America's Richest man Take Two

America’s Richest Man Take Two In his novel Martin Chuzzlewit Dickens took his vengeance on America’s fast talking, profit orientated society. Martin becomes an unwitting partner in the Eden Land Corporation, a shady group which has enticed him with a giant plan depicting the flourishing city of Eden, replete with banks, churches, markets, theaters and a daily journal The Eden Stinger. The real Eden (modeled on Cairo Illinois) turns out to be a miserable slough: ‘There were not above a score of cabins in the whole, half of these appeared untenanted; all were rotten and decayed’ For one of them, Martin’s companion ‘brought forth a great placard…bearing the inscription Chuzzlewit & Co, Architects and Surveyors which he displayed in the most conspicuous part of the premises. With such gravity as if the thriving city of Eden had a real existence. – In the history of USA coming at the start of the 1840s to New York and then travelling on into the interior Charles Dickens has come at low point in the migration. Soon the Irish Potato famine is going to like a scythe and then changes in Germany- both events bring a deluge of new migrants and easy money for those earlier land owners who have picked the right locations where to put the unfortunate souls who desperately need a new place in the new land. But even in spectacular growth which again characterized the last half of the never to ever be repeated just past 20th Century some places are cursed and will never produce easy quick profit; Some places lack the infrastructure to make life there viable: And some miss out when another developer gets in ahead; And sometimes society swings in some new direction making predicting where will growth will develop next impossible…. About this period in respect of the previously mentioned in a blog in this series- America’s Richest Man Virginia Cowles tells us in ‘The Astors’ – ‘Yet in the panic of 1837 many people believed that the market would never recover and regarded the old man as quite mad to go on plunging his capital into a bottomless pit’ p57 The Astors Now I like to see the piece of land where I live in exactly these sorts of terms. In terms of a curse the local natives were so convinced the land was cursed that the got the missionary Fairburn to stand on the local hill over looking where Hoturoa dragged across the from Cook Islands –Tainui Canoe and to raise his holy hands and pray for the land. While convinced that cannibalism had blighted this harbor crossing region I was not the least bit surprised to find human bones in among the fire pit material in my backyard… And yes elsewhere around here heads turn up without the bodies….Moving on- The first well advertised development for this land which had been swapped for opposite Onehunga – brought in just a couple of buyers, then a decade or so later there were a dozen or so houses and properties purchased. Next Communism in China and the failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward brought Chinese market gardening and gambling dens. And on and on it goes. Each new breathless profit making opportunity consistently sending every developer away losing money or reputation –Cursed. So was John Jacob Astor despite making the greatest amount of money from Manhattan ownership and development on that land- cursed? Well when it comes to ‘Aristocracy’ the quick way to check that is to look at the family tree over six or more generations and see where 200 years later people have got to…. Jesus puts it this way when he tells a land development story- ‘there was once a rich man who had land which bore good crops – he thought to himself I haven’t got room to store it all what to do? I know! I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones ….Eat drink and be merry but God said to him ‘You fool this very night I will require your life then who will get all the things you have kept for yourself?’ Luke 12:16-20 and ‘what if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?’ Luke 9:25