In the basement he had a forge, and there were tools of all kinds over which he labored, while upstairs he had a law library of 10,000 volumes, for it was a fixed, cynical determination of his never to pay a lawyer for advice that he could himself get for the reading. The next step is marriage with title. This they could easily do for two reasons. 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. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. 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. The man so the story further runs had no money to pay Longworths fee and no property except two second-hand copper stills. What the circumstances were that attended this grant are not now known. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. PODCAST: Why Cristiano Ronaldo Is The World's Highest-Earning Athlete; 2017 Grateful Grads Index: Top 200 Best-Loved Colleges; Full List: The World's Highest-Paid Actors And Actresses 2017 Robert G. Goelet, a civic leader, naturalist and philanthropist whose marriage merged two families that date to 17th-century New Amsterdam and made the couple stewards of Gardiners Island, a. On the other hand, they bought constantly. These also were high in the appraisement of property values, for they could be used to make whisky, and whisky could be in turn used to debauch the Indian tribes and swindle them of furs and land. The Government and the public were forced to pay the highest sums for the poorest material. Little by little, scarcely known to the people, laws are altered ; the States and the Government, representing the interests of the vested class, surrender the peoples rights, often even the empty forms of those rights, and great railroad systems pass into the hands of a small cabal of multimillionaires. The Goelets were three brothers descended from Peter Goelet, an ultra-wealthy 19th century ironmonger who used profits from the Revolutionary War to buy up Manhattan real estate. The case looked black. This was his grim way of striking back at a commercial society whose lies and shams and hypocrisies he hated ; he knew them all ; he had practiced them himself. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that masterhand Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting have been brought.5 But it would be both idle and prejudicial in the highest degree to single out for condemnation a brace of capitalists for following out a line of action so strikingly characteristic of the entire capitalist class a class which, in the pursuit of profits, dismisses nicety of ethics and morals, and which ordains its own laws. The second generation of the Goelets counting from the founder of the fortune were incorrigibly parsimonious. This Rutgers was a lineal descendant of Anthony Rutgers, who, in 1731, obtained from the royal Governor Cosby the gift of what was then called the Fresh Water Pond and Swamp a stretch of seventy acres of little value at the time, but which is now covered with busy streets and large commercial and office buildings. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. 10 So valuable was a partnership in this firm that a writer says that Field paid Leiter an unknown number of millions when he bought out Leiters interest. Parts of his land and other possessions he bought with the profits from his business ; other portions, as has been brought out, he obtained from corrupt city administrations. By 1830 the population was 24,831 ; twenty years later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. The next step is marriage with title. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. The amount of $319,000,000 was calculated as being solely the value of the land, not counting improvements, which were valued at as much more. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. It was estimated that the 266 acres of land, constituting what was owned by individuals and private corporations in one section alone the South Side, were worth $319,000,000. degree in 1902 and an M.A. A Battle over Frogs", "DUCHESS INHERITS FORTUNE; Former Miss Goelet Receives $3,000,000 From Mother's Estate", "George H. Warren A Founder of Concern That Once Owned Metropolitan Opera's Home, Dies at 87. John Jacob Astor is one of the directors of the Western Union Telegraph monopoly, with its annual receipts of $29,000,000 and its net profits of $8,000,000 yearly ; and as for the many other corporations in which he and his family, the Goelets and the other commanding landlords hold stock, they would, if enumerated, make a formidable list. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. degree in 1903. 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. 9 In those parts of this work relating to great fortunes from railroads and from industries, this phase of commercial life is specifically dealt with. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. Far from it. Nearly a century and a half ago William and Frederick Rhinelander kept a bakeshop on William street, New York City, and during the Revolution operated a sugar factory. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. He died in 1879 aged seventy-nine years ; and within a few months, his brother Robert, who was as much of an eccentric and miser in his way, passed away in his seventieth year. The principal landowner in this one section, not to mention other sections of that immense city, was Marshall Field, with $11,000,000 worth of land ; the next was Leiter, who owned in that section land valued at $10,500,000.8 It appeared from this report that eighteen persons owned $65,000,000 of this $319,000,000 worth of land, and that eighty-eight persons owned $136,000,000 worth or one-half of the entire business center of Chicago. 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. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . [3], His paternal grandparents were Sarah (ne Ogden) Goelet and Robert Goelet, one of the founders of the Chemical Bank and Trust Company (later known as JPMorgan Chase). Field left a fortune of about $100,000,000 (as estimated by the executors) which he bequeathed principally to two grandsons, both of which heirs were in boyhood. With his wife, he built Ochre Court in Newport, Rhode Island, his son built Glenmere mansion, and his daughter, Mary Goelet, married Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke of Roxburghe. 1 Some of this land and these water grants and piers were obtained by Peter Goelet during the corrupt administration of City Controller Romaine. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). In the basement he had a forge, and there were tools of all kinds over which he labored, while upstairs he had a law library of 10,000 volumes, for it was a fixed, cynical determination of his never to pay a lawyer for advice that he could himself get for the reading. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. 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. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. [2] In his will, he left the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to Harvard University. Business Magnate. The unsold land grant, says Professor Frank Parsons, amounted to 344,368 acres, worth probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly $2,000,000 above all they paid in.4. Shortly after Robert married Henrietta (Harriet) Louise Warren in 1879, he commissioned architect Edward H. Kendall to design a Fifth Avenue mansion worthy of his social standing. On the other hand, the feminine possessors of American millions, aided and abetted doubtless by the men of the family, who generally crave a blooded connection, lust for the superior social status insured by a title. By October, he had cast a smaller plaster figure for Goelet, McKim, the Trustees, and the university's various committees to review. 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. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. While the Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders and others, or rather the entire number of inhabitants, were transmuting their land into vast and increasing wealth expressed in terms of hundreds of millions in money, Nicholas Longworth was aggrandizing himself likewise in Cincinnati. It will be recalled that, as important personages in Tammany Hall, the dominant political party in New York City, the Rhinelanders used the powers of city government to get grant after grant for virtually nothing. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. The case looked black. His land lay in the very center of the expanding city, in the busiest part of the business section and in the best portion of the residential districts. Two children survived each of the brothers. [16] His widow lived almost another 47 years until her death in 1988. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. [20] It too was torn down and replaced by a new tower at 425 Park designed by architect Lord Norman Foster, still on land owned by the Goelet family. He was 68 years old. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. When twenty-one he went to Chicago and worked in a wholesale dry goods house. Longworth had been born in Newark, N.J., in 1782, and at the age of twenty-one had migrated to Cincinnati, then a mere outpost, with a population of eight hundred sundry adventurers. a daughter of John Rutgers. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. On the other hand, they bought constantly. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. Longworth had been born in Newark, N.J., in 1782, and at the age of twenty-one had migrated to Cincinnati, then a mere outpost, with a population of eight hundred sundry adventurers. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. In that day, although but thirty years since, when none but the dazzlingly rich could afford to keep a sumptuous steam yacht in commission the year round, Robert Goelet had a costly yacht, 300 feet long, equipped with all the splendors and comforts which up to that time had been devised for ocean craft. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. It will be recalled that, as important personages in Tammany Hall, the dominant political party in New York City, the Rhinelanders used the powers of city government to get grant after grant for virtually nothing. We have seen how John Jacob Astor of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. To give one of many instances : The Illinois Central Railroad, passing through an industrial and rich farming country, is one of the most profitable railroads in the United States.