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Show How Astor Did It. In a current magazine is the story of John Jacob Astor, how his master stroke of business was when he engaged in the fur trade and sent his own ships on three year voyages, how they entered en-tered the mouth of the Columbia, founded Astoria and drew from that region the material out of which the shrewd German amassed a great fortune. for-tune. It is clear, however, had old John been like a majority of our congress, he never would have done anything like that. He would have hired English ships and captains to do that work for would they not have done it cheaper by contract con-tract than Astor could possibly have done it? Would not their sailors have worked for half the wages that old John paid? Could not the English captains have skimped the food? True the Englishmen Eng-lishmen might have been less energetic than As- A tor's captains, it is certain they would never have named a place Astoria; it is quite possible that they would have claimed the whole country for their own sovereign and that Hood valley and Willamette valley would now have been a part of British Columbia as much as Victoria is, but judging by what our law makers have been 'doing for. some years, it is a bad business for our country to own any ships save battleships and the right thing to do is, v,hen those ships go off on a cruise to hire British merchant ships to carry the needed coal for them. And still our people claim to be a great people. |
