Great Fortunes: Nicholas Longworth Part 5
Mr. Longworth continued his wine trade with great success for about twenty-five years, and though for some time his expenditures were largely in excess of his income from this source, he at length reaped a steady and increasing profit from it, which more than reimbursed him for his former losses. He was very fond of the strawberry, and succeeded, by careful and expensive cultivation, in making several very important improvements in that delicious fruit. His experiments in the sexual character of the strawberry are highly interesting, but must be passed by here. He manifested no selfishness with respect to his fruits. He was anxious that their cultivation should become general, and his discoveries and improvements were always at the service of any and every one who desired to make use of them.
He was thoroughly devoted to his adopted home, and anxious to secure its steady improvement. When it was proposed to establish an observatory, the Mount Adams property, then owned by him, was regarded as the most fitting site for it. He was asked to name the price for which he would sell the property. To the astonishment of the parties in charge of the enterprise, he made a free gift of the land—four acres in extent—to the trustees. A gentleman who had hoped to dispose of some of his own property for this purpose charged Mr. Longworth, through the press, with being influenced by a desire to improve his adjoining property by the erection of the observatory on Mount Adams. Longworth promptly replied that if the writer of the article in question would donate four acres of his own property for an observatory, he (Longworth) would put up, at his own expense, a building on it equal to that which had been erected on Mount Adams, and transfer the latter place to the city as a permanent pleasure ground. He quietly added that in this way his accuser might himself receive, for his adjacent property, all the benefits of such an improvement, and at the same time win for himself the lasting gratitude of the people of Cincinnati. This settled the matter, and no more was heard from the other side.
“Longworth,” says one who knew him, “is a problem and a riddle—a problem worthy of the study of those who delight in exploring that labyrinth of all that is hidden and mysterious, the human heart; and a riddle to himself and others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high order; of keen sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in money matters; one who can be exact to a dollar, and liberal, when he chooses, with thousands; of marked peculiarity and tenacity in his own opinions, yet of abundant tolerance to the opinions, however extravagant, of others—a man of great public spirit and sound general judgment.
“In addition to all this, it would be difficult to find an individual of his position and standing so perfectly free from pride, in the ordinary sense. He has absolutely none, unless it be the pride of eccentricity. It is no uncommon circumstance for men to become rich by the concentration of time, and labor, and attention to some one object of profitable employment. This is the ordinary phase of money-getting, as closing the ear and pocket to applications for aid is that of money-saving. Longworth has become a rich man on a different principle. He appears to have started upon the calculation that if he could put any individual in the way of making a dollar for Longworth, and a dollar for himself at the same time, by aiding him with ground for a lot, or in building him a house on it; and if, moreover, he could multiply cases of the kind by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, he would promote his own interests just in the same measure as he was advancing those of others. At the same time he could not be unconscious that, while their half was subdivided into small possessions, owned by a thousand or more individuals, his half was a vast, boundless aggregate, since it was the property of one man alone. The event has done justice to his sagacity. Hundreds, if not thousands, in and adjacent to Cincinnati, now own houses and lots, and many have become wealthy, who would, in all probability, have lived and died as tenants under a different state of case. Had not Mr. Longworth adopted this course, he would have occupied that relation to society which many wealthy men now sustain, that of getting all they can and keeping all they get.”
