In law the Indian was supposed to have certain rights, but Astor's company not only ignored but flouted them. Now when the Indians complained, what happened? Did the Government protect them? The Government, and especially the courts, were quick and generous in affording the greatest protection and the widest latitude to Astor's company. But when the Indians resented the robberies and injustices to which they were subjected beyond bearing, they were murdered. They were murdered wantonly and in cold blood; and then urgent alarmist representations would be sent to Washington that the Indians were in a rebellious state, whereupon troops would be punitively hurried forth to put them down in slaughter. In turn, goaded by an intense spirit of revenge, the Indians would resort to primitive force and waylay, rob and murder the white agents and traders.[86]
From 1815 to 1831 more than 150 traders were robbed and killed by Indians.[87] Many of these were Astor's men. But how many Indians were killed by the whites has never been known, nor apparently was there any solicitude as to whether the number was great or small.
What did Astor pay his men for engaging in this degrading and dangerous business? Is it not a terrifying commentary on the lengths to which men are forced to go in quest of a livelihood, and the benumbing effects on their sensibilities, that Astor should find a host of men ready to seduce the Indians into a state of drunkenness, cheat and rob them, and all this only to get robbed and perhaps murdered in turn? For ten or eleven months in the year Astor's subaltern men toiled arduously through forest and plain, risking sickness, the dangers of the wilderness and sudden death. They did not rob because it benefited them; it was what they were paid to do; and it was likewise expected of them that they should look upon the imminent chances of death as a part of their contract.
For all this what was their pay? It was the trifling sum of $130 for the ten or eleven months. But this was not paid in money. The poor wretches who gave up their labor, and often their health and lives, for Astor were themselves robbed, or their heirs, if they had any. Payment was nearly always made in merchandise, which was sold at exorbitant prices. Everything that they needed they had to buy at Astor's stores; by the time that they had bought a year's supplies they not only had nothing coming to them, but they were often actually in debt to Astor.
But Astor—how did he fare? His profits from the fur trade of the West were truly stupendous for that period. He, himself, might plead to the Government that the company was in a decaying state of poverty. These pleas deceived no one. It was characteristic of his habitual deceit that he should petition the Government for a duty on foreign furs on the ground that the company was being competed with in the American markets by the British fur companies. At this very time Astor held a virtual monopoly of fur trading in the United States. One need not be surprised at the grounds of such a plea. Throughout the whole history of the trading class, this pathetic and absurdly false plea of poverty has incessantly been used by this class, and used successfully, to get further concessions and privileges from a Government which reflected, and represented, its interests. Curiously, enough, however, if a mendicant used the same plea in begging a mite of alms on the streets, the law has invariably regarded him as a vagrant to be committed to the Workhouse.
ASTOR'S ENORMOUS PROFITS.
At about the identical time that John Jacob Astor was persistently complaining that the company was making no money, his own son and partner, William B. Astor, was writing from New York on Nov. 25, 1831, to the Secretary of War, that the company had a capital of about $1,000,000 and that, "You may, however, estimate our annual returns at half a million dollars."[88] Not less than $500,000 annual revenues on a capital of $1,000,000! These were inconceivably large returns for the time; Thomas J. Dougherty, Indian Agent at Camp Leavenworth, estimated that from 1815 to 1830 the fur trade on the Missouri and its waters had yielded returns amounting to $3,330,000 with a clear profit of $1,650,000. This was unquestionably a considerable underestimate.
It is hardly necessary to say that Astor, as the responsible head and beneficiary of the American Fur Company, was never prosecuted for the numerous violations of both penal and civil laws invariably committed by his direction and for his benefit. With the millions that rolled in, he was able to command the services of not only the foremost lawyers in warding off the penalties of law, but in having as his paid retainers some of the most noted and powerful politicians of the day.[89] Senator Benton, of Missouri, a leading light in the Democratic party, was not only his legal representative in the West and fought his cases for him, but as United States Senator introduced in Congress measures which Astor practically drafted and the purport of which was to benefit Astor and Astor alone. Thus was witnessed a notorious violator of the law, invoking aid of the law to enrich himself still further,—a condition which need not arouse exceptional criticism, since the whole trading class in general did precisely the same thing.