“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 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, and carry furs from thence 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.”

It is estimated that Mr. Astor made about two millions of dollars by his trade in furs and teas.  The bulk of his immense fortune was made by investments in real estate.  His estate was estimated at twenty millions of dollars at the time of his death, and has now increased to over forty millions.  He had a firm faith in the magnificent future of New York as the greatest city of the continent, and as fast as his gains from his business came in, they were regularly invested in real estate.  A part was expended in leasing for a long period property which the owners would not sell, and the rest in buying property in fee simple.  These leases, some of which have but recently expired, were extremely profitable.  In his purchases of land Mr. Astor was very fortunate.  He pursued a regular system in making them.  Whenever a favorable purchase could be made in the heart of the city, he availed himself of the opportunity, but as a rule he bought his lands in what was then the suburb of the city, and which few besides himself expected to see built up during their lifetime.  His sagacity and foresight have been more than justified by the course of events.  His estate now lies principally in the heart of New York, and has yielded an increase greater even than he had ventured to hope for.  Seventy hundred and twenty houses are said to figure on the rent roll of the Astor estate at present, and besides these are a number of lots not yet built upon, but which are every day increasing in value.  “When Mr. Astor bought Richmond Hill, the estate of Aaron Burr, he gave one thousand dollars an acre for the hundred and sixty acres.  Twelve years later, the land was valued at fifteen hundred dollars per lot.”

In 1810, he sold a lot near Wall Street for eight thousand dollars.  The price was so low that a purchaser for cash was found at once, and this gentleman, after the sale, expressed his surprise that Mr. Astor should ask only eight thousand for a lot which in a few years would sell for twelve thousand.