Word: astors
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...Lewis Cass Ledyard, 80, famed corporation lawyer, president since 1917 of the New York Public Library; of myocarditis; in Manhattan. Good friend to the elder John Pierpont Morgan and Payne Whitney, he executed their estates. As trustee of the fund created by Samuel Jones Tilden, he helped merge the Astor and Lenox Libraries into the New York Public Library. Lawyer Ledyard, like his partners James Coolidge Carter and John George Milburn, was a onetime president of the New York Bar Association. For 30 years he was counsel to the New York Stock Exchange. In an age of business dinosaurs...
...volumes, 1.353 carefully documented pages, Researcher Porter has stored all the available facts about the first & greatest of the Astor dynasty. Born the son of a butcher in the little German village of Waldorf, John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) became "first business man in America to attain colossal wealth." Author Porter considers him preeminent in his period, says: "Indeed it is doubtful whether in the art of buying and selling he has ever been approached, much less surpassed...
Porter names eight lines of business in which Astor engaged; the two most usually connected with his name are Manhattan real estate and the American Fur Company. Astor was one of the first to bank on Manhattan's rapid growth. In 20 years he invested well over $700,000 in Manhattan property. "The funds employed came almost entirely from the profits of Astor's China trade, which, in its turn, had been based principally upon his success as a dealer in furs, and also as a general merchant...
...Astor took risks with his money but he never deliberately wasted any. He prophesied the failure of a recently-opened hotel because the management put such large lumps of sugar in the sugar bowl. Poet Fitz-Greene Halleck who served as his confidential secretary for many years had once said to him: "Mr. Astor, of what use is all this money to you? I would be content to live upon a couple of hundreds a-year for the rest of my life, if I was only sure of it." Astor's will left him an annuity of $200. When...
John Jacob Astor is the first of a series, to be called "The Harvard Studies in Business History," which will be issued by the Harvard University Press. Says Editor Norman Scott Brien Gras, professor at Harvard's School of Business Administration: "Sometimes the theme of the studies will be individual business men, sometimes it will be an individual business firm. But the emphasis will logically be upon the policy and management of private enterprise...