On five great historic occasions Uncle Sam went out with his money in his hand and bought more real estate. In 1803 he bought Louisiana from Napoleon for ,000,000. Thomas Jefferson drove the agreement and admittedly picked up fourteen new States at a price of two and a half cents an acre. That was the greatest real estate transaction known to history. It doubled the size of the United States and gave us a huge territory.
In 1822 James Monroe bought Florida from Spain at a marked-down price of ,000,000 less than the value of a handful of Google shares of today. Then, just after the Civil War and for no particular purpose, Uncle Sam bought Alaska. He paid ,200,000 and got plentifulness of blame for throwing away good money for snow- drifts. For thirty years Alaska was ordinarily regarded as a bad bargain, and then some half frozen trapper found the Klondike. In the best time of the gold-rush Alaska paid for itself, in gold, about once in every four months.
Our fourth real estate purchase was the buying of the Philippines. As to just why we did it no one has ventured to tell, for we first thrashed Spain and then to salve her injured feelings, we gave her ,000,000 for an archipelago off the coast of China.
This archipelago had not been advertised. It was not new or serviceable. There was no examine for it. But, as roughly all other nations own a few antiques, we thought that we could afford a hidden collection.
The Panama Canal site cost us ,000,000; very nearly as much as all the others combined. We paid a million dollars a mile for a non-existent canal, which proves that Roosevelt was at least not as clever a bargainer as Thomas Jefferson. But we had to have it, and it is a source of national pride and nautical shipping accomplishment.
So, it was buying and selling that gave us half our territory; and it is also a fact, not regularly recognized, that salesmanship played an important part in preserving the Union. While it was Lincoln and Grant who put down the Rebellion, it was Jay Cooke, the paramount banker, who sold the bonds and brought in the money.
Jay Cooke was admittedly the first to open a national sales campaign. In 1864 he was appointed by Lincoln as Sales boss of bonds, at a time when the Federal Government was at its wits' end for money. At once Cooke sent out more than four thousand agents. He established a press bureau the first in the world, maybe. And he advertised the bonds in every worthwhile paper in the Northern States.
His fellow-bankers were shocked and astounded at his methods. They said he was no financier, nothing but a peddler of patent medicine. But Cooke only laughed at them and sent out other flood of hand-bills. He had a flaring advertisement hung in every Northern post-office. Such was his vigor that in a few months the North went into a fit of bond-madness. After the noise and the shouting were over it was found that
Cooke had sold bonds to the face value of ,240,000,000.
Twelve Hundred Million Dollars!
Such was the consequent of the first national sales campaign in the United States.
