Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1901 — GEORGE WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

AS BUSINESS MAN.

Probably the Largest Land Owner in the United Btatea. As a man of business Washington was extremely methodical. Everything was figured down to the penny, and there was no guesswork about the returns from any of his properties. He was eminently successful, and his property outside of Mount Vernon, and not Including his wife’s estate, amounted to $530,000. He was probably the largest owner of land In America, his holdings exceeding 50,000 acres. The Mount Vernon estate came Into the possession of the Washington family in 1074. It originally consisted of 5,000 acres, hut when it was inherited by Washington from his brother Lawrence the property was just half that size. Washington was in the market for all the available land adjoining, and at the time of his death he owned 8,000 acres in the immediate vicinity of his residence. He made wise selections of lands which were tendered to officers of the French and Indian war, and by buying out the patents of other officers he secured ownership of more than 40,000 acres of land in the western part of the colony. He made large sales from this domain, but what was left was valued at over $300,000 in the inventory of his property. J ust after the Revolutionary War Washington and Gov. Clinton of New York obtained 0,000 acres in the Mohawk valley. Two-thirds of it was sold at n big profit and the remainder he held at his death. In the location of the new capital on the Potomac Washington invested heavily in the vicinity of the present city of Washington and built many houses. He also built bouses in Alexandria. As a farmer Washington early drifted from the exclusive cultivation of tobacco to other crops, and later introduced a system of rotation by which the soil did not btk*ome exhausted. In time Mouut Vernon became the manufacturing censer for the population of 300 people who ived on the plantation. Everything that could bo made on the plantation wns produced, and the necessity of buying from the outside was reduced to the lowest limit. He had looms, blacksmith shops, wagon shops, flour mills—ln short, every vurlety of industry where slave labor could lie utilized to advantage. He became devoted to improving the breed of sheep and of stock generally. He wns interested in n couple of banks which paid good dividends and put money into several canal companies. All in nil, he was a business man on a large scale, and while he suffered heavy losses from the depreciation of currency during the revolutionary struggle, they were more than recouped by his successful ventures In land speculate in. Had Washington been horn 100 years later he would have been undoubtedly one of the “captains of Industry” of the present era.