Her commercial genius is shown in the fact that she secured one good paying customer--Alexander T.Stewart.Stewart grew to believe in her as his spirit of good luck.Once when bargains had been offered at the Stewart store and the old woman was not at her place on the curb,the merchant-prince sent his carriage for her in hot haste ''lest offense be given.''And the day was saved.
When the original store was abandoned for the Stewart ''Palace''the old apple woman with her box,basket and umbrella were tenderly taken along,too.
John Jacob Astor had no such belief in luck omens,portents,or mascots as had A.T.Stewart.With him success was a sequence--a result--it was all cause and effect.A.T.Stewart did not trust entirely to luck,for he too,carefully devised and planned.But the difference between the Celtic and Teutonic mind is shown in that Stewart hoped to succeed,while Astor knew that he would.One was a bit anxious;the other exasperatingly placid.
Astor took a deep interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition.
He went to Washington to see Lewis,and questioned him at great length about the Northwest.Legend says that he gave the hardy discoverer a thousand dollars,which was a big amount for him to give away.
Once a committee called on him with a subion list for some worthy charity.Astor subscribed fifty dollars.One of the disappointed committee remarked,''Oh,Mr.Astor,your son William gave us a hundred dollars.''
''Yes,''said the old man,''But you must remember that William has a rich father.''
Washington Irving has told the story of Astoria at length.It was the one financial plunge taken by John Jacob Astor.
And in spite of the fact that it failed,the whole affair does credit to the prophetic brain of Astor.
''This country will see a chain of growing and prosperous cities straight from New York to Astoria,Oregon,''said this man in reply to a doubting questioner.
He laid his plans before Congress,urging a line of army posts,forty miles apart,from the western extremity of Lake Superior to the Pacific.''These forts or army posts will evolve into cities,''said Astor,when he called on Thomas Jefferson,who was then President of the United States.Jefferson was interested,but non-committal.Astor exhibited maps of the Great Lakes,and the country beyond.He argued with a prescience then not possessed by any living man that at the western extremity of Lake Superior would grow up a great city.Yet in Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-six,Duluth was ridiculed by the caustic tongue of Proctor Knott,who asked,''What will become of Duluth when the lumber crop is cut?''
Astor proceeded to say that another great city would grow up at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan.General Dearborn.Secretary of War under Jefferson had just established Fort Dearborn on the present site of Chicago.Astor commended this,and said:''From a fort you get a trading post,and from a trading post you will get a city.''
He pointed out to Jefferson the site,on his map,of the Falls of St.Anthony.''There you will have a fort some day,for wherever there is water-power,there will grow up mills for grinding grain and sawmills,as well.This place of power will have to be protected,and so you will have there a post which will eventually be replaced by a city.''Yet Fort Snelling was nearly fifty years in the future and St.Paul and Minneapolis were dreams undreamed.
Jefferson took time to think about it and then wrote Astor thus,''Your beginning of a city on the Western Coast is a great acquisition,and I look forward to a time when our population will spread itself up and down along the whole Pacific frontage,unconnected with us,excepting by ties of blood and common interest,and enjoying like us,the rights of self-government.''
The Pilgrim Fathers thought land that lay inward from the sea as valueless.The forest was an impassible barrier.Later,up to the time of George Washington,the Alleghanies were regarded as a natural barrier.Patrick Henry likened the Alleghany Mountains to the Alps that separated Italy from Germany and said,''The mountain ranges are lines that God has set to separate one people from another.''
Later,statesmen have spoken of the ocean in the same way,as proof that a union of all countries under an international capital could never exist.
Great as was Jefferson,he regarded the achievement of Lewis and Clarke as a feat and not an example.He looked upon the Rocky Mountains as a natural separation of peoples ''bound by ties of blood and mutual interest''but otherwise unconnected.To pierce these mighty mountains with tunnels,and whisper across them with the human voice,were miracles unguessed.But Astor closed his eyes and saw pack-trains,mules laden with skins,winding across these mountains,and down to tide-water at Astoria.There his ships would be lying at the docks,ready to sail for the Far East.
James J.Hill was yet to come.
A company was formed,and two expeditions set out for the mouth of the Columbia River,one by land and the other by sea.
The land expedition barely got through alive--it was a perilous undertaking,with accidents by flood and field and in the imminent deadly breech.
But the route by the water was feasible.
