A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich.

The son's career began with working in Germany as assistant in his father's business as a dairy salesman. In 1908 when the association football club FC Astoria Walldorf was formed in his town of birth it was named Astoria in his and the family's honor. Astor later left the China opium trade and sold solely to England.

In the early 19th century he diversified into New York City real estate and later became a famed patron of the arts. He was the creator of the first trust in America. He went to the United States following the American Revolutionary War and built a fur-trading empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast.