Extremely wealthy entrepreneur

Independent

Extremely wealthy entrepreneur

You are John Jacob Astor, the richest man in the world. Now an old man, you still recall back when you started dealing in furs in your first years after coming to America right after the American Revolution. You were born in 1763, in  Walldorf, near Heidelberg in the old Palatinate (which late in the 19^th century will become part of a unified Germany). Your speech is still accented with the German of your native Walldorf. But anybody who dislikes you because of your accent is not worth anybody’s attention, let alone yours: Everybody who speaks has an accent even if some are too ignorant to know it.

Demand in Europe for furs from the North American wilderness remained high and desperate Indian tribes eagerly trapped the animals and sold the furs to your agents for goods like knifes and axes and muskets and power and iron leg-hold traps. It was a most profitable trade for you; you recognized of course that it was an extractive enterprise of limited duration due to the rapid depletion of animals. But you had a whole vast wilderness continent to draw furs from, so the commerce was quite strong and enriching for your company.

You made your first fortune in the fur trade, with your operations headquartered in New York City but spreading across the continent to the Great Lakes region and, ultimately, to the mouth of the Columbia River on the continent’s Northwest Pacific coast. The Jay Treaty of 1794 with Britain created trading opportunities across all of Canada, and you secured with tight commercial connections in London. Later, your company made Mackinac Island in the Michigan Territory its major command post, thus making the island a center of American control of the global fur trade. It drew on Indians trapping animals all across the continent’s wilderness. You were never a trapper of furs yourself – you traded trinkets for the furs Indians trapped, and resold the furs at much higher prices in faraway places.

From the fur trade, you gained great sums and wisely invested it in New York real estate, turning your first fortune into an even greater one. You owe a large percentage of the total real estate on the island of Manhattan.

You also own fleets of ships, doing business around the world. You’ve also been heavily involved in the profitable opium trade, which has enriched the British as well as yourself. Opium, grown in the British colony of Bengal, is shipped into China, violating Chinese law, but that backward kingdom can’t secure its borders or ports. The Emperor of China lacks the forces and the power to control the lands he says are his. So your opium smuggling ships, operating for the British East India Company, encountered no real difficulties in Chinese ports. So you profited greatly from the opium trade, which the British have just asserted by military power in the recent Opium War. The British rightly compelled Chinese submission to the superior British, and this ensured your profit from opium trading.

OBJECTIVES:

1. You can win the game if you demonstrate your brilliance, consistently advocate for national unity, and remain loyal to your old friends. Individual objective
2. You may also win if you ally with a faction that passes more resolutions favorable to its goals.

Assignments –

1. For the first meeting you must review the Douglass Narrative.
2. For the second, you must consider Calhoun’s ideas. Remember, you are opposed to any breakup of the United States.
3. For the third meeting, reflect on slavery and the Constitution.

You are one of the most unfettered persons in the game. After all, you’re rich and owe nobody anything, just your honest, considered opinion. 

***

Of course, the whole fur trade was entirely dependent upon the territorial dispossession of the indigenous peoples of North America as well as upon the destruction of the animals. Naturally, it is not sustainable. But your Fur Company’s achievements advanced not only your wealth but the cause of civilization too, and your gains from trading in furs enabled you to venture into other businesses and to become a great patron of the arts as well. John James Audubon, the bird painter, another immigrant to America, has depended greatly on your favor and you are pleased by his beautiful paintings. Some of them he gave you, and others you bought from him. You have taken to collecting beautiful objects in your old age.

You are a globalist – you believe the whole world must be open to American traders, whether in the interior of Canada or south China. You are the greatest merchant of the age – you buy things in one place and transport them to other places, where people will pay more for them than you’ve spent. This kind of capitalism drives the world and has made you rich. But the pursuit of greater wealth is not all that motivates you, for you value beauty and great art, and the civilization of the German and British peoples and their descendants here in the United States.

You own the Astor House hotel, where Charles Dickens is hosting the Literary Forum on the book by that runaway colored man Douglass. Generously, you are letting Mr. Dickens use the space without any charge. Mr. Gallatin, an old associate of yours, is also your guest,

You plan on leaving your fortune to your son, William, and to some worthy causes in trusts; however, in the course of this Game you have no need for cash and cannot use money to achieve your Objectives. Some other participants in these three Meetings may approach you seeking a donation or an investment, but you didn’t become wealthy by being careless with money. Listen politely, but commit nothing when asked about money. You don’t give money away and you cannot use money in this Game without special advance approval from the Gamemaster. But you need not announce this fact to anyone. You are the richest man in the world – you didn’t achieve that by giving anything away. You were ruthless.

You are now an old man, a rich man, a man whose opinions matter, you think, and should be respected. You have nothing to prove in the three meetings of this Game – nothing, that is, except that you are smart and that you remain on top of your game. To hell with everybody who whispers that you’re senile and have lost your edge. You dislike the condescending negativity that people look at you with, now that you are old. People flatter you, but they seem to just be waiting for you to die. You still like to eat peas from the edge of a knife, as you always have, and you dine on oysters in a fashion that makes ladies cringe. So what? You still have friends, like Albert Gallatin and Washington Irving.

You don’t care to kowtow to anyone, but you do want people to know that John Jacob Astor still has a brilliant mind!Additionally, you believe in the United States of America and want to advance its future growth and prosperity. If people kowtow to you, that’s perfectly good and appropriate.

But your overarching concern is to demonstrate a greater degree of intellectual independence and ability than anyone else! To do so, you must demonstrate a convincing command of the book that Mr. Dickens has chosen to have discussed at this Literary Forum, as well as of the Documents in the Gamebook. You need people to understand that you’re not merely a rich old man, but a lively rich old man with a better brain and sharper tongue than most men half your age. For the first meeting you must review the Douglass Narrative. For the second, you must consider Calhoun’s ideas. Remember, you are opposed to any breakup of the United States. For the third meeting, reflect on slavery and the constitution. How exactly you should do so – well, that’s up to you. You have full freedom.

You are loyal to the people you’ve known for years who have demonstrated personal loyalty to you, such as Gallatin and Irving. You can win the game if you demonstrate your brilliance, consistently advocate for national unity, and remain loyal to your old friends. You may also win if you ally with a faction that passes more resolutions favorable to its goals.

Special Power —Sleeping: If, after giving a speech, you are asked a question that you’d rather not respond to, you can choose to sit down and then nod off into sleep. This nodding off into sleep must be done in a way that your audience realizes that you’re asleep. Only characters who are over age 80 have this power and for it to be used effectively as a distraction, it should be funny yet dignified. You must remain asleep for a while. This can be a tactical advantage to avoid a question, and it could also be creatively used at other times.

The John Jacob Astor role ends here.