At that time, too, tea merchants of large capital had an advantage which they do not now enjoy.  A writer explains the manner in which the business was done in those days:—­

“A house that could raise money enough thirty years ago to send $260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital, and this was the working of the old system.  The Griswolds owned the ship Panama.  They started her from New York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps $30,000 worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in Spanish dollars.  The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety (a few miles below Canton).  Her supercargo in two months has her loaded with tea, some china ware, a great deal of cassia or false cinnamon, and a few other articles.  Suppose the cargo, mainly tea, costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on the average.

“The duty was enormous in those days.  It was twice the cost of the tea, at least:  so that a tea cargo of $200,000, when it had paid duty of seventy-five cents per pound (which would be $400,000), amounted to $600,000.  The profit was at least fifty per cent on the original cost, or $100,000, and would make the cargo worth $700,000.

“The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven or twelve months after the ship left New York in May) to wholesale grocers, for their notes at four and six months,—­say for $700,000.  In those years there was credit given by the United States of nine, twelve, and eighteen months!  So that the East-India or Canton merchant, after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of government capital to the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship.

“No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regular East-Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for grocers’ notes for $700,000.  These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for $400,000 duty, at nine, twelve, and eighteen months, giving him time actually to send two more ships with $200,000 each to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds on the first cargo were due.

“John Jacob Astor at one period of his life had several vessels operating in this way.  They would go to the Pacific (Oregon) and carry from thence furs to Canton.  These would be sold at large profits.  Then the cargoes of tea to New York 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 Government of over five millions of dollars."[1]

But it was neither his tea trade nor his fur trade that gave Astor twenty millions of dollars.  It was his sagacity in investing his profits that made