Andrus taught school in
New Jersey for four years and then pursued his talents as an investor and businessman. His primary operating business, the Arlington Chemical Company, manufactured typical medicines of the late 1800s and distributed them worldwide. He was an investor in railroads and utilities, as well as real estate, mining claims, and the Standard Oil Company. He was director of the New York Life Insurance Company. Andrus' extraordinary skills, however, lay in finding and purchasing undervalued assets, usually in partnership with a knowledgeable operator. His holdings included several buildings and land in Minneapolis, Minnesota, large timber tracts in California, mineral-rich acres in New Mexico as well as significant land holdings in Florida, New Jersey and Alaska. He served as president of the New York Pharmaceutical Association, and of the Palisade Manufacturing Co. of Yonkers, Westchester County. He was elected mayor of Yonkers in 1903. In 1904, Andrus was elected as the representative of
New York's 19th congressional district as a
Republican to the
59th United States Congress and to the three succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1905, to March 3, 1913. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1912, and resumed his former business pursuits in
Yonkers, New York, until his death. He was active as a lay leader of the Methodist Church and held a long-term post as a trustee of Wesleyan University. An early sound interview of Andrus exists, recorded on February 27, 1930, in which he's asked about his health, opinion on the recent
Wall Street crash of 1929, and thoughts on aging. ==Death and Legacy==