History of the Great American Fortunes Part 14

Persons who took the leases supposed that they took them for the full term of the Trinity lease. [John Jacob] Astor was too far-sighted and too shrewd for that. Every lease expired in 1864, leaving him [William B. Astor, the founder's heir] the reversion for three years, putting him in possession of all the buildings, and all of the improvements made on the lots, and giving him the right of renewal." Smith's account is faulty. Most of the leases expired in 1866. The value of the reversions was very large.

[121] Docs. No. 130 [New York] a.s.sembly Docs., 1854:22-23.

[122] Journal of the [New York] Senate, Forty-second Session, 1819:67-70.

[123] Doc. No. 108, [New York] Senate Doc.u.ments, 1834, Vol. ii. The committee stated that banks in the State outside of New York City, after paying all expenses, divided 11 per cent. among the stockholders in 1833 and had on hand as surplus capital 16 per cent. on their capital. New York City banks paid larger dividends.

[124] People of the State of New York vs. Manhattan Co.--Doc. No. 62, Doc.u.ments of the Board of a.s.sistant Aldermen, 1832-33, Vol. ii.

[125] Doc. No. 68 [New York] Senate Docs., 1838, Vol. ii.

[126] Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, xiii:426-427.

[127] In the course of this work, the word Government is frequently used to signify not merely the functions of the National Government, but those of the totality of Government, State and munic.i.p.al, not less than National.

[128] Doc. No. 49 [New York] Senate Docs., 1838, Vol. ii.

[129] "On the Penitentiary System in the United States," etc., by G. De Beaumont and A. De Tocqueville, Appendix 17, Statistical Notes: 244-245.

[130] A complete error. Walling, for more than thirty years Superintendent of Police of New York City, says in his "Memoirs" that he never knew an instance of a rich murderer who was hanged or otherwise executed. And have we all not noted likewise?

[131] "On the Penitentiary System," etc., 184-185.

[132] Prison a.s.sociation of New York, Annual Reports, 1844-46. It is characteristic of the origin of all of these charity a.s.sociations, that many of the founders of this prison a.s.sociation were some of the very men who had profited by bribery and theft. Horace Greeley was actuated by pure humanitarian motives, but such incorporators as Prosper Wetmore, Ulshoeffer, and others were, or had been, notorious in lobbying by bribing bank charters through the New York Legislature.

[133] "The New Yorker," Feb. 17, 1838.

CHAPTER V

THE MOMENTUM OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE

It was at this identical time, in the panic of 1837, that Astor was phenominally 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."[134]

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 t.i.tle. The anguish of families, the sorrow and suffering of the community, the blank despair and ruination which drove many to beggary and prost.i.tution, 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 cla.s.ses were forced down into the army of wageworkers.

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 300,000 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 exactions 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 a.s.sESSMENTS 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 a.s.sessments.

But this practice was not by any means peculiar to Astor. Practically the whole propertied cla.s.s 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 a.s.sessable property escaped taxation every year, and that no bona fide efforts were made by the officials to remedy that state of affairs.[135] The state of morality among the propertied cla.s.ses--those cla.s.ses 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 munic.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s which controlled the administration of government. This cla.s.s 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.[136]

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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trious type of the whole of his cla.s.s.

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 t.i.tles of n.o.bility existed, it became exclusively a token of the propertied cla.s.s. The people were a.s.siduously 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 propertyless? 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 preachings 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts of the propertied cla.s.s. The various legislative bodies were mainly, and the judicial benches wholly, recruited from the ranks of the lawyer cla.s.s; these lawyers either had, or sought to have, the rich as clients;[137] 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s, was enthralled by the spell of property.

THE SANCt.i.tY OF PROPERTY.

Out of this prevailing idea grew many of the interpretations and partial enforcements. A legislator, magistrate or judge might be the very opposite of venal, and yet be irresistibly impelled by the force of training and a.s.sociation to take the current view of the una.s.sailable rights and superiority of property. It would be bia.s.sed, 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 sanct.i.ty 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 laudations of property. But these teachings were supplemented by other methods which added to their effectiveness.

We have seen how after the Revolution the propertied cla.s.ses 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 affrighting force; if votes were to determine the personnel and policy of Government, then the propertyless, being in the majority, would overwhelm them eventually and pa.s.s an entirely new code of laws.

In one State after another, the propertied cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 (1 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 pa.s.sed by the New Jersey Legislature in June, 1820 (1 Laws N. J. p. 741), expressly reenacted 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.ses was a rising in 1840 of the workingmen in what is slurringly misdescribed 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.

How did the propertied cla.s.ses meet this extension of suffrage throughout the United States?