CHAPTER VIII
OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED
The founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed.
Next to the Astors' estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000.
THE GOELET FORTUNE.
The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters. Of Peter Goelet's business methods and personality no account is extant. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. In the course of this work it has already been shown in specific detail how Peter Goelet in conjunction with John Jacob Astor, the Rhinelander brothers, the Schermerhorns, the Lorillards and other founders of multimillionaire dynasties, fraudulently secured great tracts of land, during the early and middle parts of the last century, in either what was then, or what is now, in the heart of New York City. It is entirely needless to iterate the narrative of how the city officials corruptly gave over to these men land and water grants before that time municipally owned—grants now having a present incalculable value.[162]
As was the case with John Jacob Astor, the fortune of the Goelets was derived from a mixture of commerce, banking and ownership of land. Profits from trade went toward buying more land, and in providing part of corrupt funds with which the Legislature of New York was bribed into granting banking charters, exemptions and other special laws. These various factors were intertwined; the profits from one line of property were used in buying up other forms and thus on, reversely and comminglingly. Peter had two sons; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. These two sons, with an eye for the advantageous, married daughters of Thomas Buchanan, a rich Scotch merchant of New York City, and for a time a director of the United States Bank. The result was that when their father died, they not only inherited a large business and a very considerable stretch of real estate, but, by means of their money and marriage, were powerful dignitaries in the directing of some of the richest and most despotic banks. Peter P. Goelet was for several years one of the directors of the Bank of New York, and both brothers benefited by the corrupt control of the United States Bank, and were principals among the founders of the Chemical Bank.
These brothers had set out with an iron determination to build up the largest fortune they could, and they allowed no obstacles to hinder them. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. In getting their charter for the notorious Chemical Bank, they bribed members of the Legislature with the same phlegmatic serenity that they would put through an ordinary business transaction. This bank, as we have brought out previously, was chartered after a sufficient number of members of the Legislature had been bribed with $50,000 in stock and a large sum of money. Yet now that this bank is one of the richest and most powerful institutions in the United States, and especially as the criminal nature of its origin is unknown except to the historic delver, the Goelets mention the connection of their ancestors with it as a matter of great and just pride. In a voluminous biography giving the genealogies of the rich families of New York—material which was supplied and perhaps written by the families themselves—this boast occurs in the chapter devoted to the Goelets: "They were also numbered among the founders of that famous New York financial institution, the Chemical Bank."[163] Thus do the crimes of one generation become transformed into the glories of another! The stock of the Chemical Bank, quoted at a fabulous sum, so to speak, is still held by a small, compact group in which the Goelets are conspicuous.
From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors—constantly increasing their land possessions. This they could easily do for two reasons. One was that almost consecutively they, along with other landholders, corrupted city governments to give them successive grants, and the other was their enormous surplus revenue which kept piling up.