Part 34

renzied and otherwise. Riggs and Peabody shipped American cotton to London, and received in return the manufactured production in its manifold forms. In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine Riggs withdrew from the firm, retaining a certain financial interest, merely, and Peabody forged to the front, alone, as a financier. For many years Peabody dealt largely with Robert Owen, and thus there grew up a close and lasting friendship between these very able men. Both were scouts for civilization. No doubt they influenced each other for good. We find them working out a new policy in business--the policy of reciprocity, instead of exploitation. Robert Owen always had almost unlimited credit, for he prized his word as the immediate jewel of his soul. It was exactly the same with Peabody. In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven Peabody visited England. He was then thirty-two years old. The merchants from whom he bought discovered a surprising thing when they met Peabody--he was not the bounding, bragging, bustling, hustling American. He hustled, of course, but not visibly nor offensively. He had the appearance of a man who had all the time there was. He was moderate in voice and gentle in manner, and we hear of a London banker paying him the somewhat ambiguous compliment of saying, "Why, you know, he is a perfect gentleman--he does not seem like an American, at all, you know!" Peabody had the rare gift of never defeating his ends through haste and anxiety. The second trip Peabody made to London was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five, and it was on a very delicate and important errand. The State of Maryland was in sore financial distress. She had issued bonds, and these were coming due. Certain Southern States had repudiated their debts, and it looked as if Maryland was going to default. Peabody issued an open letter calling on the citizens of Maryland to preserve their commercial honor. The State bonds were held mostly in New York and Philadelphia, and these were rival cities. Baltimore was to be tabu. Stephen Girard had loaned money to Maryland, and in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine had declined to renew, and this some said had led to the stringency which reached its height in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. Then it was that the State of Maryland empowered George Peabody to go to London and negotiate a loan. The initiative was his own. He went to London, and floated a loan of eight million dollars. Robert Owen said that Peabody borrowed the money "on his face." He invited a dozen London bankers to a dinner, and when the cloth was removed he explained the matter in such a lucid way that the moneybags loosened their strings and did his bidding without parley. Peabody sailed back to Baltimore with the gold coin. Another case of Charm of Manner. Peabody knew the loan was a good thing to both borrower and lender. And the man who knows what he is going to do with money, and when and how he is going to pay it back, is never at a loss for funds. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three Andrew Carnegie called upon the banks of Pittsburgh for a million-dollar loan. The bankers said, "Why, Mr. Carnegie, this is unprecedented!" The reply was: "Well, I am a man who does unprecedented things. If you believe that I know what I am doing, get this money together for me--life is too short for apologies--I'll be back in an hour." Three of the bankers coughed, one sneezed, but they got the money and had it ready when Andy called in an hour. In this transaction Andy held the whip-hand. The Carnegie Mills were already owing the Pittsburgh banks a tidy million or so, and they were compelled to uphold and support the credit of their clients, or run the risk of having smokestacks fall about their ears. It was so, in degree, with Peabody and the London bankers. A considerable portion of Maryland's old bond issue had been hypothecated by the Philadelphia and New York bankers with merchants in London. It was now Peabody's cue to show London that she must protect her own. His gracious presence and his logic saved the day. It is a great man who can flick a fly on the off-leader's ear, when occasion demands. As a commission for securing the London loan, the State of Maryland gave Peabody a check for sixty thousand dollars. He endorsed the check, "Presented to the State of Maryland with the best wishes of G. Peabody," and gave it back. Peabody's success with Threadneedle Street tapped for him a reservoir of power. To bring Great Britain and America into closer financial and industrial relationship now became his life-work. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five he moved his principal office to London. This was for the purpose of facilitating the shipment of English goods to America. The English manufacturers were afraid to sell to American merchants. "Capital is timid," said Adam Smith, the truth of which many of us can attest. Peabody knew the trade of America; and his business now was to make advances to English jobbers on shipments going to "the States." Thus did he lubricate the wheels of trade. London bankers had been trying to show English manufacturers that trading with the "American Colonies" was very risky, inasmuch as these "Colonies" were "rebels," and entertained a hate and jealousy toward the Mother Country which might manifest itself in repudiation almost any time. This fanning of old embers was to keep up the rate of discount. The postage on a letter carried from England to America, or America to England, was twenty-five cents when Peabody first went to England. He saw the rate reduced to ten cents, and this largely through his own efforts. Now we send a letter to Great Britain for two cents, or as cheaply as a letter can be sent from New York City to Yonkers. Through the influence of George Peabody, more than any other man of his time, the two great countries grew to understand each other. The business of Peabody was to maintain the credit of America. To this end he made advances on shipments to the States. Where brokers had formerly charged ten per cent, he took five. And moreover, where he knew the American importer, he advanced to the full amount of the invoice. He turned his money over four times a year, and thus got an interest on it of twenty per cent. His losses averaged only one-half of one per cent. When he wanted funds he found no difficulty in borrowing at a low rate of interest on his own paper. The business was simple, easy, and when once started yielded an income to Peabody of from three hundred thousand to a half-million dollars a year. And no one was more surprised than George Peabody himself, who had once worked for a certain Sylvester Proctor of Danvers for four years, and at the end of that time had been paid five dollars and given a suit of clothes! * * * * * Peabody lived and died a bachelor. Bachelors are of two kinds: There is the Rara Avis Other Sort; and the common variety known as the Bachelorum Vulgaris. The latter variety may always be recognized by its proclivity to trespass on the preserve of the Pshaw of Persia, thus laying the candidate open to a suit for the collection of royalties. Besides that, the Bachelorum Vulgaris is apt to fall into the poison-ivy, lose his hair, teeth, charm and digestion, and die at the top. The other sort is wedded to his work; for man is a molecule in the mass and must be wedded to something. To be wedded to your work is to live long and well. For a man to wed a woman who has no interest in his work, and thus live his life in an orbit outside of hers, often causes the party to oscillate into the course followed by the Bachelorum Vulgaris and the Honorable Pshaw, known as the Devil and the Deep Sea, and thus he completes the circle, revealing the Law of Antitheses, that the opposites of things are alike. The ideal condition is to be a bigamist, and wed a woman and your work at the same time. To wed a woman and be weaned from your work is a tragedy; to wed your work and eliminate the woman may spell success. If compelled to choose, be loyal to your work. As specimens of those who got along fairly well without either a feminine helpmeet or a sinker, I give you Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Sir Isaac Newton, Herbert Spencer and George Peabody. George Peabody was the true apostolic predecessor of Harry G. Selfridge, of Chicago and the round world, who has inaugurated American Merchandising Methods in London, selling to the swells of Piccadilly the smart suits created by Stein-Bloch. Unlike most men of wealth and position, Peabody never assumed unusual importance nor demanded favors. In London, where he lived for thirty years, he resided in simple apartments, with no use for a valet nor the genus flunkey. He was grateful to servants, courteous to porters, thankful to everybody, always patient, never complaining of inattention. He grew to be a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and sought to do him honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked by--with reasons, probably, not wholly disinterested. He used no tobacco, never touched spirituous liquors, and at banquets usually partook of but a single dish. His first great gift was three million dollars to erect model tenements for the poor of London. The Peabody Apartments occupy two squares in Islington and are worth a visit today, although they were built about Eighteen Hundred Fifty. The intent was to supply a home for working people that was sanitary, wholesome and complete, at a rental of exact cost. Peabody expected that his example would be imitated by the rich men of the nobility, and that squalor and indigence would soon become things of the past. Alas, the Peabody Apartments accommodate only about a thousand people, and half a million or more of human beings live in abasing poverty and misery in London today. Except in a few instances, the nobility of London are devoid of the Philanthropic Spirit. In New York, the Mills Hotels are yet curiosities, and the model tenements exist mostly on paper. Trinity Church with its millions draws an income today from property of a type which Peabody prophesied would not exist in the year Nineteen Hundred. One thing which Peabody did not bank on was the indifference of the poor to their surroundings, and the inherent taste for strong drink. He thought that if the rich would come to the rescue, the poor would welcome the new regime and be grateful. The truth seems to be that the poor must help themselves, and that beautiful as philanthropy is, it is mostly for the philanthropist. The poor must be educated to secrete their surroundings, otherwise if you supply them a palace they will transform it into a slum tomorrow. "The sole object of philanthropy," said Story the sculptor, "is to model a face like George Peabody's." When the news reached America of what George Peabody, the American, was doing for London, there were many unkind remarks about his having forsaken his native land. To equalize matters Peabody then gave three million dollars, just what he had given to London, for the cause of education in the Southern States. This money was used to establish schoolhouses. Wherever a town raised five hundred dollars for a school Peabody would give a like sum. A million dollars of the Peabody fund was finally used for a Normal School at Nashville. The investment has proved a wise and beneficent one. He next gave a million and a half dollars to found the Peabody Institute of Baltimore. That this gift fired the heart of Peter Cooper to do a similar work, and if possible a better work, there is no doubt. At the first World's Fair held in London in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one, Peabody gave fifteen thousand dollars toward the exhibition of American inventions, the chief of which at this time were the McCormick Re