Page 43 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

29.

function to perform in tying together the sections. For in­

stance, one vessel traded with the Indians for furs while

another transported the transshipped furs to Canton, thus

allowing the first vessel to remain on the Coast gathering

a new cargo. A third vessel was responsible for keeping all

the vessels supplied with provisions and naval stores. Such

efficiency resulted in Astor's getting more cargoes of furs
into the Canton market and ensuring their arrival early in

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the season.
Astor was not satisfied merely with improving methods

employed in the American fur trade on the Northwest Coast. He

desired to expand his profits in the fur trade even further.

But the English monopolistic companies prevented his doing so.

The only way to compete successfully with the English and

accrue more profits from the fur trade would be to establish

a landed fur-trading operation. He attempted to buy into the

Northwest Company, which rebuffed his offer. Astor then decided

to form his own trading company. To staff his Pacific Fur

Company he hired Canadians away from the Northwest Company by

offering them higher salaries. Astor's plan was for the

Pacific Fur Company to build a string of trading posts in the

interior along the Missouri and Columbia Rivers and their

tributaries. The Company's major base of operations would be

a fort at the mouth of the Columbia River, a fort to be named

Astoria. Each year vessels from New York would bring supplies

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Kenneth W. Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man
(2 vols.; Cambridge, 1931), II� 668.