Before long, he owned a sizeable, quickly-developing slab of the fastest-growing city in the world.Īstor ultimately became the fourth-richest man in US history, laying the groundwork for a family fortune that still survives, and a real estate market that breeds middle men…not unlike the rabbits and raccoons, minks and beavers on whose backs he arguably built New York. A German immigrant who came to New York in 1784, Astor made his first fortune on fur pelts, which he bought from rough-hewn frontier types and sold to high end furriers in cities around the world.Īstor could have used his money to build in New York, but he followed the middle man model, buying up huge chunks of Manhattan island and leasing them out to people who promised to build on them. In 2006, his descendant, Andrew Hawkins, publicly apologized to 25,000 Gambians, draping himself in chains to highlight his ancestor's role in bringing slavery to America.īefore New York could become America's most prominent city, it needed to be settled - and that's where John Jacob Astor came in. For others, though, the triangle trade was a tragedy: one of the legs of Hawkins' journey involved carrying slaves from Africa to the New World, which makes him not only the father of the New World's economy, but also one of the fathers of the transatlantic slave trade. Suddenly, commerce with the New World became a license to print money, a gravy galleon with biscuit sails.įor Hawkins, it was a win-win, and his naval work earned him a knighthood and a promotion to Admiral. In 1555, John Hawkins, a ship's captain and occasional pirate, began what became known as the "triangular trade," a route from Africa to the Caribbean to England that turned a profit on each leg of the journey. After all, back in the 1500's, it cost a fortune to ship goods across the Atlantic, and dragging an empty ship back home translated into time wasted and money lost. Still not convinced that middle men are what made America great? Well, here are a few examples to prove the point:īefore the first guy in a hat with a buckle on it stepped off the Mayflower, the New World needed middle men to help it turn a profit. But while you might make a few bucks from stuffing guests in your study and calling it "Chez Bob," AirBnB's owners are riding your shoulders into the ranks of America's millionaire middle men. Sure, Uber enables every guy with a Jeep Liberty to become a taxi driver and AirBnB makes it possible for every renter with a spare room to become a hotelier. Platforms and apps like Uber, AirBnB and TaskRabbit may spout off about the cutting-edge wonders of the sharing economy, but at the end of the day, they're doing what middle men have always done: connecting buyers to sellers and making a profit off both sides. Middle men are smack-dab in the middle of a fresh renaissance. It's a cute speech, and Say Anything is a great movie, but let's face it: at the end of the day, America runs on middle men. Let the Lloyd Dobblers of the world whine about not wanting to buy anything that's sold or processed or process anything that's bought or sold. And, when it came to making America, it took a lot of guys buying grain and selling shovels, looking for a profit on both sides of the deal. But, as beautiful as the amber waves of grain may be, it takes a fleet of middle men to make them profitable. Sure, we celebrate the pioneers and inventors, the guys who shot buffalo or settled the frontier. From its pirates to its merchant princes, its raiders to its robber barons, America was made by middle men.
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