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Show Washington Keen Man of Business Bow does It come about that George Washington, a member of an agricultural agricul-tural fumlly, living in an agricultural state, and concerned primarily wltb the occupation and use of land, may be styled with absolute truth as the best and the most furslghted business man of his time? It has been my fortune during the last three summers to search out the family history of Washington's ancestors, ances-tors, writes Albert Bushnell Hart, professor pro-fessor emeritus of history. Harvard tlngulshabte. love of - figures that affects af-fects some men. Even Gambling Losses Listed. Washington loved to keep books. One of his biographers lias calculated his losses In gaming. He lost. 75 pounds In a year, and he kept the account ac-count and added It up. But the biographer biog-rapher fails to notice that on the other oth-er side of the page Washington put down his winnings. Ills winnings weie TO pounds. Thut Is, he was S pounds to the good, because, after all. he had the fun of It and the fun must bave been worth at least 10 pounds. Washington constantly Increased hie holdings. He was s scientific agricul turuiist There Is In existence an In- university. In the Nation's Business. From William tie Washington, who settled In the town of Washington rnlatinnte of Durham, In 1185, we think we have a straight strain of 2-r generations of Waslilngtons behind our George Washington thut can be sub stuntiated ; and In that set of ancestors, ances-tors, father to son, among men of varied va-ried talents and Intellectual powers, I have as yet fulled to find a single scalawag. In that line you find the lawyer strain. Tou find Judges. You find for the most part landowners, holders of considerable estates, which they administered successfully. Line of Successful Men. There Is in the Washington line s strong strain of practical and highly successful business men. Otherwise It would be Impossible to account for the manner In which Washington reached out beyond his Immediate field as s landowner to greoter enterprises; and how eventually be became the first practical tnrnsportntion man in the United States. Washington, of course, was a landowner. land-owner. That is, hts prime business was to run landed estates, it was s declining business when he took it up. when by the death of his father and then of bis two brothers he came into possession of very large properties, Including In-cluding the Mount Vernon estate anil s number of adjacent plantations. Al together he had O.(KK) acres of land. terestlng correspondence . between Washington and a man named Itlox-liam, Itlox-liam, whom he Imported from England to be the manager of his estate. We have a letter from Bloxhom telling ' what ho thought of George Washington, Washing-ton, and almost on the same day a letter from Washington telling what he thought of Bloxham, not very complimentary com-plimentary on either side, but they came to understand each other and Bloxham lived and riled In Washington's Washing-ton's service, Washington imported the best agricultural agri-cultural implements be could bear of. He was In correspondence with Arthur Young In England, s great reformer In such matters. He Introduced seeds, be planted cuttings, he raised trees and shrubs. He was a creative farmer. At least he made a living out of the farm, and left It much more valuable than he found it Found Joy as Surveyor, Again, Washington was a surveyor by profession. He began everybody knows It at sixteen years of age In the employ of his neighbor and life- , long friend, Lord Fairfax, to go out ac ' ! and make surveys. We have copies of ' those surveys. We have the original -drawings he made, and the original pints. Only a day or two before he died he was out surveying a bit of property. Be loved to handle the sur- , veylng Instruments. He loved the exactness ex-actness of the science. - pretty much In one body along the I'otoninc, Including Mount Vernon. That land he carried on as a business busi-ness enterprise, as you would do If you were charged with such a responsibility, respon-sibility, to make O.IXX) acres of land pay If you could. He was the first Virginian to see that tobacco wns played out because the land was worn nut; that the land would not stand the pressure of continued tobacco crops. So he turned to the culture of wheat He built a mill to utilize that wheat and he sent it to market He had his own brand. Kept Accounts Faithfully, According to the customs of the time, be put up a distillery In order to make a different disposition of a part of his product That Is to say, Washington sought all the different kinds of agriculture agri-culture that could be maintained on his farm. He raised blooded stock of a superior kind. The king of Spain made blm a present of a very valuable jack, and he raised mules and apparently appar-ently raised tbem to advantage. Furthermore, Washington was a natural accountant, and the proof is In his diaries and In bis account hooks. Almost the last thing that he put on paper was a little hit of bookkeeping. He kent his records in a clear, legible hand. He kept them according to the customs of the times. That Is, he recorded re-corded whatever went on. His dluries have been published In four volumes but they tell you nothing of what Washington thought. He put down not what he thought but what he did, who his visitors were, if he went to church or stayed at home. Thnt Is, he kept a record to which he could refer to show very nearly where he was every day nnd what be was doing. do-ing. tie was on analytic bookkeeper, nml i suspect one of the first In America. Hence we find his nccounts very carefully care-fully subdivided. We find an account for each plantation, a general account, how much he gained out of wheat how much from tobacco, how many slaves ho had. "lint the expense hmi been, ami so on. lie had that Inex- |