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, 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 fac-similies 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.
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.
