bargain, the bank and the cashier’s house for $120,000.  On May 12, 1812, he opened the Girard Bank, with a capital of $1,200,000, which he increased the following year by $100,000 more.2

A DICTATOR OF FINANCE.

His wealth was now overshadowingly great ;  his power immense.  He was a veritable dictator of the realms of finance ;  an assiduous, repellent little man, with his devil’s eye, who rode roughshod over every obstacle in his path.  His every movement bred fear ;  his veriest word could bring ruin to any one who dared cross his purposes.  The war of 1812 brought disaster to many a merchant, but Girard harvested fortune from the depths of misfortune.  “ He was, it must be said,” says Houghton, “hard and illiberal in his bargains, and remorseless in exacting the last cent due him.”  And after he opened the Girard Bank :  “ Finding that the salaries which had been paid by the government were higher than those paid elsewhere, he cut them down to the rate given by the other banks.  The watchman had always received from the old bank the gift of an overcoat at Christmas, but Girard put a stop to this.  He gave no gratuities to any of his employees, but confined them to the compensation for which they had bargained ;  yet he contrived to get out of them service more devoted than was received by other men who paid higher wages and made presents.  Appeals to him for aid were unanswered.  No poor man ever came full-handed from his presence.  He turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of failing merchants to help them on their feet again.  He was neither generous nor charitable.  When his faithful cashier died, after long years spent in his service, he manifested the most hardened indifference to the bereavement of the family of that gentleman, and left them to struggle along as best they could.”

Further, Houghton unconsciously proceeds to bring out several incidents which show the exorbitant profits Girard made from his various business activities.  In the spring of 1813, one of his ships was captured by a British cruiser at the mouth of the Delaware.  Fearing that his prize would be recaptured by an American war ship if he sent her into port, the English Admiral notified Girard that he would ransom the ship for $180,000 in coin.  Girard paid the money ;  and, even after paying that sum, the cargo of silks, nankeens and teas yielded him a profit of half a million dollars.  His very acts of apparent public spirit were means by which he scooped in large profits.  Several times, when the rate of exchange was so high as to be injurious to general business, he drew upon Baring Bros. for sums of money to be transferred to the United States.  This was hailed as a public benefaction.  But what did Girard do ?  He disposed of the money to the Bank of the United States and charged ten per cent. for the service.

BRIBERY AND INTIMIDATION.

The reestablishment and enlarged sway of this bank were greatly due to his efforts and influence ;  he became its largest stockholder and one of its directors.  No business institution in the first three decades of the nineteenth century exercised such a sinister and overshadowing influence as this chartered monopoly.  The full tale of its indirect bribery of politicians and newspaper editors, in order to perpetuate its great privileges and keep a hold upon public opinion, has never been set forth.  But sufficient facts were brought out when, after years of partisan agitation, Congress was forced to investigate and found that not a few of its own members for years had been on the payrolls of the bank.3

In order to get its charter renewed from time to time and retain its extraordinary special privileges, the United States Bank systematically debauched politics and such of the press as was venal ;  and when a critical time came, as it did in 1832-34, when the mass of the people sided with President Jackson in his aim to overthrow the bank, it instructed the whole press at its command to raise the cry of “ the fearful consequences of revolution, anarchy and despotism,” which assuredly would ensue if Jackson were reelected.  To give one instance of how for years it had manipulated the press :  The “Courier and Enquirer” was a powerful New York newspaper.  Its owners, Webb and Noah, suddenly deserted Jackson and began to denounce him.  The reason was, as revealed by a Congressional investigation, that they had borrowed $50,000 from the United States Bank which lost no time in giving them the alternative of paying up or supporting the bank.4

Girard’s share in the United States Bank brought him millions of dollars.  With its control of deposits of government funds and by the provisions of its charter, this bank swayed the whole money marts of the United States and could manipulate them at will.  It could advance or depress prices as it chose.  Many times, Girard with his fellow directors was severely denounced for the arbitrary power he wielded.  But — and let the fact be noted — the denunciation came largely from the owners of the State banks who sought to supplant the United States Bank.  The struggle was really one between two sets of capitalistic interests.

Shipping and banking were the chief sources of Girard’s wealth, with side investments in real estate and other forms of property.  He owned large tracts of land in Philadelphia, the value of which increased rapidly with the growth of population ;  he was a heavy stockholder in river navigation companies and near the end of his life he subscribed $200,000 toward the construction of the Danville & Pottsville Railroad.

THE SOLITARY CROESUS.

He was at this time a solitary, crusty old man living in a four-story house on Water street, pursued by the contumely of every one, even of those who flattered him for mercenary purposes.  Children he had none, and his wife was long since dead.  His great wealth brought him no comfort ;  the environment with which he surrounded himself was mean and sordid ;  many of his clerks lived in better style.  There, in his dingy habitation, this lone, weazened veteran of commerce immersed himself in the works of Voltaire, Diderot, Paine and Rousseau, of whom he was a profound admirer and after whom some of his best ships were named.

This grim miser had, after all, the one great redeeming quality of being true to himself.  He made no pretense to religion and had an abhorrence of hypocrisy.  Cant was not in his nature.  Out into the world he went, a ferocious shark, cold-eyed for prey, but he never cloaked his motives beneath a calculating exterior of piety or benevolence.  Thousands upon thousands he had deceived, for business was business, but himself he never deceived.  His bitter scoffs at what he termed theologic absurdities and superstitions and his terrific rebuffs to ministers who appealed to him for money, undoubtedly called forth a considerable share of the odium which was hurled upon him.  He defied the anathemas of organized churchdom ;  he took hold of the commercial world and shook it harshly and emerged laden with spoils.  To the last, his volcanic spirit flashed forth, even when, eighty years old, he lay with an ear cut off, his face bruised and his sight entirely destroyed, the result of being felled by a wagon.

In all his eighty-one years charity had no place in his heart.  But after, on Dec, 26, 1831, he lay stone dead and his will was opened, what a surprise there was !  His relatives all received bequests ;  his very apprentices each got five hundred dollars, and his old servants annuities.  Hospitals, orphan societies and other charitable associations all benefited.  Five hundred thousand dollars went to the City of Philadelphia for certain civic improvements ;  three hundred thousand dollars for the canals of Pennsylvania ;  a portion of his valuable estate in Louisiana to New Orleans for the improvement of that city.  The remainder of the estate, about six millions, was left to trustees for the creation and endowment of a College for Orphans, which was promptly named after him.

A chorus of astonishment and laudation went up.  Was there ever such magnificence of public spirit ?  Did ever so lofty a soul live who was so misunderstood ?  Here and there a protesting voice was feebly heard that Girard’s wealth came from the community and that it was only justice that it should revert to the community ;  that his methods had resulted in widows and orphans and that his money should be applied to the support of those orphans.  These protests were frowned upon as the mouthing's of cranks or the ravings of impotent envy.  Applause was lavished upon Girard ;  his very clothes were preserved as immemorial memento's 5

“ THE GREAT BENEFACTOR.”

All of the benefactions of the other rich men of the period waned into insignificance compared to those of Girard.  His competitors and compeers had given to charity, but none on so great a scale as Girard.  Distinguished orators vied with one another in extolling his wonderful benefactions,6 and the press showered encomiums upon him as that of the greatest benefactor of the age.  To them this honestly seemed so, for they were trained by the standards of the trading class, by the sophistries of political economists and by the spirit of the age, to concentrate their attention upon the powerful and successful only, while disregarding the condition of the masses of the people.

The pastimes of a king or the foibles of some noted politician or rich man were things of magnitude and were much expatiated upon, while the common man, singly or in mass, was of absolutely no importance.  The finely turned rhetoric of the orators, pleasing as it was to that generation, is, judged by modern standards, well nigh meaningless and worthless.  In that high flown oratory, with its carefully studied exordiums, periods and perorations can be clearly discerned the reverence given to power as embodied by possession of property.  But nowhere do we see any explanation, or even an attempt at explanation, of the basic means by which this property was acquired or of its effect upon the masses of the people.  Woefully lacking in facts are the productions of the time as to how the great body of the workers lived and what they did.  Facts as to the rich are fairly available, although not abundant, but facts regarding the rest of the population are pitifully few.  The patient seeker for truth — the mind which is not content with the presentation of one side — finds, with some impatience, that only a few writers thought it worth while to give even scant attention to the condition of the working class.  One of these few was Matthew Carey, an orthodox political economist, who, in a pamphlet issued in 1829,7 gave this picture which forms both a contrast and a sequel to the accumulations of multimillionaires, of which Girard was then the archtype :

A STARK CONTRAST PRESENTED.

“ Thousands of our laboring people travel hundreds of miles in quest of employment on canals at 62½ cents to 87½ cents per day, paying $1.50 to $2.00 a week for board, leaving families behind depending upon them for support.  They labor frequently in marshy grounds, where they inhale pestiferous miasmata, which destroy their health, often irrevocably.  They return to their poor families broken hearted, and with ruined constitutions, with a sorry pittance, most laboriously earned, and take to their beds, sick and unable to work.  Hundreds are swept off annually, many of them leaving numerous and helpless families.  Notwithstanding their wretched fate, their places are quickly supplied by others, although death stares them in the face.  Hundreds are most laboriously employed on turn-pikes, working from morning to night at from half a dollar to three-quarters a day, exposed to the broiling sun in summer and all the inclemency of our severe winters.  There is always a redundancy of wood-pilers in our cities, whose wages are so low that their utmost efforts do not enable them to earn more than from thirty-five to fifty cents per day. ... Finally there is no employment whatever, how disagreeable or loathsome, or deleterious soever it may be, or however reduced the wages, that does not find persons willing to follow it rather than beg or steal.”

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THE ORIGIN OF HUGE CITY ESTATES

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1 “Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine,” II:516-517.

2 Allen’s “Biographical Dictionary,” Edition of 1857:791.

3 Hunt’s “Lives of American Merchants”: 382.

4 Allen’s “Biographical Dictionary,” Edit. of 1857:227.

5 Stryker’s “American Register” for 1849:241.

6 “ The American Almanac ” for 1850: 324.

7 “An Economic and Social History of New England,” II:825.

8 Hunt’s “ Lives of American Merchants ” : 139.

9 Life of Eli Whitney, “Our Great Benefactors ” : 567.

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1 “ The Astor Fortune,” McClure’s Magazine, April, 1905.

2 Innumerable were the sermons and addresses poured forth, all to the same end.  To cite one :  The Rev. Daniel Sharp of the Third Baptist Meeting House, Boston, delivered a sermon in 1828 on “The Tendency of Evil Speaking Against Rulers.”  It was considered so powerful an argument in favor of obedience that it was printed in pamphlet form (Beals, Homer & Co., Printers), and was widely distributed to press and public.

3 Various writers assert that twenty dollars was the average minimum.  In many places, however, the great majority of debts were for less than ten dollars.  Thus, for the year ending November 26, 1831, nearly one thousand citizens had been imprisoned for debt in Baltimore.  Of this number more than half owed less than ten dollars, and of the whole number, only thirty-four individually had debts exceeding one hundred dollars.— Reports of Committees, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, Vol. II, Report No. 732:3.

4 In his series of published articles, “The History of the Prosecution of Bankrupt Frauds,” the author has brought out comprehensive facts on this point.

5 The eminent merchants who sat on this committee had their own conclusive opinion of what produced poverty.  In commenting on the growth of paupers they ascribed pauperism to seven sources.  (1) Ignorance, (2) Intemperance, (3) Pawnbrokers, (4) Lotteries, (5) Charitable Institutions, (6) Houses of Ill-Fame, (7) Gambling.
      No documents more wonderfully illustrate the bourgeois type of temperament and reasoning than their reports.  The people of the city were ignorant because 15,000 of the 25,000 families did not attend church.  Pawnbrokers were an incentive to theft, cunning and lack of honest industry, etc., etc.  Thus their explanations ran.  In referring to mechanics and paupers, the committee described them as “the middling and inferior classes.”  Is it any wonder that the working class justly views “charitable” societies, and the spirit behind them with intense suspicion and deep execration ?

6 Documents of the Board of Assistant Aldermen of New York City, 1831-32, Doc. No. 45:1

7 House Executive Document, No. 13, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third Session ;  also, House Report, No. 313.

8 Report for 1821 of the “ Society for the Prevention of Pauperism.”

9 “ New York Gazette and General Advertiser,” Aug. 5, 1797.  The rewards offered for the apprehension of fugitive apprentices varied.  An advertisement in the same newspaper, issue of July 3, 1797, held out an offer of five dollars reward for an indented German boy who had “absconded.”  The fear was expressed that he would attempt to board some ship, and all persons were notified not to harbor or conceal him as they would be “proceeded against as the law directs.”  That old apprentice law has never been repealed in New York State.

10 The Government reports bear out Barrett’s statements, although in saying this it must be with qualifications.  The shippers engaged in the East India and China trade were more favored, it seems, than other classes of shippers, which discrimination engendered much antagonism.  “ Why,” wrote the Mercantile Society of New York to the House Committee on Manufactures in 1821, “ should the merchant engaged in the East India trade, who is the overgrown capitalist, have the extended credit of twelve months in his duties, the amount of which on one cargo furnishes nearly a sufficient capital for completing another voyage, before his bonds are payable ?”  The Mercantile Society recommended that credits on duties be reduced to three and six months on merchandise imported from all quarters of the globe.—Reports of Committees, Second Session, Sixteenth Congress, 1820-21, Vol. 1, Document No. 34.

11 “The Old Merchants of New York,” I: 31-33.  Barrett was a great admirer of Astor.  He inscribed Vol. iii, published in 1864, to Astor’s memory.

12 The movement to abolish imprisonment for debt was a protracted one lasting more than a quarter of a century, and was acrimoniously opposed by the propertied classes, as a whole.  By 1836, however, many State legislatures had been induced to repeal or modify the provisions of the various debtors’ imprisonment acts.  In response to a recommendation by President Andrew Jackson that the practise be abolished in the District of Columbia, a House Select Committee reported on January 17, 1832, that “the system originated in cupidity.  It is a confirmation of power in the few against the many ;  the Patrician against the Plebeian.”  On May 31, 1836, the House Committee for the District of Columbia, in reporting on the debtors’ imprisonment acts, said :  “They are disgraceful evidences of the ingenious subtlety by which they were woven into the legal system we adopted from England, and were obviously intended to increase and confirm the power of a wealthy aristocracy by rendering Poverty a crime, and subjecting the liberty of the poor to the capricious will of the rich.”—Reports of Committees, Second Session, Twenty-second Congress, 1832-33, Report No. 5, and Reports of Committees, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836, Report No. 732, ii: 2.


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1 “ Kings of Fortune ” : 16 — The pretentious title and sub-title of this work, written thirty odd years ago by Walter R. Houghton, A.M., gives an idea of the fantastic exaltation indulged in of the careers of men of great wealth.  Hearken to the full title :  “Kings of Fortune—or the Triumphs and Achievements of Noble, Self-made men.— Whose brilliant careers have honored their calling, blessed humanity, and whose lives furnish instruction for the young, entertainment for the old and valuable lessons for the aspirants of fortune.”  Could any fulsome effusion possibly surpass this ?

2 “ Mr.  Girard’s bank was a financial success from the beginning.  A few months after it opened for business its capital was increased to one million three hundred thousand dollars.  One of the incidents which helped, at the outstart, to inspire the public with confidence in the stability of the new institution was the fact that the trustees who liquidated the affairs of the old Bank of the United States opened an account in Girard’s Bank, and deposited in its vaults some millions of dollars in specie belonging to the old bank.”—“The History of the Girard National Bank of Philadelphia,” by Josiah Granville Leach, LL.B., 1902.  This eulogistic work contains only the scantiest details of Girard’s career.

3 The First Session of the Twenty-second Congress, 1831, iv, containing reports from Nos. 460 to 463.

4 Ibid.
      An investigating committee appointed by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1840, reported that during a series of years the Bank of the United States (or United States Bank, as it was more often referred to) had corruptly expended $130,000 in Pennsylvania for a re-charter.— Pa. House Journal, 1842, Vol. II, Appendix, 172-531.

5 In providing for the establishment of Girard College, Girard stated in his will :  “ I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatsoever in the said college ;  nor shall any such person be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor within the premises appropriated to the purposes of said college.”—The Will of the Late Stephen Girard, Esq., 1848: 22-23.
      An attempt was made by his relatives in France to break his will, one of the grounds being that the provisions of his will were in conflict with the Christiar religion which was a part of the common law of Pennsylvania.  The attempt failed.

Extracts from Stephen Girard's will

To the Pennsylvania hospital, subject to the payment of an annuity of $200 to a female slave, whom he sets free $30,000
To the asylum for the deaf and dumb ............. 20,000
To the orphans' asylum .......................... 10,000
To the controllers of the public schools ........ 10,000
To the city corporation, to be invested, and the interest to be applied, annually, in the purchase of wood for the poor ........................... 10,000
To the society of ship masters ................... 10,000
To the free masons' lodge ........................ 20,000
For a school to be erected in the township of Passayunk, for poor white children ............ 6,000
Sundry legacies to individuals amounting to ...... 120,000
Several annuities amounting to about ............... 4,000
To the city of New Orleans 1,000 acres of improved land in the territory of Mississippi, and one-third of 207,000 acres of unimproved land in the same territory,
To the city of Philadelphia the remaining two-thirds of the said unimproved lands.
To the city of Philadelphia, stock in the Schuylkill navigation company ........ 110,000
For a college for poor white male children and its proper endowments, the sum of .... 2,000,000
To the city of Philadelphia, for certain city improvements, to be invested, and the interest to be annually applied ......... 500,000
All his remaining estate, real and personal (no part of the real estate to be sold) is to be applied as follows:--- in further aid of the said college, improvements of the city, and in the relief of the taxes.
To the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to be applied to internal improvements by canals, provided the legislature shall, within one year from Stephen Girard's decease, pass laws authorising the city of Philadelphia to make the intended improvements, otherwise to the United States for the same object ................ 300,000

There are, however, some restrictions, which I consider it my duty to prescribe, and to be, amongst others, conditions on which my bequest for said college is made and to be enjoyed, namely:  first, I enjoin and require, that, if at the close of any year, the income of the fund devoted to the purposes of the said college shall be more than sufficient for the maintenance of the institution during that year, then the balance of the said income, after defraying such maintenance, shall be forthwith invested in good securities, thereafter to be and remain a part of the capital;  but, in no event, shall any part of the said capital be sold, disposed of, or pledged, to meet the current expenses of the said institution, to which I devote the interest, income, and dividends thereof, exclusively:  Secondly, I enjoin and require that ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said college;  nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of the said college.

6 For example, an address by Edward Everett, at the Odeon, before the Mercantile Library Association in Boston, September 13, 1838 :  “Few persons, I believe, enjoyed less personal popularity in the community in which he lived and to which he bequeathed his personal fortune. ... A citizen and a patriot he lived in his modest dwelling and plain garb ;  appropriating to his last personal wants the smallest pittance from his princely income ;  living to the last in the dark and narrow street in which he made his fortune ;  and when he died bequeathed it for the education of orphan children.  For the public I do not believe he could have done better,” etc., etc.—Hunt’s “ Merchant’s Magazine,” 1830, 1 :35.

7 “The Public Charities of Philadelphia.”