We must not omit a name from this chapter, well known all the world over—that of James Bennett, the founder of what is still a power, the New York Herald. Scotland was the birth-place of Bennett. He was reared under the shadow of Gordon Castle. His parents were Roman Catholics, and he was trained in their religion. Every Saturday night the family assembled for religious service. James was kept at school till he was fifteen years of age, and he then entered a Roman Catholic seminary at Aberdeen, his parents intending him for the ministry. He pursued his studies, on the banks of the Dee, for three years, and then threw up his studies, and abandoned his collegiate career. The memoirs of Benjamin Franklin impressed him greatly, and he felt an earnest desire to visit America, and the home of Franklin, and he landed there in 1819. At Portland he opened a school as teacher, and thence he moved to Boston. He was charmed with all he saw in the city and vicinity; he hunted up every memorial of Franklin that could be found; he examined all the relics of the Revolution, and visited the places made memorable in the struggle with Great Britain; but he was poor, and well-nigh discouraged. He walked the common, without money, hungry, and without friends. In his darkest hour he found a New York shilling, and from that hour his fortune began to mend. He obtained a position at Boston as proof reader, and displayed his ability as a writer, both in prose and verse. In 1822, he came to New York, and immediately connected himself with the press, for which he had a decided taste. He was not dainty in his work; he took everything that was offered him. He was industrious, sober, frugal, of great tact, and displayed marked ability. He soon obtained a position on the Charleston Courier as translator of Spanish-American papers. He prepared other articles for the Courier, many of which were in verse. His style was sharp, racy, and energetic. In 1825, he became proprietor of the New York Courier by purchase. It was a Sunday paper; but not a success. In 1826, he became associate editor of the National Advocate, a democratic paper. Leaving that, he became associate editor of the Inquirer, conducted by Mr. Noah; he was also a member of the Tammany Society, and a warm partisan. During the session of Congress, Mr. Bennett was at the capital writing for his paper; and while at that post, a fusion was effected between the Courier and the Inquirer. Again, he had to leave the paper on account of a difference between him and the editor as regarded the bank. At this time he turned his attention to the New York press, which was then seriously behind the age. He felt that it was not what was demanded, and resolved to establish a paper that should realise his idea of a metropolitan journal. He had no capital; no rich friends to back him; nothing but his pluck, ability, and indomitable resolution. On the 6th of May, 1835, the New York Herald made its appearance. It was a small penny paper. Mr. Bennett was editor, reporter, and correspondent; he collected the city news, and wrote the money articles; he resolved to make the financial feature of his paper a marked one; he owed nothing to the Stock Board. If he was poor, he was not in debt; he did not dabble in stocks; he had no interest in the bulls and bears; he could pitch into the bankers and stock-jobbers as he pleased, as he had no interest one way or the other. He worked hard, he rose early, was temperate and frugal, and seemed to live only for his paper. He was his own compositor and errand-boy; collected his own news, mailed his papers, kept his accounts, and he grew rich. His marble palace was the most complete newspaper establishment in the world. Before the Herald buildings were completed, and while he was making a savage attack on the national banks, he was waited upon by the president of one of them, who said to him—“Mr. Bennett, we know that you are at great expense in erecting this building, besides carrying on this immense business. If you want any accommodation, you can have it at our bank.” Mr. Bennett replied—“Before I purchased the land, or began to build, I had, on deposit, 250,000 dollars in the Chemical Bank. There is not a dollar due on the Herald buildings that I cannot pay. I would pay off the mortgage to-morrow if the mortgagee would allow me to. When the building is open, I shall not owe a dollar to any man if I am allowed to pay. I owe nothing that I cannot discharge in an hour. I have not touched one dollar of the money on deposit in the bank; and while that remains I need no accommodation.” One secret of his success is soon told—“He can command the best talent in the world for his paper. He pays liberally for fresh news, of which he has the exclusive use. If a pilot runs a steamer hard, or an engineer puts extra speed on his locomotive, they know that they will be well paid for it at the Herald office, for its owner does not higgle about the price. When news of the loss of Collins’ steamer was brought to the city, late on a Saturday night, the messenger came direct to the Herald office. The price demanded was paid; but the messenger was feasted and confined in the building until the city was flooded with extra Sunday morning copies. The attachés of the Herald are found in every part of the civilised world; they take their way where heroes fear to travel. If in anything they are outdone, outrun, outwritten, if earlier and fresher news is allowed to appear, a sharp, pungent letter is written, either discharging the writer, or sending him home. During the war, the Herald establishment at Washington was a curiosity. The place was as busy as the War Department. Foaming horses came in from all quarters, ridden by bespattered letter-carriers. Saddled horses were tied in front of the door like the head-quarters of a general. The wires were controlled to convey the latest news from every section to the last moment of the paper going to press. Mr. Bennett is a fine illustration (this was written, of course, in his lifetime) of what America can do for a penniless boy, and what a penniless boy can do for himself, if he has talent, pluck, character, and industry. In the conflict of interest, and in the heat of rivalry, it is difficult to estimate a man rightly. In coming times, Mr. Bennett will take his place in that galaxy of noble names who have achieved their own position, been architects of their own fortune, and left an enduring mark upon the age in which they lived.”
Horace Greeley had an origin as humble, and a fight as hard as Mr. Bennett. He was born in New Hampshire, and, from his earliest years, was fond of study. The father had to move to a new settlement; and here, as little was to be done at home, after breakfast the home was left to take care of itself; away went the family—father, mother, boys, girls, and oxen—to work together. In early life the lad gave proof that the Yankee element was strong in him. In the first place, he was always doing something—and he had always something to sell. He saved nuts, and exchanged them, at the store, for the articles he wanted to purchase; he would hack away, hours at a time, at a pitch-pine stump, the roots of which are as inflammable as pitch itself, and, tying up the roots in little bundles, and the little bundles into one large one, he would take the load to the store, and sell it for firewood. His favourite out-door sport, too, at Westhaven, was bee-hunting, which is not only an agreeable and exciting pastime, but occasionally rewards the hunter with a prodigious mass of honey: as much as 150lbs. have frequently been obtained from a single tree. This was profitable sport, and Horace liked it amazingly; his share of the honey generally found its way to the store. By these, and other expedients, the boy always managed to have a little money. When he started, as an apprentice, to learn the printing-trade, he packed up his wardrobe in a small pocket-handkerchief—and, small as it was, it would have held more—for the proprietor had never more than two shirts and one change of clothing at the same time, till he was of age. “If ever there was a self-made man,” wrote an old friend, “this same Horace Greeley is one; for he had neither wealthy nor influential friends, collegiate or academic education, or anything to aid him in the world, save his own natural good sense, an unconquerable love of study, and a determination to win his way by his own efforts. He had, moreover, a natural aptitude for arithmetical calculation, and could easily surpass, in his boyhood, most persons of his age in the facility and accuracy of his demonstrations and his knowledge of grammar. He early learned to observe and remember political statistics, and the leading men and measures of the political parties; the various and multitudinous candidates for governor and Congress, not only in a single State, but in many; and, finally, in all the States; together with the taxation of, and vote of this and that, and the other Congressional districts (why democrat and what not), at all manner of elections. These things he rapidly and easily mastered, and treasured in his capacious memory, till, we venture to say, he has few, if any, equals at this time, in this particular department, in this or any other country.” After Greeley had served his apprenticeship, he came to New York, with ten dollars in his pocket, a bundle on his back, and a stick. It was hard work for him to find a job; but, at length, he was taken into a newspaper-office. After a time he joined in a speculation which was to give New York a penny paper; and, in conjunction with his partner, Mr. Story, went on printing after the paper in question had ceased to exist. He then started the New Yorker, having, in the meanwhile, abandoned the use of stimulants, and become a vegetarian. After more or less editorial work, more or less profitable, Greeley started the New York Tribune, which, from the first, was a success.
Another of New York’s leading men was Daniel Drew. His father died when he was fifteen years of age, and he came to New York to seek his fortune. Resolved to do something, and having nothing better to do, he became a soldier as a substitute for another. Then he took to stock-keeping, and droves of over 2,000 cattle crossed the Alleghanies under his direction. In 1834, he began the steam-boat enterprise. In 1836, he appeared in Wall Street. For eleven years his firm was very celebrated. Mr. Drew was a rapid, bold, and successful operator. His connection with the Erie Railroad, guaranteeing the paper of that company to the amount of a million and a-half of dollars, showed the magnitude of his transactions. In 1857, as treasurer of the company, his own paper, endorsed by Vanderbilt to the amount of a million and a-half of dollars saved the Erie from bankruptcy. During that year, amidst universal ruin, Mr. Drew’s losses were immense; but he never flinched, met his paper promptly, and said that, during all that crisis, he had not lost one hour’s sleep. In conjunction with Vanderbilt, he relieved the Harlem Road from its floating debt, and replaced it in a prosperous condition.
“It would be unpardonable to forget the great Barnum,” says a New York writer, “one of our most remarkable men. He lives among the millionaires in a costly brown-stone house in Fifth Avenue, corner of Thirty-ninth Street, and is a millionaire himself. He has retired from the details of actual life, though he has the controlling interest of the Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum. He has made and lost several fortunes; but, in the evening of life, he is in possession of wealth, which he expends with great liberality and a genial hospitality. He was born at Bethel, Connecticut, and was trained in a village tavern kept by his father. He had a hopeful buoyant disposition, and was distinguished by his irrepressible love of fun. At the age of fifteen he began life for himself, and married when he was nineteen. As editor of the Herald of Freedom, he obtained an American notoriety. The paper was distinguished for its pith and vigour. Owing to sharp comments on officials, Mr. Barnum was shut up in gaol. On the day of his liberation his friends assembled in great force, with carriages, bands of music, and flags, and carried him home. His first appearance as an exhibitor was in connection with an old negress, Joyce Heth, the reputed nurse of Washington. His next attempt was to obtain possession of Scudder’s American Museum. Barnum had not five dollars in the world, nor did he pay any down. The concern was little better than a corpse ready for burial, yet he bound himself down by terms fearfully stringent, and met all the conditions as they matured. He secured the person of Charles S. Stretton, the celebrated dwarf, and exhibited him. He also secured the services of Jenny land, binding himself to pay her 1,000 dollars a-night for 150 nights, assuming all expenses of every kind. The contract proved an immense pecuniary success. From the days of Joyce Heth, to the present time, Mr. Barnum has always had some speciality connected with his show, which the world pronounces humbug; and Mr. Barnum does not deny that they are so. Among these are the Woolly Horse, the Buffalo Hunt, the Ploughing Elephant, the Segal Mermaid, the What-is-it, and the Gorilla. But Mr. Barnum claims that, while these special features may not be all that the public expect, every visitor to the exhibition gets the worth of his money ten times over; that his million curiosities and monstrosities, giants, and dwarfs, his menagerie and dramatic entertainments, present a diversified and immense amount of entertainment that cannot be secured anywhere else. A large or red baboon, upon a recent occasion, was exhibited at the Museum. It was advertised as a living gorilla, the only one ever exhibited in America. Mr. Barnum’s agents succeeded in hoodwinking the press to such a degree, that the respectable dailies described the ferocity of this formidable gorilla, whose rage was represented to be so intense, and his strength so fearful, that he was very near tearing to pieces the persons who had brought him from the ship to the Museum. Barnum had not seen the animal; and when he read the account in the Post, he was very much excited, and sent immediately to the men to be careful that no one was harmed. The baboon was about as furious as a small-sized kitten. The story did its work, and crowds came to see the wonderful beast. Among others a professor came from the Smithsonian Institute; he examined the animal, and then desired to see Mr. Barnum. He informed the proprietor that he had read the wonderful accounts of the gorilla, and had come to see him. ‘He is a very fine specimen of the baboon,’ said the professor; ‘but he is no gorilla.’ ‘What’s the reason that he is not a gorilla?’ said Barnum. The professor replied, that ‘ordinary gorillas had no tails.’ ‘I own,’ said the showman, ‘that ordinary gorillas have no tails; but mine has, and that makes the specimen the more remarkable.’ The audacity of the reply completely overwhelmed the professor, and he retired, leaving Mr. Barnum in possession of the field. Mr. Barnum’s rule has been to give all who patronise him the worth of their money, without being particular as to the means by which he attracts the crowds to his exhibitions. His aim has been notoriety. He offered the Atlantic Telegraph Company 5,000 dollars for the privilege of first sending twenty words over the wires. It has not been all sunshine with Mr. Barnum. His imposing villa at Bridgeport was burned to the ground. Anxious to build up East Bridgeport, he became responsible to a manufacturing company, and his fortune was swept away in an hour; but with wonderful sagacity he relieved himself. As a business man, he has singular executive force, and great capacity. Men who regard Mr. Barnum as a charlatan, who attribute his success to what he calls humbug, clap-trap, exaggerated pictures, and puffing advertisements, will find that the secret of his success did not lie in that direction. Under all his eccentricity, there was a business energy, tact, perseverance, shrewdness, and industry, without which, all his humbugging would have been exerted in vain. From distributing Sear’s Bible, he became lessee of the Vauxhall Saloon; thence a writer of advertisements for an amphitheatre at four dollars a-week; then negotiating, without a dollar, for the Museum, which was utterly worthless; outwitting a corporation who intended to outwit him on the purchase of the Museum over his head; exhibiting a manufactured mermaid which he had bought of a Boston showman; palming off Tom Thumb as eleven years of age when he was but five; showing his woolly horse, and exhibiting his wild buffaloes at Holcken—these, and other small things that Barnum did, are known to the public; but there are other things which the public did not know. Barnum was thoroughly honest, and he kept his business engagements to the letter. He adopted the most rigid economy. Finding a hearty coadjutor in his wife, he put his family on a short allowance, and shared himself in the economy of the household. Six hundred dollars a-year he allowed for the expenses of his family, and his wife resolutely resolved to reduce that sum to 400 dollars. Six months after the purchase of the Museum, the owner came into the ticket-office at noon; Barnum was eating his frugal dinner, which was spread before him. ‘Is this the way you eat your dinner?’ the proprietor inquired. Barnum said, ‘I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the Sabbath, and I intend never to eat another on a week-day till I am out of debt.’ ‘Ah, you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,’ replied the owner. In less than a year the Museum was paid for out of the profits of the establishment.”
There are no better rules for business success than those laid down by Mr. Barnum, and which have guided his course. Among them are these—“Select the kind of business suited to your temperament and inclination; let your pledged word ever be sacred; whatever you do, do with all your might; use no description of intoxicating drinks; let hope predominate, but do not be visionary; pursue one thing at a time; do not scatter your powers; engage proper assistance; live within your income, if you almost starve; depend upon yourself, and not upon others.”
Perhaps one of the men who made most money by advertising, was Mr. Barnes, the proprietor of the New York Ledger. The manner was entirely his own. When he startled the public by taking columns of a daily journal, or one entire side, he secured the end he had in view. His method of repeating three or four lines—such as, “Jenny Jones writes only for the Ledger!” or “Read Mrs. Southwort’s new story in the Ledger!”—and this repeated over and over again, till men turned from it in disgust, and did not conceal their ill-temper—was a system of itself. “What is the use,” said a man to Mr. Barnes, “of your taking the whole side of the Herald, and repeating that statement a thousand times?” “Would you have asked me that question,” replied Mr. Barnes, “if I had inserted it but once? I put it in to attract your attention, and to make you ask that question.” This mode of advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and ridicule. His ruin was predicted over and over again; and when he had thus amassed a fine fortune, it was felt that the position he had secured was the one he aimed at when he was a mere printer’s lad. He sought for no short paths to success; he mastered his trade as a printer patiently and perfectly; he earned his money before he spent it; in New York he was preferred because he did his work better than others; he was truthful, sober, honest, and industrious; if he took a job, he finished it at the time and in the manner agreed upon. He borrowed no money, incurred no debts, and suffered no embarrassments. He was born in the north of Ireland, not far from Londonderry, and was true to the Scotch Presbyterian blood in his veins.
I now come to the most illustrious name, as regards money-getters, either in England or America. Mr. George Peabody was something more than a money-hunter, and, in the history of money-making men, deserves the post of honour for his philanthropy. He was born in Massachusetts, and was, essentially, a self-taught and self-made man. After he had learnt, in the district school, how to read and write, having been four years in a grocer’s score, and having spent another year with his grandfather in rustic life in Vermont, he went to join his brother David, who had set up a drapery or dry-goods store at Newburyport. This was stopped, a few months after, by a fire, which destroyed Peabody’s shop and most of the other houses in the town. Fortunately, at this juncture, an uncle, who had settled in George Town, in the district of Columbia, invited young George to become his commercial assistant; and he stayed with him a couple of years, managing the most part of the business. In May, 1812, during the unhappy war between Great Britain and America, when a British fleet came up the Potomac, this young merchant’s clerk, with others of his time, volunteered into the patriot army, and served a few months in the defence of Port Warburton, as a true citizen soldier. The short war being over, his proved skill and diligence brought him the offer of a partnership in a new concern—it was that of Elisha Riggs, who was about to commence the sale of dry goods throughout the middle States of the Union. Riggs found the capital, while Peabody did the work, and the firm at once achieved immense success. Peabody acted as bagsman, and often travelled alone, on horseback, through the western wilds of New York and Pennsylvania, or the plantations of Maryland and Virginia, if not farther, lodging with farmers or gentlemen slave-owners, and so becoming acquainted with every class of people, and every way of living: indeed, so fast did the Southern connection increase, that the house was removed to Baltimore, though its branches were established, seven years later, at Philadelphia and New York. About the year 1830, Mr. Riggs having retired from business, Mr. Peabody found himself at the head of one of the largest mercantile firms in the home-trade of America. But Mr. Peabody had also, by this time, distinguished himself as a man of superior integrity, discretion, and public spirit. “He coveted no political office; he courted the votes of no party; he waited upon no caucus; put his foot down,” says the writer of the account of his life in the “Annual Register,” “upon no platform; but held aloof from the strife of American factions.” His first visit to London was in 1827, whole he was still chief partner in the Baltimore firm. In 1843, he fixed himself here, as merchant and money-broker, with others, by the style of “George Peabody and Co., of Warnford Court, City.” As one of the three commissioners appointed by the State of Maryland to obtain means for restoring its credit, he refused to be paid for his services; but the State could not do less than vote him their special thanks. To the last he retained his fondness for his native land, and used to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence, on the 4th of July, with a kind of public dinner at the Crystal Palace.
It is as a magnificent giver as well as getter of money that Mr. Peabody has become famous. He knew perfectly well what he was about. He had seen as much of the world as most elderly men of business accustomed to society and travel, and he had come to the conclusion that a man was not made happy by fine houses, and grand equipages, and stately parks, and galleries filled with the choicest productions of art in ancient or modern times, or by the social status which assuredly the possession of money gives. None of these things, he found, made a man happy; though if he had them, and were deprived of them, the loss would make him truly unhappy indeed. Mr. Peabody thought he knew a surer way to the possession of happiness; and that was, by dedicating the wealth he had honourably acquired, to the promotion of the well-being of his less fortunate fellow-men.
Some of his first acts of pecuniary munificence, as was to be expected, had an American bearing. At the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, he promptly supplied the sum needed to pay for the arrangements of the United States contributions. In the following year he joined Mr. Henry Grinnell, of New York, shipowner, in fitting out the expedition to the Arctic Sea in search of Sir John Franklin. In the same year he bestowed a large donation, since augmented to £100,000, to found a free library and educational institute at Danvers, his native place. In 1857, he revisited his native land, after an absence of twenty years. On this occasion he gave £100,000 to form, at Baltimore, a noble institute devoted to science and art, in conjunction with a free public library. The corner-stone of this building was laid in 1858, and the structure was then completed; but its opening was delayed by the civil war which at that time prevailed. It was not till after the conclusion of the war that it was finally dedicated to the purposes for which it was founded. Mr. Peabody afterwards gave a second £100,000 to the institute.
In 1862, Mr. Peabody made the magnificent donation of £150,000 for the amelioration of the condition of the poor of London, and the trustees, who were men of mark and position, immediately employed the money in accordance with the noble donor’s wishes, in the erection of model dwellings for working-men. In 1866, he added another £100,000 to the fund; and in 1868, he made a further donation of about fifteen acres of land at Brixton, 5,642 shares in the Hudson’s Bay Company, and £5,405 in cash (altogether another £100,000); thus making the value of his gifts to the poor of London as much as £350,000. By the last will and testament of Mr. Peabody, opened on the day of his funeral, his executors, Sir Curtis Sampson and Sir Charles Reed, were directed to apply a further sum of £150,000 to the Peabody Fund, thus making a sum of half a million sterling so employed.