Founding Father

February 15, 2010 by admin
Filed under: The American Spectator

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February is an important month in the history of American
commerce. In this month is the birthday of one of the country’s
earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs.

During a time period of America’s existence as an English colony
and then a young nation — when, to put it mildly, communication
and transportation faced challenges — this businessman’s
enterprise processed 1.5 million fish per year sent throughout
the 13 American colonies and the British West Indies. The mill he
built grinded 278,000 pounds of branded flour annually that was
shipped through America and, unusual during colonization, even
exported to England as well as Portugal. And in the 1790s, during
the last years of his life, this mogul built one of the largest
whiskey distilleries in the new nation.

Don’t think you’ve heard of this entrepreneur? Well, it’s
possible you might know him from some of his achievements in the
political sphere. He did, in fact, have a few notable
accomplishments there. Like serving as a representative in
colonial Virginia’s House of Burgesses and as a Virginia delegate
to the pre-Revolutionary War Continental Congress. Then being
chosen to lead the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War
and leading the American nation to a hard-fought victory for
independence. And then, a few years after that, becoming the new
nation’s first president.

For many Americans, and indeed quite a few scholars, George
Washington has been little more than just the face on Mount
Rushmore and the one-dollar bill. People revered him but just
didn’t know how to relate to him. Whereas Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin generated interest with their passions and
achievements in practical science and architecture, Washington
didn’t seem to have a career — or much of a life — outside of
his leadership as general and president.

But now, some pioneering scholars are documenting that
Washington’s life’s work was just as enthralling as that of any
of the Founding Fathers. His pursuits can be said to be just as
creative as those of Franklin and Jefferson, but in a different
way. Washington’s creativity of the type one associates with
modern entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and even Donald Trump.
Whereas Franklin built gadgets at his homestead, and Jefferson
built fancy buildings, the notable thing Washington built were a
series of interconnected businesses.

In the 2006 biography The Unexpected George Washington,
historian Harlow Giles Unger calls Washington “one of America’s
leading entrepreneurs” and chronicles Washington’s transformation
of Mount Vernon from a sleepy tobacco farm into a type of
industrial village. As Unger writes, Washington “expanded a
relatively small tobacco plantation into a diversified
agroindustrial enterprise that stretched over thousands of acres
and included, among other ventures, a fishery, meat processing
facility, textile and weaving manufactory, distillery, gristmill,
smithy [blacksmith shop], brickmaking kiln, cargo-carrying
schooner, and, of course, endless fields of grain.”

Some of these enterprises are now on display at the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens
historical site in Alexandria, Virginia, available for visitors
to see as we approach the national holiday of Washington’s
Birthday, celebrated on a Monday — today although Washington’s
real birthday is the 22nd. (And the federal holiday, by the way,
is still officially
Washington’s Birthday, not President’s Day. Although many
celebrate the birth of Abraham Lincoln in February, and some
states have their own legal holidays for him, Congress never
formally merged Washington’s day with Lincoln’s birthday nor gave
Lincoln his own official holiday.) The Donald W. Reynolds Museum
and Education Center, opened on the grounds of Mount Vernon in
2006, has a display of the Mount Vernon fishery and other facets
of his career as a “visionary entrepreneur.” And Washington’s
gristmill and whiskey distillery were themselves recently
reopened for attendees to get a first-hand look at some of
Washington’s interconnected ventures.

In this challenging time for free enterprise, Washington’s
business, as well as his political, biography can be seen as
emblematic of the American Dream. Washington’s background wasn’t
exactly poor, but it was not as rich as many of his
contemporaries among the Founders. His father died when he was
11, and, among the youngest of many brothers, he didn’t inherit
much, and the family lacked money to give him a formal education.

So at 16, Washington became an apprentice land surveyor for
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. From Fairfax
(namesake of Fairfax County, which is now part of the Northern
Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.), Washington learned about
land acquisition, and became skilled in the practice that today
we would call a real estate speculator.

After fighting with distinction in the French and Indian War,
Washington inherited the 2,000-acre Mount Vernon farm from his
older brother Lawrence and began acquiring other land around it,
extending his homestead to 8,000 acres at the time of his death.
In 1759, Washington married the widow Martha Custis, and she and
her two children came to live at Mount Vernon. But although
Martha had considerable wealth, as has been noted, running a
productive farm against the backdrop of British trade
restrictions and taxes, as well as nature’s unpredictability, was
not an easy task. It was then that Washington began his
innovative agribusiness practices that made Mount Vernon, as
described in a paper (not available online) by Mount Vernon
director of restoration Dennis J. Pogue, “an expansive and
ambitious commercial enterprise.”

Washington’s first step to becoming an entrepreneur was to
abandon the most common cash crop of his native Virginia. That
would be the now-dreaded tobacco. But it was not for health
reasons that Washington stopped planting it. It was because of
taxes and duties that reduced his profits and the fact that the
tobacco crop was hurting Mount Vernon’s soil. As Pogue writes in
another paper (pdf),
“By 1766 the disappointingly low prices that he was receiving in
return for his tobacco harvest convinced Washington that he would
be better off devoting the labor of his workers to producing
other commodities that had a more dependable payoff.”

Washington grew hundreds of crops, many of which were imported
from Europe. (And yes, he did grow
hemp, but not very much and not for very long.) But for his
main cash crop, he chose wheat. But he didn’t stop fulfilling the
market need with the growing of this wheat. He became a
manufacturer of two products that contained his crop: flour and
distilled whiskey.

Recently replicated on their original foundations at Mount
Vernon, Washington’s gristmill and distillery are architectural
wonders that anticipated modern factories. The flour mill is
three levels high with two sets of mill stones, including French
buhr stones that were used to make the finest quality of flour.
The mill produced about 278,000 pounds of flower per year,
branded with the Washington name, sold throughout the colonies
and exported to England and as far away as Portugal. The flour
bore the identification of George Washington, in effect making it
similar to a modern branded food product.

Washington also “farmed” the banks of the Potomac for shad,
herring and other fish. His fishery consisted of rowboats and
large nets, and in a six-week fishing season each spring,
Washington’s men netted about 1.5 million fish, according to the
Reynolds museum at Mount Vernon. And the inedible portions of the
fish were used as fertilizer for crops such as wheat

But it is the distillery may offer the most fascinating example
of Washington’s entrepreneurial prowess. After retiring from the
presidency and returning to Mount Vernon — setting a precedent
for voluntarily relinquishing power — Washington built a
distillery in 1797 on the advice of his plantation manager James
Anderson, a native of Scotland who knew a thing or two about
distilled spirits. The whiskey was made largely from crops grown
at Mount Vernon. As one Virginia magazine describes
it, “rye, malted barley and corn were mixed with boiling water to
make a mash in 120 gallon barrels.”

This process is now reenacted at Mount Vernon at the distillery
that was reopened in 2007, thanks to a grant from the Distilled
Spirits Council of the United States. A few times a year,
Washington’s whiskey — using one of the old recipes — is even
sold to Mount Vernon visitors.

Washington’s lifelong entrepreneurship sheds new light on his
fight for liberty, and his motivation to develop a constitutional
structure in which all were free to develop their many talents.
Like that of other Founding Fathers, Washington’s career was
stained by the evils of slavery, and this extended to his
business enterprises, most of which made use of the labor of the
slaves at Mount Vernon. But his correspondence shows that
Washington realized this contradiction more than most of the
Founding Fathers, and he worked
tirelessly the last few years of his life to free all of his
slaves upon his and Martha’s death and also make provisions for
their education and for the support of the former slave children
and elderly.

So this month, if you can’t make it to the celebrations at Mount
Vernon, you just may want to toast George Washington — the
politician and entrepreneur — with a plate of herring washed
down with a glass of whiskey.