The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-05-31
Why Willie Astor Has Become
an Englishman.
MADE A FAILURE HERE
Couldn't Buy Elections so He Became q
Stiff-Necked OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
ers OF the Republic Were
Theorists

lives IN LONDON Is the leaOlng Cortsl-
butor for June to his own Pail Mall
Magazine. His article IS entitled John
Jacob Aston" 1t purports - be the life
story of the man who made possible the
wealth which the present descendant
now spends in England. II il also Mr..
Astor tells how little ne really Eh!nks of
the United States.
He also gives much space il tracing
his ancestry through distinguished
lineage back to Pedro d'Astorsa, cru
sading cavalier, to whose ancestors a
Spanish queen had granted the right to
have coat of arms This, Of course,
sets at naught later records, which
trace the family back only about 200
years to Germany.
Mr.. Astor opens his article with the
bald statement that I'VE owe to wealth
the greatest pleasures and advantages
that life can offer in education, in the
comforts and relnements of home, in
the embellishments of art and in the
delight of travel
Then he goes on to show what fools
the founders of the republic really were
when they believed that wealth was a
menace to popular institutions.
These principles" he says. ARE
manner in the school and lecture room,
from the pulpit and upon the stage, Ky
the tendencies Of legislative enactment
and in the utterance of the press, and
by the jury which finds the poor man
obviously right and the rich man rec
essariiy wrong"
These theorists as Mr.. Astor calls
the trainers of the constitution, adopted
the principle that large fortunes are
contrary to the austere tenets of re-
publican Simplicity
With this introduction Mr. Astor tells
how his ancestor, John Jacob Aston
founder of the Astor millions of to-day,
set at naught such foolishness. He
was born at Waldorf, Germany, July
II, 1883 He came here 20 years later.
In a dozen years he was rich, having
revolutionized the fur trade of the con-
tinent. He sent cargoes of furs to Eng
land, thence carrying British wares to
China and returning With tea
After the success of the war of 1872
proved that the founders Of the consti-
tuition We're right after all, the original
Aston began buying real estate in New
York city-that is, after the British
blockading squadron sailed away. Each
piece was sold again after few years
at double or treble it's purchase price.
He bought whole farms.
To show" writes Mr.. Aston that
this species of farming was not in vain
one of these farms, purchased in 1911
for $500, is now worth s1,400,O 0O.'
In America he continues my
great grandfathers life and character
have been distorted and caricatured I'M
til only an odd travesty survives. By
the press in particular, with the eX-
ception Of few serious journals, he
has been continually derided and re-
viled with the spirit of pure malignity
which pursues the successful man.
Continuing, William Waldorf Aston
says:
There exists no ampler copiousness
of meanness and vulgarity, no grosael
exhibition of ignorance, no coarser pro-
fanation of private life, of modesty, OF
the defenseless, or of domestic sorrow
than fills the columns of these lepers
cine press) white as snow. l remember
when a lad hearing my father say OF
some of the most Virulent of these at
lacks, 1t is enough to make one wish
to abandon such country an opinion
! subsequently learned to share
Throughout the United States the
old-time Quaker and Puritan faith ir
simplicity of life and small fortunes
has latterly been rudely shaken The
gradual and universal transition tc
standards of opulence furnishes an in.
structive study. The development OF
'plutocrats' can hardly be within the
intention Of the founders of the repub
lie. neither are the tramps, who mum
Der close upon 100000, and who hav,
their annual congress- at which thu
moral and physical filth of the land as
sembleS to discuss its campaign for the
ensuing year. And yet the organi,
and economic system in operation ha
not only failed to prevent the gather
ing together of great fortunes, but by
an extraordinary sarcasm it has hal
ruined and largely exterminated the
grandchildren and great grandchildren
of the people for whom they legislated
What has become of the revolutionar!
families?
who now owns the land those col
onists possessed and for which many
of them gave their lives?
Half of those families have become
wholly extinct. In some the surviv-
ing members have sunk to the leve
of mere tillers of the soil. Many live
in respectable restitution. In six OF
the original 10 states the Society OF
the Cincinnati, founded by Washing
ton and Lafayette, has persisted for
want of any one to perpetuate it.
LAS early as the days of Benjamin
thinkers who questioned the wisdom
of submitting complex and delicate
problems of society and statecraft tC
the decision of the multitude
James Payn, in an article contrib.
uted to Harper's. wrote of old Johr
Jacob Astor that when he lay dyint
there came a knock at the door. NJ
one had been admitted and he wa!
estranged- from most of his family
who is it?" asked the dying man.
He was told
Let him in" he cried, "he owes MI
$500"
He died 20 minutes later. tingIint
l,n hot h
But his great grandson says of him
Mr.. Aston was not actuated by mere
desire of gain-for he was already ricl
beyond the needs of any individual
but by delight in the exercise o
those faculties whose calibeT had al
ready been so widely proved"