me.
“What kinds of things?”
I shrugged.
“Just…things.”
My parents shared another look.
“Dad? Where did Elliot’s dad get all of his money?”
“From
his
dad.”
“But where did
he
get it?”
My father laughed.
“From
his
dad.”
“But where does it all come from? Do they own buildings, like Lance’s family?”
“Oh, sure,” my dad said. “They own entire companies.”
“But that’s not where the money
comes
from,” my mom said.
“Right,” my dad said. “Those are just things they bought with it.”
My mom shook her head softly.
“It all comes from that patent. Right? Just that one little find.”
My father twisted his paper napkin into a coil and nodded.
“Just that one little find.”
• • •
Cornelius Allagash was born on the South Street docks in 1775, just minutes after arriving in New York City. His mother was nine and a half months pregnant, according to legend, but the unborn capitalist refused to emerge until he had landed on American soil.
Cornelius’s parents were hardworking Dutch cobblers. They failed to make enough money to send their boy to school, but Cornelius was bright. He learned to speak English by attending free sermons in City Hall Park. And after swiping a Bible from a lecturer, he taught himself to read. Before long, he had started a successful bootlegging business, selling his moonshine for two shillings a jar.
By the age of twenty-one, Cornelius had amassed enough shillings to buy himself a horse. But his prospects were limited; his house was only large enough for a single still, and it took him nearly a month to produce each barrel. Desperate to get ahead, Cornelius bought some rudimentary chemistry books and attempted to speed up his brewing process. He experimented with different chemical combinations, testing out batches on his horse. But every single trial ended poorly. One day—Christmas of 1800, according to his autobiography—Cornelius became so dizzy from the fumes that he passed out. As he collapsed, he dropped a wooden bucket into the still, smacked his head against a stone wall, and crumpled onto the basement floor. He was unconscious for a few minutes, and when he came to, he couldn’t find his bucket. The vessel had vanished. He was beginning to doubt his sanity when he noticed something strange inside his still. The surfaceof his whiskey-chemical mixture was coated with a thin layer of brown fiber. He ladled out a scoop and examined it by candlelight; it had the consistency of grain, but the softness of sand. His bucket, it seemed, had been pulverized on contact.
Cornelius didn’t know what had happened, exactly, but he knew his latest chemical might have value. Anything that could break down wood so efficiently had to be useful to somebody. The city, after all, was clogged with dilapidated tenements and running out of space all the time. You couldn’t destroy them with fire; the entire city could go up in smoke. Maybe this chemical could help clear the brush down by the Bowery. There was so much wood in the city, piled into clapboard houses south of Wall, to say nothing of the sprawling forests north of Fourteenth Street. Something that turned it into something else, even mush, had got to be worth something.
In order to patent the chemical, he had to scientifically classify it. So he hired an alcoholic schoolteacher—one of his best clients—to analyze it, in exchange for a jar of moonshine and one percent of any profits that resulted from the discovery. The schoolteacher asked for two jars of moonshine in lieu of the one percent, but Cornelius wouldn’t relent. He didn’t have two jars to spare. After a fair amount of arguing, the schoolteacher spent five minutes scrutinizing the substance—it was calcium bisulfite, i.e. Ca(HSO 3 ) 2 —and signed his name on the dotted line. Today, his progeny are among the richest people in North America. His great-great-grandson lives on a private island in the South Pacific and is
“What kinds of things?”
I shrugged.
“Just…things.”
My parents shared another look.
“Dad? Where did Elliot’s dad get all of his money?”
“From
his
dad.”
“But where did
he
get it?”
My father laughed.
“From
his
dad.”
“But where does it all come from? Do they own buildings, like Lance’s family?”
“Oh, sure,” my dad said. “They own entire companies.”
“But that’s not where the money
comes
from,” my mom said.
“Right,” my dad said. “Those are just things they bought with it.”
My mom shook her head softly.
“It all comes from that patent. Right? Just that one little find.”
My father twisted his paper napkin into a coil and nodded.
“Just that one little find.”
• • •
Cornelius Allagash was born on the South Street docks in 1775, just minutes after arriving in New York City. His mother was nine and a half months pregnant, according to legend, but the unborn capitalist refused to emerge until he had landed on American soil.
Cornelius’s parents were hardworking Dutch cobblers. They failed to make enough money to send their boy to school, but Cornelius was bright. He learned to speak English by attending free sermons in City Hall Park. And after swiping a Bible from a lecturer, he taught himself to read. Before long, he had started a successful bootlegging business, selling his moonshine for two shillings a jar.
By the age of twenty-one, Cornelius had amassed enough shillings to buy himself a horse. But his prospects were limited; his house was only large enough for a single still, and it took him nearly a month to produce each barrel. Desperate to get ahead, Cornelius bought some rudimentary chemistry books and attempted to speed up his brewing process. He experimented with different chemical combinations, testing out batches on his horse. But every single trial ended poorly. One day—Christmas of 1800, according to his autobiography—Cornelius became so dizzy from the fumes that he passed out. As he collapsed, he dropped a wooden bucket into the still, smacked his head against a stone wall, and crumpled onto the basement floor. He was unconscious for a few minutes, and when he came to, he couldn’t find his bucket. The vessel had vanished. He was beginning to doubt his sanity when he noticed something strange inside his still. The surfaceof his whiskey-chemical mixture was coated with a thin layer of brown fiber. He ladled out a scoop and examined it by candlelight; it had the consistency of grain, but the softness of sand. His bucket, it seemed, had been pulverized on contact.
Cornelius didn’t know what had happened, exactly, but he knew his latest chemical might have value. Anything that could break down wood so efficiently had to be useful to somebody. The city, after all, was clogged with dilapidated tenements and running out of space all the time. You couldn’t destroy them with fire; the entire city could go up in smoke. Maybe this chemical could help clear the brush down by the Bowery. There was so much wood in the city, piled into clapboard houses south of Wall, to say nothing of the sprawling forests north of Fourteenth Street. Something that turned it into something else, even mush, had got to be worth something.
In order to patent the chemical, he had to scientifically classify it. So he hired an alcoholic schoolteacher—one of his best clients—to analyze it, in exchange for a jar of moonshine and one percent of any profits that resulted from the discovery. The schoolteacher asked for two jars of moonshine in lieu of the one percent, but Cornelius wouldn’t relent. He didn’t have two jars to spare. After a fair amount of arguing, the schoolteacher spent five minutes scrutinizing the substance—it was calcium bisulfite, i.e. Ca(HSO 3 ) 2 —and signed his name on the dotted line. Today, his progeny are among the richest people in North America. His great-great-grandson lives on a private island in the South Pacific and is
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