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By the turn of the century he was rumoured to be worth $250,000; but no one knew the exact figure, and years later Astor confided to a friend that he was a millionaire long before anyone suspected it. He had always been reserved and secretive; but now this latter trait was so pronounced that the richer he grew the more loudly he complained of poverty.
Yet Astor’s real estate transactions were only a hobby. His true interests lay in the China trade.
he was reserved, he never told anyone his plans and whenever possible he took great pleasure in misleading people as to his real intentions.
The more he accumulated the more he complained about his expenditure, and the more he complained the more he tried to cut down on the wages of his employees. He never rewarded long and faithful service and even failed to honour promises which would not have cost him more than a few dollars.
Now that his mind was concentrated wholly on real estate he used the last fourteen years of his life to multiply his fortune many times over. During the financial panic of 1837 he was in an impregnable position. He had no debts, plenty of ready cash, and was the owner of a great many mortgages on urban land.
trouble. William was justly famous for the frugality which had been instilled in him since childhood and although he was not a man of imagination he grasped the understanding that profits could be made from reducing expenditure. As a result he always went about brandishing a pruning knife, particularly when he studied the company accounts or checked the company bills.
The New York Times singled out John Jacob III for attack. ‘He loses no opportunity of raising rents, never repairs a street if he can help himself and takes good care to do less for his tenants than any Landlord in the city.’ ‘An ideal landlord,’
John Jacob Astor, the man without a heart, had found happiness at the end of his life: at last he cared for another being. He was icily calm as the end approached.
An article published in Fortune Magazine in 1957 showed that 175 years after the first John Jacob Astor had appeared in New York his great-great-grandson was still among the nation’s richest men. Although he was outstripped by over fifty Americans, most of whom had oil fortunes, he was still in a very impressive category.
