HISTORY OF THE GREAT
AMERICAN FORTUNES
BY GUSTAVUS MYERS
BY GUSTAVUS MYERS
CHAPTER V
THE MOMENTUM OF
THE MOMENTUM OF
THE ASTOR FORTUNE
It was at this identical time, in the panic of 1837, that Astor was phenomenally active in profiting from despair. “ He added immensely to his riches,” wrote a contemporaneous narrator, “ by purchases of State stocks, bonds and mortgages in the financial crisis of 1836-37. He was a willing purchaser of mortgages from needy holders at less than their face ; and when they became due, he foreclosed on them, and purchased the mortgaged property at the ruinous prices which ranged at that time.”1
If his seven per cent was not paid at the exact time, he inflexibly made use of every provision of the law and foreclosed mortgages. The courts quickly responded. To lot after lot, property after property, he took full title. The anguish of families, the sorrow and suffering of the community, the blank despair and ruination which drove many to beggary and prostitution, others to suicide, all had no other effect upon him than to make him more eagerly energetic in availing himself of the misfortunes and the tragedies of others.
Now was observable the operation of the centripetal principle which applied to every recurring panic, namely, that panics are but the easy means by which the very rich are enabled to get possession of more and more of the general produce and property. The ranks of petty landowners were much thinned out by the panic of 1837 and the number of independent business men was greatly reduced ; a considerable part of both classes were forced down into the army of wage workers.
ASTOR’S WEALTH MULTIPLIES.
Within a few years after the panic of 1837 Astor’s wealth multiplied to an enormous extent. Business revived, values increased. It was now that immigration began to pour in heavily. In 1843 sixty thousand immigrants entered the port of New York. Four years later the number was 129,000 a year. Soon it rose to 300,00 a year ; and from that time on kept on ever increasing. A large portion of these immigrants remained in New York City. Land was in demand as never before ; fast and faster the city grew. Vacant lots of a few years before became congested with packed humanity ; landlordism and slums flourished side by side, the one as a development of the other. The outlying farm, rocky and swamp lands of the New York City of 1812, with its 100,000 population became the thickly-settled metropolis of 1840, with 317,712 inhabitants and the well-nigh half-million population of 1850. Hard as the laborer might work, he was generally impoverished for the reason that successively rents were raised, and he had to yield up more and more of his labor for the simple privilege of occupying an ugly and cramped habitation.
Once having fastened his hold upon the land, Astor never sold it. From the first, he adopted the plan, since religiously followed, for the most part, by his descendants, of leasing the land for a given number of years, usually twenty-one. Large tracts of land in the heart of the city he let lie unimproved for years while the city fast grew up all around them and enormously increased their value. He often refused to build, although there was intense pressure for land and buildings. His policy was to wait until the time when those whom necessity drove to use his land should come to him as supplicants and accept his own terms. For a considerable time no one cared to take his land on lease at his onerous terms. But, finally, such was the growth of population and business, that his land was indispensable and it was taken on leaseholds.
Astor’s exaction's for leaseholds were extraordinarily burdensome. But he would make no concessions. The lessee was required to erect his dwelling or business place at his own expense ; and during the period of the twenty-one years of the lease, he not only had to pay rent in the form of giving over to Astor five or six per cent of the value of the land, but was responsible for all taxes, repairs and all other charges. When the ground lease expired the buildings became Astor’s absolute property. The middleman landlord, speculative lessee or trading tenant who leased Astor’s land and put up tenements or buildings, necessarily had to recoup himself for the high tribute that he had to pay to Astor. He did this either by charging the worker exorbitant rents or demanding excessive profits for his wares ; in both of which cases the producers had finally to foot the bill.
EVASION OF ASSESSMENTS
BY THE LANDLORDS.
The whole machinery of the law Astor, in common with all other landlords, used ruthlessly in enforcing his rights as landlord or as lessor or lessee. Not a single instance has come down of any act of leniency on Astor’s part in extending the time of tenants in arrears. Whether sickness was in the tenant’s family or not, however dire its situation might be, out it was summarily thrown into the streets, with its belongings, if it failed in the slightest in its obligations.
While he was availing himself of the rigors of the law to oust tenants in arrears, he was constantly violating the law in evading assessments. But this practice was not by any means peculiar to Astor. Practically the whole propertied class did it, not merely once, but so continually that year after year official reports adverted to the fact. An Aldermanic report on taxation in 1846 showed that thirty million dollars worth of assess able property escaped taxation every year, and that no bona fide efforts were made by the officials to remedy that state of affairs.2 The state of morality among the propertied classes — those classes which demanded such harsh laws for the punishment of vagrants and poor criminals — is clearly revealed by this report made by a committee of the New York Board of Aldermen in 1847 :
For several years past the evasion of taxation on the part of those engaged in the business of the city, and enjoying the protection and benefits of its municipal government and its great public improvements, has engaged the attention of the city authorities, called forth reports of committees and caused application to the Legislature for relief, but the demands of justice and the dictates of sound policy have hitherto been entirely unheeded.
Necessarily they were unheeded, for the very obvious reason that it was this same class which controlled the administration of government. This class distorted the powers of government by calling either for the drastic enforcement of laws operating for its interests, or for the partial or entire immunity from other laws militating against its interests and profit. The report thus continued :
Our rich merchants and heavy capitalists ... find excuses to remove their families to nearby points and thus escape all taxation whatever, except for the premises that they occupy. More than 2,000 firms engaged in business in New York, whose capital is invested and used in New York, and with an aggregate personal property of $30,000,000, thus escape taxation.3
DEFRAUDING A FINE ART.
The committee pointed out that at the taxable rate of 1 per cent the city was, in that way, being cheated out of the sum of $225,000 or $300,000 a year. These two thousand firms who every year defrauded the city were the eminently respectable and influential merchants of the city ; most of them were devout church members ; many were directors or members of charitable societies to relieve the poor ; and all of them, with vast pretensions of superior character and ability, joined in opposing any movement of the working classes for better conditions and in denouncing those movements as hostile to the security of property and as dangerous to the welfare of society. Each of these two thousand firms year after year defrauded the city out of an average of $150 annually in that one item, not to mention other frauds. Yet not once was the law invoked against them. The taxation that they shirked fell upon the working class in addition to all of those other myriad forms of indirect taxation which the workers finally had to bear. Yet, as we have noted before, if a poor man or woman stole property of the value of $25 or more, conviction carried with it a long term in prison for grand larceny. In every city — in Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Baltimore, New Orleans and in every other place — the same, or nearly the same, conditions prevailed. The rich evaded taxation ; and if in the process it was necessary to perjure themselves, they committed perjury with alacrity. Astor was far from being an exception. He was but an illustrious type of the whole of his class.
But, how, in a Government theoretically democratic and resting on popular suffrage, did the propertied interests get control of Government functions ? How were they able to sway the popular vote and make, or evade, laws ?
By various influences and methods. In the first place, the old English ideas of the superiority of aristocracy had a profound effect upon American thought, customs and laws. For centuries these ideas had been incessantly disseminated by preachers, pamphleteers, politicians, political economists and editors. Where in England the concept applied mainly to rank by birth, in America it was adapted to the native aristocracy, the traders and landowners. In England it was an admixture of rank and property ; in America, where no titles of nobility existed, it became exclusively a token of the propertied class. The people were assiduously taught in many open and subtle ways to look up to the inviolability of property, just as in the old days they had been taught to look humbly up to the majesty of the king. Propertied men, it was preached and admonished, represented the worth, stability, virtue and intelligence of the community. They were the solid, substantial men. What importance was to be attached to the property less ? They, forsooth, were regarded as irresponsible and vulgar ; their opinions and aspirations were held of small account.
HOW PUBLIC OPINION WAS MADE.
The churches professed to preach to all ; yet they depended largely upon men of property for contributions ; and moreover the clergy, at least the influential of them, were propertied men themselves. The preaching's of the colleges and the doctrines of the political economists corresponded precisely to the views the trading interests at different periods wanted taught. Many of the colleges were founded with funds contributed or bequeathed by traders. The newspapers were supported by the advertisements of the propertied class. The various legislative bodies were mainly, and the judicial benches wholly, recruited from the ranks of the lawyer class ; these lawyers either had, or sought to have, the rich as clients ;4 few attorneys are overzealous for poor men’s cases. Still further, the lawyers were deeply impregnated, not with the conception of law as it might be, but as it had been handed down through the centuries. Encrusted creatures of precedent and self-interest, they thoroughly accepted the doctrine that in the making and enforcement of law their concern should be for the propertied interests. With few exceptions they were aligned with the propertied.
So that here were many influences all of which conspired to spread on every hand, and drill deep in the minds of all classes, often even of those who suffered so keenly by prevalent conditions, the idea that the propertied men were the substantial element. Consequently with this idea continuously driven into every stratum of society, it was not surprising that it should be embodied in thoughts, customs, laws and tendencies. Nor was it to be wondered at that when occasionally a proletarian uprising enunciated radical principles, these principles should seem to be abnormally ultra-revolutionary. All society, for the most part, except a fragment of the working class, was enthralled by the spell of property.
THE SANCTITY OF PROPERTY.
Out of this prevailing idea grew many of the interpretations and partial enforcement's. A legislator, magistrate or judge might be the very opposite of venal, and yet be irresistibly impelled by the force of training and association to take the current view of the unassailable rights and superiority of property. It would be biased, in fact, ridiculous to say that the privileges and exemptions enjoyed by the rich were altogether the outcome of corruption by bribes. There is a much more subtle and far more effective and dangerous form of corruption. This is corruption of the mind. For innumerable centuries all government had proceeded, perhaps not avowedly, but in reality, upon the settled and consistent principle that the sanctity of property was superior to considerations of human life, and that a man of property could not very well be a criminal and a peril to the community. Under various disguises church, college, newspaper, politician, judge, all were expositors of this principle.
The people were drugged with adulation's of property. But these teachings were supplemented by other methods which added to their effectiveness. We have seen how after the Revolution the propertied classes withheld suffrage from those who lacked property. They feared that property would no longer be able to dominate Government. Gradually they were forced to yield to the popular demand and allow manhood suffrage. This seemed to them a new and frighting force ; if votes were to determine the personnel and policy of Government, then the property less, being in the majority, would overwhelm them eventually and pass an entirely new code of laws.
In one State after another, the propertied class were driven, after a prolonged struggle, to grant citizens a vote, whether they had property or not. In New York State unqualified manhood suffrage was adopted in 1822, but in other States it was more difficult to bring about this revolutionary change. The fundamental suffrage law of New Jersey, for instance, remained, for more than sixty years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, in accordance with an act passed by the Provincial Congress of New Jersey on July 2, 1776, two days before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, or according to some authorities, on the very day of its adoption. Among other requirements this act (I Laws, N.J. p. 4.) decreed that the voter must be “ worth £50 proclamation money, clear estate within the colony.” The fourth section of an act passed by the New Jersey Legislature in June, 1820 (1 Laws N.J. P. 741), expressly re-enacted this same property qualification. By about the year 1840, however, nearly all the States had adopted manhood suffrage, so far as it applied to whites. The severest and most dramatic conflict took place in Rhode Island. In 1762 an act had been passed declaring that the possession of £40 was necessary to become qualified as a voter. This law continued in force in Rhode Island for more than eighty years. In the years 1811, 1819, 1824, 1829, 1832 and 1834 the workingmen (or the mechanics, as the official reports styled them), made the most determined efforts to have this property qualification abolished, but the propertied classes, holding the legislative power, declined to make any change. Under such a law it was easy for one-third of the total number of resident male adults to have the exclusive decisions in elections ; the largest vote ever polled in Rhode Island, was in the Presidential election of 1840, when 8,662 votes were cast, in a total adult male population of permanent resident citizens of about 24,000. The result of this hostility of the propertied classes was a rising in 1840 of the workingmen in what is slurringly mis-described in conventional history as “ Dorr’s Rebellion,”— an event the real history of which has not as yet been told. This movement eventually compelled the introduction in Rhode Island of suffrage without the property qualification.
CORRUPTION AT THE POLLS.
A systematic corruption of the voters was now begun. The policy of bribing certain legislators to vote for bank, railroad, insurance company and other charters was extended to reach down into ward politics, and to corrupt the voters at the springs of power. With a part of the money made in the frauds of trade or from exaction's for land, the propertied interests, operating at first by personal entry into politics and then through the petty politicians of the day, packed caucuses and primaries and bought votes at the polls. This was equally true of both city and rural communities. In many of the rural sections the morals of the people were exceedingly low, despite their church-going habits. The cities contained, as they always do contain, a certain quota of men, products of the industrial system, men of the slums and alleyways, so far gone in destitution or liquor that they no longer had manhood or principle. Along came the election funds of the traders, landholders and bankers to corrupt these men still further by the buying of their votes and the inciting of them to commit the crime of repeating at the polls. Exalted society and the slums began to work together ; the money of the one purchased the votes of the other. Year after year this corruption fund increased until in the fall of 1837 the money raised in New York City by the bankers alone amounted to $60,000. Although this sum was meager compared to the enormous corruption funds which were employed in subsequent years, it was a sum which, at that time, could do great execution. Ignorant immigrants were persuaded by offerings of money to vote this way or that and to repeat their votes. Presently the time came when batches of convicts were brought from the prisons to do repeating, and overawe the polls in many precincts.5
As for that class of voters who could not be bribed and who voted according to their conceptions of the issues involved, they were influenced in many ways : by the partisan arguments of newspapers and of political speech-makers. These agencies of influencing the body politic were indirectly controlled by the propertied interests in one form or another. A virtual censorship was exercised by wealth ; if a newspaper dared advocate any issue not approved by the vested interests, it at once felt the resentment of that class in the withdrawal of advertisements and of those privileges which banks could use or abuse with such ruinous effect.
POLITICAL SUBSERVIENCY.
Finally, both of the powerful political parties were under the domination of wealth ; not, to be sure, openly so, but insidiously. Differences of issue there assuredly were, but these issues did not in any way affect the basic structure of society, or threaten the overthrow of any of the fundamental privileges held by the rich. The political campaigns, except that later contest which decided the eventual fate of chattel slavery, were, in actuality, sham battles. Never were the masses so enthusiastic since the campaign of 1800 when Jefferson was elected, as they were in 1832 when they sided with President Jackson in his fight against the United States Bank. They considered this contest as one between the people, on the one side, and, on the other, the monied aristocracy of the country. The United States Bank was effaced ; but the State banks promptly took over that share of the exploitative process so long carried on by the United States Bank, and the people, as has already been explained, were no better off than they were before. One set of ruling capitalists had been put down only to make way for another.
Both parties received the greater part of their campaign funds from the men of large property and from the vested corporations or other similar interests. Astor, for example, was always a liberal contributor, now to the Whig party and again to the Democratic. In return, the politicians elected by those parties to the legislature, the courts or to administrative offices usually considered themselves under obligations to that element which financed their campaigns and which had the power of defeating their reelection by the refusal of funds or by supporting the opposite party. The masses of the people were simply pawns in these political contests, yet few of them understood that all the excitement, partisan activity and enthusiasm into which they threw themselves, generally had no other significance than to enchain them still faster to a system whose beneficiaries were continuously getting more and more rights and privileges for themselves at the expense of the people, and whose wealth was consequently increasing by precipitate bounds.
ASTOR BECOMES AMERICA’S
RICHEST MAN.
RICHEST MAN.
Astor was now the richest man in America. In 1847 his fortune was estimated at fully $20,000,000. In all the length and breadth of the United States there was no man whose fortune was within even approachable distance of his. With wonderment his contemporaries regarded its magnitude. How great it ranked at that period may be seen by a contrast with the wealth of other men who were considered very rich.
In 1847 and 1852 a pamphlet listing the number of rich men in New York was published under the direction of Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the “ New York Sun.” The contents of this pamphlet were vouched for as strictly accurate.6 The pamphlet showed that there were at that time perhaps twenty-five men in New York City who were ranked as millionaires. The most prominent of these were Peter Cooper with an accredited fortune of $1,000,000 ; the Goelets, $2,000,000 ; the Lorillards, $1,000,000 ; Moses Taylor, $1,000,000 ; A.T. Stewart, $2,000,000 ; Cornelius Vanderbilt, $1,500,000, and William B. Crosby, $1,500,000. There were a few fortunes of $500,000 each, and several hundred ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. The average fortunes graded from $100,000 to $200,000. A similar pamphlet published in Philadelphia showed that that city contained a bevy of nine millionaires, only two of whose individual fortunes exceeded $1,000,000.7 No facts are available as to the private fortunes in Boston and other cities. Occasionally the briefest mention would appear in the almanacs of the period of the death of this or that rich man. There is a record of the death of Alexander Milne, of New Orleans, in 1838 and of his bequest of $200,000 to charitable institutions, and of the death of M. Kohne, of Charleston, S.C., in the same year with the sole fact that he left $730,000 in charitable bequests. In 1841 there appeared a line that Nicholas Girod, of New Orleans, died leaving $400,000 to “ various objects,” and a scant notice of the death of William Bartlett, of Newburyport, Mass., coupled with the fact that he left $200,000 to Andover Seminary. It is entirely probable that none of these men were millionaires ; otherwise the fact would have been brought out conspicuously. Thus, when Pierre Lorillard, a New York snuff maker, banker, and landholder, died in 1843, his fortune of $1,000,000 or so, was considered so unusual that the word millionaire, newly-coined, was italicized in the rounds of the press. Similarly in the case of Jacob Ridgeway, a Philadelphia millionaire, who died in the same year.
The passing away now of a man worth a mere million, calls forth but a trifling, passing notice. Yet when Henry Brevoort died in New York City in 1848, his demise was accounted an event in the annals of the day. His property was estimated at a valuation of about $1,000,000, the chief source of which came from the ownership of eleven acres of land in the heart of the city. Originally his ancestors cultivated a truck farm and ran a dairy on this land, and daily in the season carried vegetables, butter and milk to market. Brevoort, the newspaper biography read, was a “ man of fine taste in painting, literature and intellectual pursuits of every kind. He owned a large property in the fashionable part of the city, where he erected a splendid house, elegantly adorned and furnished in the Italian style ; for he was quite a connoisseur in the arts.”
It can be at once seen in what transcendent degree Astor’s wealth towered far above that of every other rich man in the United States.
ASTOR’S TOWERING WEALTH.
His fortune was the colossus of the times ; an object of awe to all wealth-striver's. Necessary as manufactures were in the social and industrial system, they, as yet, occupied a strikingly subordinate and inferior position as an agency in accumulating great fortunes. Statistics issued in 1844 of manufactures in the United States showed a total gross amount of $307,196,844 invested. Astor’s wealth, then, was one-fifteenth of the whole amount invested throughout the territory of the United States in cotton and wool, leather, flax and iron, glass, sugar, furniture, hats, silks, ships, paper, soap, candles, wagons — in every kind of goods which the demands of civilization made indispensable.
The last years of this magnate were passed in an atmosphere of luxury, adulation and power. On Broadway, by Prince street, he built a pretentious mansion, and adorned it with works of art which were more costly than artistic. Of medium height, he was still quite stout, but his once full, heavy face and his deep set eyes began to sag from the encroachments of extreme advanced age. He could be seen every weekday poring over business reports at his office on Prince street — a one-story, fireproof brick building, the windows of which were guarded by heavy iron bars. The closing weeks of his life were passed at his country seat at Eighty-eighth street and the East River. Infirm and debilitated, so weak and worn that he was forced to get his nourishment like an infant at a woman’s breast, and to have exercise administered by being tossed in a blanket, he yet retained his faculty of vigilantly scrutinizing every arrears on the part of tenants, and he compelled his agent to render daily accounts. Parton relates this story :
One morning this gentleman [the agent] chanced to enter his room while he was enjoying his blanket exercise. The old man cried out from the middle of his blanket :
“Has Mrs. —— paid that rent yet ?”
“ No,” replied the agent.
“ Well, but she must pay it,” said the poor old man.
“Mr. Astor,” rejoined the agent, “she can’t pay it now ; she has had misfortunes, and we must give her time.”
“ No, no,” said Astor ; “ I tell you she can pay it and she will pay it. You don’t go the right way to work with her.”
The agent took leave, and mentioned the anxiety of the old gentleman with regard to this unpaid rent to his son, who counted out the requisite sum, and told the agent to give it to the old man, as if he had received it from the tenant.
“ There,” exclaimed Mr. Astor when he received the money. “ I told you that she would pay it if you went the right way to work with her.”8
THE DEATH OF JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
So, to the last breath, squeezing arrears out of tenants ; his mind focused upon those sordid methods which had long since become a religion to him ; contemplating the long list of his possessions with a radiant exaltation ; so Astor passed away. He died on March 29, 1848, aged eighty-four years, four months ; and almost as he died, the jubilant shouts of the enthusiastic workingmen’s processions throughout the city resounded high and often. They were celebrating the French Revolution of 1848, intelligence of which had just arrived ; — a Revolution brought about by the blood of the Parisian workingmen, only to be subsequently stifled by the stratagems of the bourgeoisie and turned into the corrupt despotism of Napoleon III.
The old trader left an estate valued at about $20,000,000. The bulk of this descended to William B. Astor. The extent of wealth disclosed by the will made a profound impression. Never had so rich a man passed away ; the public mind was not accustomed to the sight of millions of dollars being owned by one man. One New York newspaper, the “Journal,” after stating that Astor’s personal estate amounted to seven or nine million dollars, and his real estate to perhaps more, observed “ Either sum is quite out of our small comprehension ; and we presume that with most men, the idea of one million is about as large an item as that of any number of millions.” An entirely different and exceptional view was taken by James Gordon Bennett, owner and editor of the New York “Herald;” Bennett’s comments were the one distinct contrast to the mass of flowery praise lavished upon Astor’s memory and deeds. He thus expressed himself in the issue of April 5, 1848 :
We give in our columns an authentic copy of one of the greatest curiosities of the age — the will of John Jacob Astor, disposing of property amounting to about twenty million dollars, among his various descendants of the first, second, third, and fourth degrees. . . . If we had been an associate of John Jacob Astor . . . the first idea that we should have put into his head would have been that one-half of his immense property — ten millions at least — belonged to the people of the city of New York. During the last fifty years of the life of John Jacob Astor, his property has been augmented and increased in value by the aggregate intelligence, industry, enterprise and commerce of New York, fully to the amount of one-half its value. The farms and lots of ground which he bought forty, twenty and ten and five years ago, have all increased in value entirely by the industry of the citizens of New York. Of course, it is plain as that two and two make four, that the half of his immense estate, in its actual value, has accrued to him by the industry of the community.
THE WONDER OF THE AGE.
The analyst might well be tempted to smile at the puerility of this logic. If Astor was entitled to one half of the value created by the collective industry of the community, why was he not entitled to all ? Why make the artificial division of one-half ? Either he had the right to all or to none. But this editorial, for all its defects of reasoning, was an unusual expression of newspaper opinion, although of a single day, and was smothered by the general course of that same newspaper in supporting the laws and institutions demanded by the commercial aristocracy.
So the arch multi-millionaire passed away, the wonder and the emulation of the age. His friends, of whom he had a few, deeply mourned him, and his bereaved family suffered a deep loss, for, it is related, he was a kind and indulgent husband and father. He left a legacy of $400,000 for the establishment of the Astor Library ; for this and this alone his memory has been preserved as that of a philanthropist. The announcement of this legacy was hailed with extravagant joy ; yet such is the value of meretricious glory and the ideals of present society, that none has remarked that the proceeds of one year’s pillage of the Indians were more than sufficient to found this much-praised benevolence. Thus does society blind itself to the origin of the fortunes, a fraction of which goes to gratify it with gifts. The whole is taken from the collective labor of the people, and then a part is returned in the form of institutional presents which are in reality bits of charity bestowed upon the very people from whose exploitation the money has come. Astor, no doubt, thought that, in providing for a public library, he was doing a service to mankind ; and he must be judged, not according to the precepts and demands of the scarcely heard working class of his day with its altruistic aspirations, nor of more advanced present ideas, but by the standards of his own class, that commercial aristocracy which arrogated to itself superiority of aims and infallibility of methods.
He died the richest man of his day. But vast fortunes could not be heaped up by him and his contemporaries without having their corresponding effect upon the mass of the people. What was this effect ? At about the time that he died there was in New York City one pauper to every one hundred and twenty-five inhabitants and one person in every eighty-three of the population had to be supported at the public expense.9
CHAPTER VI
THE PROPULSION OF
THE PROPULSION OF
THE ASTOR FORTUNE
At the time of his father’s death William B. Astor, the chief heir of John Jacob Astor’s twenty million dollars, was fifty-six years old. A ponderous man, his eyes were small, contracted, with a rather vacuous look, and his face was sluggish and unimpressionable. Extremely unsocial and taciturn, he never betrayed emotion and generally was destitute of feeling. He took delight in affecting a carelessly-dressed, slouchy appearance as though deliberately notifying all concerned that one with such wealth as he was privileged to ignore the formulas of punctilious society. In this slovenly, stoop-shouldered man with his cold, abstracted air no one would have detected the richest man in America.
Acquisitiveness was his most marked characteristic. Even before his father’s death he had amassed a fortune of his own by land speculations and banking connections, and he had inherited $500,000 from his uncle Henry, a butcher on the Bowery. It was said in 1846 that he possessed an individual fortune of $5,000,000. During the last years of his father he had been president of the American Fur Co., and he otherwise knew every detail of his father’s multifarious interests and possessions.
WILLIAM B. ASTOR’S PARSIMONY.
He lived in what was considered a fine mansion on Lafayette place, adjoining the Astor Library. The sideboards were heaped with gold plate, and polyglot servants in livery stood obediently by at all times to respond to his merest nod. But he cared little for this show, except in that it surrounded him with an atmosphere of power. His frugality did not arise from wise self control, but from his parsimonious habits. He scanned and revised the smallest item of expense. Wine he seldom touched, and the average merchant spent more for his wardrobe than he did. At a time when the rich despised walking and rode in carriages drawn by fast horses, he walked to and from his business errands. This severe economy he not only practiced in his own house, but he carried it into every detail of his business. Arising early in the morning, he attended to his private correspondence before breakfast. This meal was served punctually at 9 o’clock. Then he would stride to his office on Prince street. A contemporary writer says of him :
He knew every inch of real estate that stood in his name, every bond, contract and lease. He knew what was due when leases expired, and attended personally to the matter. No tenants could expend a dollar, or put in a pane of glass without his personal inspection. His father sold him the Astor House [an hotel] for the sum of one dollar. The lessees were not allowed to spend one cent on the building, without his supervision and consent, unless they paid for it themselves.
In the upper part of New York hundreds of lots can be seen enclosed by dilapidated fences, disfigured by rocks and waste material, or occupied as truck gardens. They are eligible located, many of them surrounded by a fashionable population. ... Mr. Astor owned most of these corner lots but kept the corners for a rise. He would neither sell nor improve them. ... He knew that no parties can improve the center of a block without benefiting the corners. He was somber and solitary, dwelt alone, mixed little with general society, gave little and abhorred beggars.1
It was a common saying of him “when he paid out a cent he wanted a cent in return ;” and as to his abject meannesses we forbear relating the many stories of him. He pursued, in every respect, his father’s methods in using the powers of city government to obtain valuable water grants for substantially nothing, and in employing his surplus wealth for further purchases of land and in investments in other profitable channels. No scruples of any kind did he allow to interfere with his constant aim of increasing his fortune. His indifference to compunctions was shown in many ways, not the least in his open support of notoriously corrupt city and State administrations.
This corruption was by no means one existing despite him and his class, and one that was therefore accepted grudgingly as an irremediable evil. Far from it. Corrupt government was welcomed by the landholding, trading and banking class, for by it they could secure with greater facility the perpetual rights, franchises, privileges and the exemptions which were adapted to their expanding aims and riches. By means of it they were not only enabled to pile up greater and greater wealth, but to set themselves up in law as a conspicuously privileged body, distinct from the mass of the people.
THE PURCHASE OF LAWS.
Publicly they might pretend a proper and ostentatious horror of corruption. Secretly, however, they quickly dispensed with what were to them idle dronings of political cant. As capitalists they ascribed their success to a rigid application and practicality ; and being practical they went about purchasing laws by the most short-cut and economical method. They had the money ; the office-holders had the votes and governmental power ; consequently the one bought the other. It was a systematic corruption springing entirely from the propertied classes ; they demanded it, were responsible for it and kept it up. It worked like an endless chain ; the land, charters, franchises and privileges corruptly obtained in one set of years yielded vast wealth, part of which was used in succeeding years in getting more law-created sources of wealth. If professional politicians had long since got into the habit of expecting to be bought, it was because the landholders, traders and bankers had accustomed them to the lucrative business of getting bribes in return for extraordinary laws.
Since the men of wealth, or embryo capitalists who by hook or crook raised the funds to bribe, were themselves ready at all times to buy laws in common councils, legislatures and in Congress, it naturally followed that each of them was fully as eager to participate in the immense profits accruing from charters, franchises or special grants obtained by others of their own class. They never questioned the means by which these laws were put through. They did not care. The mere fact that a franchise was put through by bribery was a trite, immaterial circumstance. The sole, penetrating question was whether it were a profitable project. If it were, no man of wealth hesitated in investing his money in its stock and in sharing its revenue. It could not be expected that he would feel moral objections, even the most attenuated, for the chances were that while he might not have been a party to the corrupt obtaining of this or that particular franchise, yet he was involved in the grants of other special endowments. Moreover, money making was not built on morality ; its whole foundation and impetus lay in the extraction of profits. Society, it is true, professed to move on lofty moral planes, but this was a colossal pretension and nothing less.
THE INVERTED NATURE OF SOCIETY.
Society — and this is a truth which held equally strong of succeeding decades — was incongruously inverted. In saying this, the fact should not be ignored that the capitalist, as applied to the man who ran a factory or other enterprise, was an indigenous factor in that period, even although the money or inventions by which he was able to do this, were often obtained by fraud. Every needed qualification must be made for the time and the environment, and there should be neither haste in indiscriminately condemning nor in judging by the standards or maturity of later generations.
Yet, viewing society as a whole and measuring the results by the standards and ideas then prevailing, it was undoubtedly true that those who did the world’s real services were the lowly, despoiled and much discriminated-against mass of mankind. Their very poverty was a crime, for after they were plundered and expropriated, either by the ruling classes of their own country or of the United States, the laws regarded them as semi-criminals, or, at best, as excrescences to whom short shrift was to be given. They made the clothes, the shoes, hats, shirts, underwear, tools, and all the other necessities that mankind required ; they tilled the ground and produced its food. Curiously enough, those who did these indispensable things were condemned by the encompassing system to live in the poorest and meanest habitations and in the most precarious uncertainty. When sick, disabled or superannuated they were cast aside by the capitalist class as so much discarded material to eke out a prolonged misery of existence, to be thrown in penal institutions or to starve. Substantially everywhere in the United States, vagrancy laws were in force which decreed that an able-bodied man out of work and homeless must be adjudged a vagrant and imprisoned in the workhouse or penitentiary. The very law-making institutions that gave to a privileged few the right to expropriate the property of the many, drastically plunged the many down still further after this process of spoliation, like a man who is waylaid and robbed and then arrested and imprisoned because he has been robbed.
On the other hand, the class which had the money, no matter how that money was gotten, irrespective of how much fraud or sacrifice of life attended its amassing, stood out with a luminous distinctness. It arrogated to itself all that was superior, and it exacted, and was invested with, a lordly deference. It lived in the finest mansions and laved in luxuries. Surrounded with an indescribably pretentious air of importance, it radiated tone, command and prestige.
But, such was the destructive, intestinal character of competitive warfare, that even this class was continually in the throes of convulsive struggles. Each had to fight, not merely to get the wealth of others, but to keep what he already possessed. If he could but frustrate the attempts of competitors to take what he had, he was fortunate. As he preyed upon the laborer, so did the rest of his class seek to prey upon him. If he were less able, less cunning, or more scrupulous than they, his ruination was certain. It was a system in which all methods were gauged not by the best but by the worst. Thus it was that many capitalists, at heart good men, kindly disposed and innately opposed to duplicity and fraud, were compelled to adopt the methods of their more successful but thoroughly unprincipled competitors. And, indeed, realizing the impregnating nature of example and environment, one cannot but conclude that the tragedies of the capitalist class represented so many victims of the competitive system, the same as those among the wage workers, although in a very different way. Yet in this bewildering jumble of fortune-snatching, an extraordinary circumstance failed to impress itself upon the class which took over to itself the claim to superior intelligence and virtue. The workers, for the most part, instinctively, morally and intellectually, knew that this system was wrong, a horror and a nightmare. But even the capitalist victims of the competitive struggle, which awarded supremacy to the knave and the trickster, went to their doom praising it as the only civilized, rational system and as unchangeable and even divinely ordained.
THE PREVAILING CORRUPTION.
If corruption was flagrant in the early decades of the nineteenth century, it was triply so in the middle decades. This was the period of all periods when common councils all over the country were being bribed to give franchises for various public utility systems, and legislatures and Congress for charters, land, money, and laws for a great number of railroad and other projects. The numerous specific instances cannot be adverted to here ; they will be described more appropriately in subsequent parts of this work. For the present, let this general and sweeping observation suffice.
The important point which here obtrudes itself is that in every case, without an exception, the wealth amassed by fraud was used in turn to put through more frauds, and that the net accumulation of these successive frauds is seen in the great private fortunes of today. We have seen how the original Astor fortune was largely derived by the use of both force and fraud among the Indians, and by the exercise of cunning and corruption in the East. John Jacob Astor’s immense wealth descends mostly to William B. Astor. In turn, one of the third generation, John Jacob Astor, Jr., representing his father, William B. Astor, uses a portion of this wealth in becoming a large stockholder in the New York Central Railroad, and in corrupting the New York Legislature still further to give enormously valuable grants and special laws with incalculably valuable exemptions to that railroad. John Jacob Astor, Jr., never built a railroad in his life ; he knew nothing about railroads ; but by virtue of the possession of large surplus wealth, derived mainly from rents, he was enabled to buy enough of the stock to make him rank as a large stockholder. And, then, he with the other stockholders, bribed the Legislature for the passage of more laws which enormously increased the value of their stock.
It is altogether clear from the investigations and records of the time that the New York Central Railroad was one of the most industrious corrupter's of legislatures in the country, although this is not saying much in dealing with a period when every State Legislature, none excepted, was making gifts of public property and of laws in return for bribes, and when Congress, as was proved in official investigations, was prodigal in doing likewise.2
In the fourteen years up to 1867, the New York Central Railroad had spent upward of a half million dollars in buying laws at Albany and in “protecting its stockholders against injurious legislation.” As one of the largest stockholders in the road John Jacob Astor, Jr., certainly must have been one of the masked parties to this continuous Saturnalia of corruption. But the corruption, bad as it was, that took place before 1867, was rather insignificant compared to the eruption in the years 1868 and 1869. And here is to be noted a significant episode which fully reveals how the capitalist class is ever willing to turn over the managing of its property to men of its own class who have proved themselves masters of the art either of corrupting public bodies, or of making that property yield still greater profits.
BRIBERY AND BUSINESS.
In control of the New York and Harlem Railroad, Cornelius Vanderbilt had showed what a remarkably successful magnate he was in deluging legislatures and common councils with bribe money and in getting corrupt gifts of franchises and laws worth many hundreds of millions of dollars. For a while the New York Central fought him ; it bribed where he bribed ; when he intimidated, it intimidated. But Vanderbilt was, by far, the abler of the two contending forces. Finally the stockholders decided that he was the man to run their system ; and on Nov. 12, 1867, John Jacob Astor, Jr., Edward Cunard, John Steward and others, representing more than thirteen million dollars of stock, turned the New York Central over to Vanderbilt’s management on the ground, as their letter set forth, that the change would result in larger dividends to the stockholders and (this bit of cant was gratuitously thrown in) “greatly promote the interests of the public.” In closing, they wrote to Vanderbilt of “ your great and acknowledged abilities.” No sooner had Vanderbilt been put in control than these abilities were preeminently displayed by such an amazing reign of corruption and exaction, that even a public cynically habituated to bribery and arbitrary methods, was profoundly stirred.3
It was in these identical years that the Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders and many other landholders and merchants were getting more water grants by collusion with the various corrupt city administrations. On June 14, 1850, William B. Astor gets a grant of land under water for the block between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, on the Hudson River, at the ridiculous price of $13 per running foot.4 William E. Dodge likewise gets a grant on the Hudson River. Public opinion severely condemned this practical giving away of city property, and a special committee of the Board of Councilmen was moved to report on May 15, 1854, that “ the practice of selling city property, except where it is in evidence that it cannot be put to public use, is an error in finance that has prevailed too frequently ; indeed the experience of about eleven years has demonstrated that sales of property usually take place about the time it is likely to be needed for public uses, or on the eve of a rise in value. Every pier, bulkhead and slip should have continued to be the property of the city. . . ."5
WATER GRANTS FROM TWEED.
But when the Tweed “ring” came into complete power, with its unbridled policy of accommodating anyone who could pay bribes enough, the landowners and merchants rushed to get water grants among other special privileges. On Dec. 27, 1865, William C. Rhinelander was presented with a grant of land under water from Ninety-first to Ninety-fourth street, East River.6 On March 21, 1867, Peter Goelet obtained from the Sinking Fund Commissioners a grant of land under water on the East River in front of land owned by him between Eighty-first street and Eighty-second street. The price asked was the insignificant one of $75 a running foot.7 The officials who made this grant were the Controller, Richard B. Connolly, and the Street Commissioner, George W. McLean, both of whom were arch accomplices of William M. Tweed and were deeply involved in the gigantic thefts of the Tweed ring. The same band of officials gave to Mrs. Laura A. Delano, a daughter of William B. Astor, a grant from Fifty-fifth to Fifty-seventh street, Hudson River, at $200 per running foot, and on May 21, 1867, a grant to John Jacob Astor, Jr., of lands under water between Forty-ninth and Fifty-first streets, Hudson River, for the trivial sum of $75 per running foot. Many other grants were given at the same time. The public, used as it was to corrupt government, could not stomach this granting of valuable city property for virtually nothing. The severe criticism which resulted caused the city officials to bend before the storm, especially as they did not care to imperil their other much greater thefts for the sake of these minor ones. Many of the grants were never finally issued ; and after the Tweed “ring” was expelled from power, the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund on Feb. 28, 1882, were compelled by public agitation to rescind most of them.8 The grant issued to Rhinelander in 1865, however, was one of those which were never rescinded.
During its control of the city administration from 1868 to 1871 alone, the Tweed “ring” stole directly from the city and county of New York a sum estimated from $45,000,000 to $200,000,000. Henry F. Taintor, the auditor employed by Andrew H. Green to investigate Controller Connolly’s books, testified before the special Aldermanic Committee in 1877, that he had estimated the frauds during those three and a half years at from $45,000,000 to $50,000,000.9 The committee, however, evidently thought that the thefts amounted to $60,000,000 ; for it asked Tweed during the investigation whether they did not approximate that sum, to which question he gave no definite reply. But Mr. Taintor’s estimate, as he himself admitted, was far from complete even for the three and a half years. Matthew J. O’Rourke, who was responsible for the disclosures, and who made a remarkably careful study of the “ring’s” operations, gave it as his opinion that from 1869 to 1871 the “ring” stole about $75,000,000 and that he thought the total stealing's from about 1865 to 1871, counting vast issues of fraudulent bonds, amounted to $200,000,000.
PROFITING FROM GIGANTIC THEFTS.
Every intelligent person knew in 1871 that Tweed, Connolly and their associates were colossal thieves. Yet in that year a committee of New York’s leading and richest citizens, composed of John Jacob Astor, Jr., Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, E.D. Brown, George K. Sistare and Edward Schell, were induced to make an examination of the controller’s books and hand in a most eulogistic report, commending Connolly for his honesty and his faithfulness to duty. Why did they do this ? Because obviously they were in underhand alliance with those political bandits, and received from them special privileges and exemptions amounting in value to hundreds of millions of dollars. We have seen how Connolly made gifts of the city’s property to this class of leading citizens. Moreover, a corrupt administration was precisely what the rich wanted, for they could very conveniently make arrangements with it to evade personal property taxation, have the assessments on their real estate reduced to an inconsiderable sum, and secure public franchises and rights of all kinds.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the rich, as a class, were eager to have the Tweed regime continue. They might pose as fine moralists and profess to instruct the poor in religion and politics, but this attitude was a fraud ; they deliberately instigated, supported, and benefited by, all of the great strokes of thievery that Tweed and Connolly put through. Thus to mention one of many instances, the foremost financial and business men of the day were associated as directors with Tweed in the Viaduct Railroad. This was a project to build a railroad on or above the ground on any New York City street. One provision of the bill granting this unprecedentedly comprehensive franchise compelled the city to take $5,000,000 of stock ; another exempted the company property from taxes or assessments. Other subsidiary bills allowed for the benefit of the railroad the widening and grading of streets which meant a “job” costing from $50,000,000 to $60,000,000.10 This bill was passed by the Legislature and signed by Tweed’s puppet Governor Hoffman ; and only the exposure of the Tweed regime a few months later prevented the complete consummation of this almost unparalleled steal.
The original money of the landholders came from trade ; and then by a combination of cunning, bribery, and a moiety of what was considered legitimate investment, they became the owners of immense tracts of the most valuable city land. The rentals from these were so great that continuously more and more surplus wealth was heaped up. This surplus wealth, in slight part, went to bribe representative bodies for special laws giving them a variety of exclusive property, and another part was used in buying stock in various enterprises the history of which reeked with corruption.
From being mere landholders whose possessions were confined mainly to city land, they became part owners of railroad, telegraph, express and other lines reaching throughout the country. So did their holdings and wealth-producing interests expand by a cumulative and ever-widening process. The prisons were perennially filled with convicts, nearly all of whom had committed some crime against property, and for so doing were put in chains behind heavy bars, guarded by rifles and great stone walls. But the men who robbed the community of its land and its railroads (most of which latter were built with public land and money) and who defrauded it in a thousand ways, were, if not morally exculpated, at least not molested, and were permitted to retain their plunder, which, to them, was the all-important thing. This plunder, in turn, became the basis for the foundation of an aristocracy which in time built palaces, invented impressive pedigrees and crests and coats-of-arms, intermarried with European titles, and either owned or influenced newspapers and journals which taught the public how it should think and how it should act. It is one thing to commit crimes against property, and a vastly different thing to commit crimes in behalf of property. Such is the edict of a system inspired by the sway of property.
RENTALS FROM DISEASE AND DEATH.
But the sources of the large rentals that flowed into the exchequers of the landlords — what were they ? Where did these rents, the volume of which was so great that the surplus part of them went into other forms of investments, come from ? Who paid them and how did the tenants of these mammoth landlords live ? A considerable portion came from business buildings and private residences on much of the very land which New York City once owned and which was corruptly squirmed out of municipal ownership. For the large rentals which they were forced to pay, the business men recouped themselves by marking up the prices of all necessities. Another, and a very preponderate part, came from tenement houses. Many of these were also built on land filched from the city. And such habitations ! Never before was anything seen like them. The reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866, 1867 and succeeding years revealed the fact that miles upon miles of city streets were covered with densely populated tenements, where human beings were packed in vile rooms, many of which were dark and not ventilated and which were pestilential with disease and overflowed with deaths. In its first report, following its organization, the Metropolitan Board of Health pointed out :
The first, and at all times the most prolific cause of disease, was found to be the very insalubrious condition of most of the tenement houses in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. These houses are generally built without any reference to the health and comfort of the occupants, but simply with a view to economy and profit to the owner. They are almost invariably overcrowded, and ill-ventilated to such a degree as to render the air within them constantly impure and offensive.
Here follows a mass of nauseating details which for the sake of not over shocking the reader we shall omit. The report continued :
The halls and stairways are usually filthy and dark, and the walls and banisters foul and damp, while the floors were not infrequently used. . . . [for purposes of nature] . . . for lack of other provisions. The dwelling rooms are usually very inadequate in size for the accommodation of their occupants, and many of the sleeping rooms are simply closets, without light or ventilation save by means of a single door. ... Such is the character of a vast number of tenement houses, especially in the lower part of the city and along the eastern and western border. Disease especially in the form of fevers of a typhoid character are constantly present in these dwellings and every now and then become an epidemic.13
“Some of the tenements,” added the report, “are owned by persons of the highest character, but they fail to appreciate the responsibility resting on them.” This sentence makes it clear that landlords could own, and enormously profit from, pig-sty human habitations which killed off a large number of the unfortunate tenants, and yet these landlords could retain, in nowise diminished, the luster of being men “of the highest character.” Fully one-third of the deaths in New York and Brooklyn resulted from zymotic diseases contracted in these tenements, yet not even a whisper was heard, not the remotest suggestion that the men of wealth who thus deliberately profited from disease and death, were criminally culpable, although faint and timorous opinions were advanced that they might be morally responsible.
HUMANITY OF NO CONSEQUENCE.
Human life was nothing ; the supremacy of the property idea dominated all thought and all laws, not because mankind was callous to suffering, wretchedness and legalized murder, but because thought and law represented what the propertied interests demanded. If the proletarian white population had been legal slaves, as the Negroes in the South had been, much consideration would have been bestowed upon their gullets and domiciles, for then they would have been property ; and who ever knew the owner of property to destroy the article which represented money ? But being “ free ” men and women and children, the proletarians were simply so many bundles of flesh whose sickness and death meant pecuniary loss to no property-holder. Therefore causalities to them were a matter of no great concern to a society that was taught to venerate the sacredness of property as embodied in brick and stone walls, clothes, machines, and furniture, which same, if inert, had the all-important virile quality of having a cash value, which the worker had not.
But these landlords “of the highest character” not only owned, and regularly collected rents from, tenement houses which filled the cemeteries, but they also resorted to the profitable business of leasing certain tenements to middlemen who guaranteed them by lease a definite and never-failing annual rental. Once having done this, the landlords did not care what the middlemen did — how much rent they exacted, or in what condition they allowed the tenements. “ The middlemen,” further reported the Metropolitan Board of Health,
are frequently of the most heartless and unscrupulous character and make large profits by sub-letting. They leave no space unoccupied : they rent sheds, basements and even cellars to families and lodgers ; they divide rooms by partitions, and then place a whole family in a single room, to be used for living, cooking, and sleeping purposes. In the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, and Fourteenth Wards may be found large, old fashioned dwellings originally constructed for one family, subdivided and sublet to such an extent that even the former sub-cellars are occupied by two are more families. There is a cellar population of not less than 20,000 in New York City.
Here, again, shines forth with blinding brightness that superior morality of the propertied classes. There is no record of a single landlord who refused to pocket the great gains from the ownership of tenement houses. Great, in fact, excessive gains they were, for the landowning class considered tenements “ magnificent investments ” (how edifying a phrase!) and all except one held on to them. That one was William Waldorf Astor of the present generation, who, we are told, “ sold a million dollars worth of unpromising tenement house property in 1890.”14 What fantasy of action was it that caused William Waldorf Astor to so depart from the accepted formulas of his class as to give up these “ magnificent investments ?” Was it an abhorrence of tenements, or a growing fastidiousness as to the methods ? It is to be observed that up to that time he and his family had tenaciously kept the revenues from their tenements ; evidently then, the source of the money was not a troubling factor. And in selling those tenements he must have known that his profits on the transaction would be charged by the buyers against the future tenants and that even more overcrowding would result. What, then, was the reason ?
About the year 1887 there developed an agitation in New York City against the horrible conditions in tenement houses, and laws were popularly demanded which would put a stop to them, or at least bring some mitigation. The whole landlord class virulently combated this agitation and these proposed laws. What happened next ? Significantly enough a municipal committee was appointed by the mayor to make an inquiry into tenement conditions ; and this committee was composed of property owners. William Waldorf Astor was a conspicuous member of the committee. The mockery of a man whose family owned miles of tenements being chosen for a committee, the province of which was to find ways of improving tenement conditions, was not lost on the public, and shouts of derision went up. The working population was skeptical, and with reason, of the good faith of this committee. Every act, beginning with the mild and ineffective one of 1867, designed to remedy the appalling conditions in tenement houses, had been stubbornly opposed by the landlords ; and even after these puerile measures had finally been passed, the landlords had resisted their enforcement. Whether it was because of the bitter criticisms leveled at him, or because he saw that it would be a good time to dispose of his tenements as a money-making matter before further laws were passed, is not clearly known. At any rate William Waldorf Astor sold large batches of tenements.[he could see the handwriting on the fall for being a slumlord king DC]
AN EXALTED CAPITALIST.
To return, however, to William B. Astor. He was the owner, it was reckoned in 1875, of more than seven hundred buildings and houses, not to mention the many tracts of unimproved land that he held. His income from these properties and from his many varied lines of investments was stupendous. Every one knew that he, along with other landlords, derived great revenues from indescribably malodorous tenements, unfit for human habitation. Yet little can be discerned in the organs of public opinion, or in the sermons or speeches of the day, which showed other than the greatest deference for him and his kind. He was looked up to as a foremost and highly exalted capitalist ; no church disdained his gifts ; 15 far from it, these were eagerly solicited, and accepted gratefully, and even with servility. None questioned the sources of his wealth, certainly not one of those of his own class, all of whom more or less used the same means and who extolled them as proper, both traditionally and legally, and as in accordance with the “ natural laws ” of society. No condemnation was visited on Astor or his fellow-landlords for profiting from such ghastly harvests of disease and death. When William B. Astor died in 1875, at the age of eighty-three, in his somber brownstone mansion at Thirty-fifth street and Fifth avenue, his funeral was an event among the local aristocracy ; the newspapers published the most extravagant panegyrics and the estimated $100,000,000 which he left was held up to all the country as an illuminating and imperishable example of the fortune that thrift, enterprise, perseverance, and ability would bring.[More like slyness,fraud,corrupt and no conscience to me DC]
Next
Climax of Astor
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1 “ Reminiscences of John Jacob Astor,” New York “ Herald,” March 31, 1848.
2 Doc. No. 24, Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant Aldermen, xxix. The Merchant’s Bank, for instance, was assessed in 1833 at $6,000 ; it had cost that sum twenty years before and in 1833 was worth three times as much.
3 Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant Aldermen, xxix, Doc. No. 18.
4 Many eminent lawyers, elected or appointed to high official or judicial office, were financially interested in corporations, and very often profited in dubious ways. The case of Roger B. Taney, who, from 1836, was for many years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is a conspicuous example. After he was appointed United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1833, the United States Senate passed a resolution inquiring of him whether he were not a stockholder in the Union Bank of Maryland, in which bank he had ordered public funds deposited. He admitted that he was, but asserted that he had obtained the stock before he had selected that bank as a depository of public funds. (See Senate Docs., First Session, 23rd Congress, Vol. iii, Doc. No. 238.) It was Taney, who as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, handed down the decision, in the Dred Scott case, that negro slaves, under the United States Constitution, were not eligible to citizenship and were without civil rights.
5 These frauds at the polls went on, not only in every State but even in such newly-organized Territories as New Mexico. Many facts were brought out by contestants before committees of Congress. (See “ Contested Elections,” 1834 to 1865, Second Session, 38th Congress, 1864-65, Vol. v, Doc. No. 57.) In the case of Monroe vs. Jackson, in 1848, James Monroe claimed that his opponent was illegally elected by the votes of convicts and other non-voters brought over from Blackwell’s Island. The majority of the House Elections Committee reported favoring Monroe’s being seated. Aldermanic documents tell likewise of the same state of affairs in New York. (See the author’s “ History of Tammany Hall.”) Similar practices were common in Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities, and in country townships.
6 “The Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of the City of New York.” By Moses Yale Beach.
7 “ Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia.” By a Member of the Philadelphia Bar, 1845.
The misconception which often exists even among those who profess the deepest scholarship and the most certainty of opinion as to the development of men of great wealth was instanced by a misstatement of Dr. Felix Adler, leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. In an address on “ Anti-Democratic Tendencies in American Life” delivered some years ago, Dr. Adler asserted : “Before the Civil War there were three millionaires ; now there are 4,000.” The error of this assertion is evident.
The misconception which often exists even among those who profess the deepest scholarship and the most certainty of opinion as to the development of men of great wealth was instanced by a misstatement of Dr. Felix Adler, leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. In an address on “ Anti-Democratic Tendencies in American Life” delivered some years ago, Dr. Adler asserted : “Before the Civil War there were three millionaires ; now there are 4,000.” The error of this assertion is evident.
8 Parton’s “ Life of John Jacob Astor ”: 80-81.
9 “ Proceedings of the Board of Assistant Aldermen, xxix, Doc. No. 24. This poverty was the consequence, not of any one phase of the existing system, nor of the growth of any one fortune, but resulted from the whole industrial system. The chief form of the exploitation of the worker was that of his capacity as a producer ; other forms completed the process. A considerable number of the paupers were immigrants, who, fleeing from exploitation at home, were kept in poverty in America, “ the land of boundless resources.” The statement often made that there were no tramps in the
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1 Matthew Hale Smith in “ Sunshine and Shadow in New York,” 186-187.
2 See Part III of this work, “ The Great Railroad Fortunes.”
3 See Part III, Chapters iv, v, vi, etc.
4 Proceedings of the [New York City] Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, 1844-1865:213.
5 Doc. No. 46, Documents of the [New York City] Board of Aldermen, xxi, Part II.
6 Proceedings of the [New York City] Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, 1844-1865:734.
7 Ibid : 865.
8 Proceedings of the [New York City] Sinking Fund Commission, 1882:2020-2023.
9 Documents of the [New York City] Board of Aldermen, 1877. Part II. No. 8.
10 New York Senate Journal, 1871: 482-83.
11 See Exhibits Doc. No. 8, Documents of the [New York City] Board of Aldermen, 1877.
12 For a full account of the operations of the Tweed regime see the author’s “ History of Tammany Hall.”
13 Report of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866, Appendix A : 38.
14 “America’s Successful Men of Affairs ”: 36.
15 “.” The morals and methods of the church, as exemplified by Trinity Church, were, judged by standards, much worse than those of Astor or of his fellow-landlords or capitalists. These latter did not make a profession of hypocrisy, at any rate. The condition of the tenements owned by Trinity Church was as shocking as could be found anywhere in New York City. We subjoin the testimony given by George C. Booth of the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor before a Senate Investigating Committee in 1885 :
Senator Plunkett : Ask him if there is not a great deal of church influence [in politics].
The Witness : Yes, sir, there is Trinity Church.
Q.: Which is the good, and which is the bad ?
A.: I think Trinity is the bad.
Q.: Do the Trinity people own a great deal of tenement property ?
A.: Yes, sir.
Q.: Do they comply with the law as other people do ?
A.: No, sir ; that is accounted for in one way—the property is very old and rickety, and perhaps even rotten, so that some allowance must be made on that account. (Investigation of the Departments of the City of New York, by Special Committee of the [New York] Senate, 1885. 1: 193-194.)United States before the Civil War is wholly incorrect.Senator Plunkett : Ask him if there is not a great deal of church influence [in politics].
The Witness : Yes, sir, there is Trinity Church.
Q.: Which is the good, and which is the bad ?
A.: I think Trinity is the bad.
Q.: Do the Trinity people own a great deal of tenement property ?
A.: Yes, sir.
Q.: Do they comply with the law as other people do ?
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