The Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders, the Beekmans, the Brevoorts, and practically all the mighty families that ruled the old Knickerbocker aristocracy in New York were huge land proprietors.Their fortunes thus had precisely the same foundation as that of the Prussian Junkers today.But their accumulations compared only faintly with the fortunes that are commonplace now.How many "millionaires" there were fifty years ago we do not precisely know.The only definite information we have is a pamphlet published in 1855 by Moses Yale Beach, proprietor of the New York Sun, on the "Wealthy Men of New York."This records the names of nineteen citizens who, in the estimation of well-qualified judges, possessed more than a million dollars each.The richest man in the list was William B.
Astor, whose estate is estimated at $6,000,000.The next richest man was Stephen Whitney, also a large landowner, whose fortune is listed at $5,000,000.Then comes James Lenox, again a land proprietor, with $3,000,000.The man who was to accumulate the first monstrous American fortune, Cornelius Vanderbilt, is accredited with a paltry $1,500,000.Mr.Beach's little pamphlet sheds the utmost light upon the economic era preceding the Civil War.It really pictures an industrial organization that belongs as much to ancient history as the empire of the Caesars.His study lists about one thousand of New York's "wealthy citizens."Yet the fact that a man qualified for entrance into this Valhalla who had $100,000 to his credit and that nine-tenths of those so chosen possessed only that amount shows the progress concentrated riches have made in sixty years.How many New Yorkers of today would look upon a man with $100,000 as "wealthy"?
The sources of these fortunes also show the economic changes our country has undergone.Today, when we think of our much exploited millionaires, the phrase "captains of industry" is the accepted description; in Mr.Beach's time the popular designation was "merchant prince." His catalogue contains no "oil magnates" or "steel kings" or "railroad manipulators"; nearly all the industrial giants of ante-bellum times--as distinguished from the socially prominent whose wealth was inherited--had heaped together their accumulations in humdrum trade.Perhaps Peter Cooper, who had made a million dollars in the manufacture of isinglass and glue, and George Law, whose gains, equally large, represented fortunate speculations in street railroads, faintly suggest the approaching era; yet the fortunes which are really typical are those of William Aspinwall, who made $4,000,000 in the shipping business, of A.T.Stewart, whose $2,000,000represented his earnings as a retail and wholesale dry goods merchant, and of Peter Harmony, whose $1,000,000 had been derived from happy trade ventures in Cuba and Spain.Many of the reservoirs of this ante-bellum wealth sound strangely in our modern ears.John Haggerty had made $1,000,000 as an auctioneer;William L.Coggeswell had made half as much as a wine importer;Japhet Bishop had rounded out an honest $600,000 from the profits of a hardware store; while Phineas T.Barnum ranks high in the list by virtue of $800,000 accumulated in a business which it is hardly necessary to specify.Indeed his name and that of the great landlords are almost the only ones in this list that have descended to posterity.Yet they were the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Harrimans, the Fricks, and the Henry Fords of their day.
Before the Civil War had ended, however, the transformation of the United States from a nation of farmers and small-scale manufacturers to a highly organized industrial state had begun.
Probably the most important single influence was the War itself.
Those four years of bitter conflict illustrate, perhaps more graphically than any similar event in history, the power which military operations may exercise in stimulating all the productive forces of a people.In thickly settled nations, with few dormant resources and with practically no areas of unoccupied land, a long war usually produces industrial disorganization and financial exhaustion.The Napoleonic wars had this effect in Europe; in particular they caused a period of social and industrial distress in England.The few years immediately following Waterloo marked a period when starving mobs rioted in the streets of London, setting fire to the houses of the aristocracy and stoning the Prince Regent whenever he dared to show his head in public, when cotton spindles ceased to turn, when collieries closed down, when jails and workhouses were overflowing with a wretched proletariat, and when gaunt and homeless women and children crowded the country highways.No such disorders followed the Civil War in this country, at least in the North and West.Spiritually the struggle accomplished much in awakening the nation to a consciousness of its great opportunities.The fact that we could spend more than a million dollars a day--expenditures that hardly seem startling in amount now, but which were almost unprecedented then--and that soon after hostilities ceased we rapidly paid off our large debt, directed the attention of foreign capitalists to our resources, and gave them the utmost confidence in this new investment field.
