In 1808 he incorporated the American Fur Company. Although this was a corporation, he was, in fact, the Company. He personally supplied its initial capital of $500,000 and dictated every phase of its policy. His first ambitious design was to found the settlement of Astoria in Oregon, but the war of 1812 frustrated plans well under way, and the expedition that he sent out there had to depart.4 Had this plan succeeded, Astor would have been, as he rightly boasted, the richest man in the world; and the present wealth of his descendants instead of being $450,000,000 would be manifold more.
MONOPOLY BASED ON FORCE.
Thwarted in his project to get a monopoly of the incalculable riches of furs in the extreme Northwest, he concentrated his efforts on that vast region extending along the Missouri River, far north to the Great Lakes, west to the Rocky Mountains and into the Southwest. It was a region abounding in immense numbers of fur animals and, at that time, was inhabited by the Indian tribes, with here and there a settlement of whites. By means of Government favoritism and the unconcealed exercise of both fraud and force, he obtained a complete monopoly, as complete and arbitrary as ever feudal baron held over seignorial estates. Nominally, the United States Government ruled this great sweep of territory and made the laws and professed to execute them. In reality, Astor's company was a law unto itself. That it employed both force and fraud and entirely ignored all laws enacted by Congress, is as clear as daylight from the Government reports of that period.
The American Fur Company maintained three principal posts or depots of receiving and distribution—one at St. Louis, one at Detroit, the third at Mackinac. In response to an order from Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, to send in complete reports of the fur trade, Joshua Pilcher reported from St. Louis, December 1, 1831: