Death of Armour

At the peak of his reverses, he lost a million dollars a day for 130 days. After the War he was obliged to "stand by" while economic depression forced his fortune, acquired in the meat packing industry and reputed to be the second largest in the world, to dwindle to an untaxable estate. "I lost money so fast," J. Ogden Armour said to a friend, "I didn't think it was possible." Certainly it had no precedent. Even when, at the height of his power, he squeezed the "shorts" in the Chicago grain market so relentlessly that they bled $1,000,000 into his coffers in two and a half weeks, he had never believed money could, flow so swiftly.

After a rest in California, he declared last winter, "I do not mind the loss, for I have regained my health." This summer, in London, Fate dashed even that treasure from his grasp. Typhoid, pneumonia made inroads to such an extent that there were no resources left to combat heart failure. Still the doctors thought he might pull through. On Aug. 16, he felt so much improved as to venture a glass of champagne. In the afternoon he collapsed, died, his estate valued at $25,000.*

Said the Chicago Journal of Commerce: "He probably had the distinction of having lost more money than any man that ever lived." That newspaper's business writer, Glenn Griswpld, who reported the above estimate of Mr. Armour's life, called him "the most unfortunate person who ever attained greatness in business."

Said Arthur Brisbane, Hearst editor: "Armour made mistakes, but he was a builder and a good friend, and those big fellows might have cleaned him less thoroughly. The meanest boy leaves an egg or two in the nest to encourage the bird."

Mr. Armour once said: "I have had some of the finest friendships any man ever had, although mine probably have been the most expensive friends anyone ever enjoyed. My friends have cost me a great deal of money, yet there is not one of them whom I can hate for it.

"I don't suppose I shall ever be happy. Perhaps no one ever is. But the thing that would make me happiest just now would be to know that I could get roaring drunk and wander about the loop/- for two days without anyone paying any attention to me."

How little he valued social activities a clipping from a 1907 newspaper indicates. It describes the marriage of his cousin, A. Watson Armour; continues: "It was the first social function the head of the great packing concern had attended since his own wedding 15 years or more ago. Mr. Armour was prevailed upon to get into his low-cut waistcoat and standing collar and to gaze upon himself for the first time since the Spanish-American War in a coat with long tails. 'It smells of camphor,' he complained."

* More recent appraisal indicated that Mr. Armour's holdings in the Universal Oil Co. were between two and three million dollars. /-Business district of Chicago.