Fifty years in Wall Street
nearly to the shoulder. Their dresses of Western make do not bear
comparison with the superb toilettes of New York ladies, and so they
seek out the most fashionable modistes in the city, and the change in
their appearance is as marked as it is favorable. The innate refinement
and love of elegance which is so striking a characteristic in most
American women is exemplified, perhaps, in no respect more strikingly
than in their taste in dress, and the Western ladies soon require the
finest French silks for their dresses. They must have the most expensive
real lace; their toilettes must be numerous, rich, and varied, and the
refinements of other articles of dress or ornament to which American
women have attained may well astonish and even awe the masculine mind.
In a word, people of wealth are apt to be drawn to New York because it
is the great magnet of the country, whose attractive power is well nigh
irresistible. What London is to Great Britain, what Paris is to the
Continent, what Rome was in its imperial day to the Empire, what proud
old Nineveh was to Assyria, the winged lion of the Orient; what Tyre was
to old Syria, whose commercial splendor aroused the eloquence of the
Hebrew prophet—New York is to the immense domain of the American
Republic, a natural stage, set with innumerable villages, towns, and
populous cities, with mighty rivers and vast stretches of table-lands
and prairies, and far-reaching harvest fields and forests, for the great
drama of civilization on this Continent. New York has now a population
of approximately 1,500,000. By the close of the present century it will
certainly reach 2,000,000, and the next century will see it increase to
perhaps ten times that number. The great metropolis attracts by its
restless activity, its feverish enterprise, and the opportunities which
it affords to men of ability, but in the connection which I am now
considering more particularly it attracts as an enormous lode-stone by
its imperial wealth, its Parisian, indeed almost Sybaritic luxury, and
its social splendor.
New York city has more wealth than thirteen of the States and
Territories combined. It is really the great social centre of the
Republic, and its position as such is becoming more and more assured. It
will yet outshine London and Paris. Go where we may throughout the
country, see what cities we may, there is always something lacking which
New York readily affords. There is emphatically no place like New York.
Here are some of the finest stores in the world, and mansions of which a
Doge of Venice or a Lorenzo de Medici might have been proud. Here are
the most beautiful ladies in the world, as well as the most refined and
cultivated; here are the finest theatres and art galleries, and the true
home of opera is in this country; here is the glitter of peerless
fashion, the ceaseless roll of splendid equipages, and the Bois de
Boulogne of America, the Central Park; here there is a constant round of
brilliant banquets, afternoon teas and receptions, the germans of the
elite, the grand balls, with their more formal pomp and splendid
circumstance; glowing pictures of beautiful women and brave men
threading the mazes of the dance; scenes of revelry by night in an
atmosphere loaded with the perfume of rare exotics, to the swell of
sensuous music. It does not take much of this new kind of life to make
enthusiastic New Yorkers of the wives of Western millionaires, and then
nothing remains but to purchase a brown stone mansion, and swing into
the tide of fashion with receptions, balls, and kettle-drums, elegant
equipages with coachmen in bright-buttoned livery, footmen in top boots,
maid-servants and man-servants, including a butler and all the other
adjuncts of fashionable life in the great metropolis. It is of interest
to glance at the career, by the way, of some of the more famous
financial powers of the West, who have either settled of recent years in
New York or who are frequently seen here.
COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON.
One of the financiers who may be seen daily entering the palatial Mills
Building in Broad street, New York, is a tall, well-built man, with a
full beard tinged with gray, a square, resolute jaw, and keen
bluish-gray eyes. Though now in his 66th year, his step is light and
quick, betokening good habits in his youth and due care of himself in
his later years. He is one of the best known of American financial
chieftains. It is Collis P. Huntington. He is a born leader of men. As a
boy of 15 he came to New York, with scarcely a penny. Now he is worth
thirty million dollars. He was born October 22d, 1821, at Harwinton, in
Litchfield county, Connecticut. He numbers among his ancestors Samuel
Huntington, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who
was also President of the Continental Congress and Governor and Chief
Justice of Connecticut; and also Bishop F. D. Huntington and the artist
Daniel Huntington. C. P. Huntington’s father was a farmer and small
manufacturer, in his fourteenth year Huntington left school and asked
his father to give him his time on condition that he should support
himself. He came to New York in the following year, 1836, and bought a
small bill of goods, a neighbor of his father’s becoming his surety. At
that early age he showed the same shrewdness in business, the same
energy and resolution in carrying through his projects as he did in
later life. At twenty-three he settled at Oneonta, Otsego county, New
York, as a general merchant. In 1844 he married a Connecticut girl, who
proved a valuable helpmeet in days when it was never supposed he would
ever attain any particular financial distinction. In March, 1849, he
sailed for San Francisco, going by way of the Isthmus, and following a
consignment of goods which he had made in the previous year. He was now
in his 28th year, and a future full of marvellous success awaited him.
This was not immediately apparent, however. Business success is not
usually attained without long and persistent efforts, and in spite of
repeated discouragements. He found San Francisco at that time a resort
merely for the idle and the reckless. It did not prove at this
particular juncture a satisfactory field for his business; his funds ran
low, and he determined to go to Sacramento. He earned his passage money
thither on a schooner, by helping to load her for a dollar an hour. In
Sacramento he started in business, after a time, with a small tent as a
store, and a limited supply of general merchandise as his stock in
trade; he worked hard; he labored early and late. Here he met Mark
Hopkins, and they formed a business co-partnership, which proved so
successful that by 1856 the firm was known as one of the wealthiest on
the Pacific slope. California, however, was isolated. It was a long trip
over the plains by wagon trains to the nearest point of commercial
importance east of the Rocky Mountains, and the ocean voyage by way of
the Isthmus of Panama was long and slow. A railroad to the East was
imperatively needed, in order to develop the enormous resources of the
broad territory lying west of that natural barrier known as the Rocky
Mountains. But how to bring it about was the question. Few were daring
enough to seriously grapple with the problem. It was in the store of
Huntington & Hopkins that the project was first considered with a
resolute purpose to push it through. The Civil War, however, broke out
just then, and the first gun fired on Fort Sumter seemed like the knell
of this great project. Collis P. Huntington was undaunted. “I will,” he
says, “be one of the eight or ten, if Hopkins agrees, to bear the
expense of a careful and thorough survey.” The result was that seven
gentlemen agreed to defray the expense of such a survey. Two
subsequently ceased to give their aid. The remaining five organized the
Central Pacific Railroad Company. Mr. Huntington at once went to
Washington to secure Government aid in constructing the first
trans-continental railway. He was successful. When the Pacific Railroad
bill was passed he telegraphed to his partners with characteristic humor
and terseness: “We have drawn the elephant.” He at once came to New York
to form a syndicate to take the bonds. Many at such a time would have
gone to speculators begging for aid and pledging his bonds for railroad
material with which to commence the great line. He did nothing of the
kind. The French saying, “_Toujours de l’audace_,” seemed to be his
maxim. He was always bold. He coolly announced that he would not dispose
of his bonds except for cash, and, strange as it may have seemed, he
capped the climax by refusing to sell any at all unless $1,500,000 worth
were taken. He was again successful, but the purchaser required more
security. Thereupon Mr. Huntington made himself and his firm responsible
for the whole amount. It was thus on the pledge of the private fortunes
of Mr. Huntington and his partner that the first fifty miles of the road
were built. After a time, however, funds ran low; it seemed inevitable
that the number of laborers should be reduced. Certainly more means were
necessary. At that time the Government held the first mortgage on the
road, and no Government subsidy bonds were obtainable until a section of
fifty miles of the road had been completed. Huntington and Hopkins
stepped into the breach, and agreed to keep five hundred men at work for
a year at their private expense, and three other gentlemen agreed to
furnish three hundred men for the same length of time. This resolution
ended their troubles; the road was built through to a connection with
the Atlantic seaboard, and trans-continental transportation became a
fact and no longer a dream. Mr. Huntington came to New York again, and
here he now resides in a fine mansion on Park avenue. He is still a hard
worker, but after business hours he dismisses as far as possible the
cares of his financial functions. Among the railroad systems controlled
and operated by him and his associates, the executive conduct of which
is largely directed by himself, are the Central Pacific, the Chesapeake
& Ohio, the Trans-Mississippi roads, and the Southern Pacific, making a
total of nearly eight thousand miles of line. He is also heavily
interested in roads in Mexico and Central America and steamship lines
plying to the Chesapeake Bay, to Brazil, China and Japan and other parts
of the world. Directly or indirectly he has thirty thousand men under
him. In business he is an autocrat; his manner is quick and decisive; he
is direct in his speech, and expresses himself with force when he says
anything. He also knows when silence is golden. He is a good story
teller, and has a large fund of anecdotes; he has original wit, a store
of quaint, homely sayings, which are often singularly apt. Sitting in
his office chair, with a black skull cap, which he usually wears in
business hours, pushed back on his head, he has an open, jolly,
unassuming look, and the stranger would hardly take him for one of the
uncrowned financial kings of this country. He is one of the few men in
this country who have shown themselves more than a match for Jay Gould.
LELAND STANFORD.
Leland Stanford, one of California’s United States Senators, is worth
from thirty to forty million dollars. He was born in Albany county, New
York, March 9, 1824. He received an academical education and entered a
law office in Albany in 1846, and, after three years’ study, was
admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
He removed to Port Washington, in the northern part of Wisconsin, and
there engaged in the practice of his profession for four years. In 1852