THE CLIMAX OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
The impressive fortune that William B. Astor left was mainly bequeathed
in about equal parts to his sons John Jacob II. and William. These
scions, by inheritance from various family sources, intermarriage with
other rich families, or both, were already rich. Furthermore, having the
backing of their father's immense riches, they had enjoyed singularly
exceptional opportunities for amassing wealth on their own account.
In 1853 William Astor had married one of the Schermerhorn family. The
Schermerhorns were powerful New York City landholders; and if not quite
on the same pinnacle in point of wealth as the Astors, were at any rate
very rich. The immensely valuable areas of land then held by the
Schermerhorns, and still in their possession, were largely obtained by
precisely the same means that the Astors, Goelets, Rhinelanders and
other conspicuous land families had used.
INTERRELATED WEALTH.
The settled policy, from the start, of the rich men, and very greatly of
rich women, was to marry within their class. The result obviously was to
increase and centralize still greater wealth in the circumscribed
ownership of a few families. In estimating, therefore, the collective
wealth of the Astors, as in fact of nearly all of the great fortunes,
the measure should not be merely the possessions of one family, but
should embrace the combined wealth of interrelated rich families.
The wedding of William Astor (as was that of his son John Jacob Astor
thirty-eight years later to a daughter of one of the richest landholding
families in Philadelphia) was an event of the day if one judges by the
commotion excited among what was represented as the superior class, and
the amount of attention given by the newspapers. In reality, viewing
them in their proper perspective, these marriages of the rich were
infinitesimal affairs, which would scarcely deserve a mention, were it
not for the effect that they had in centralizing wealth and for the
clear picture that they give of the ideas of the times. Posterity, which
is the true arbiter in distinguishing between the enduring and the
evanescent, the important and the trivial, rightly cares nothing for
essentially petty matters which once were held of the highest
importance. Edgar Allan Poe, wearing his life out in extreme poverty,
William Lloyd Garrison, thundering against chattel slavery from a Boston
garret, Robert Dale Owen spending his years in altruistic
endeavors--these men were contemporaries of the Astors of the second
generation. Yet a marriage among the very rich was invested by the
self-styled creators and dispensers of public opinion with far more
importance than the giving out of the world of the most splendid
products of genius or the enunciation of principles of the profoundest
significance to humanity. Yet why slur the practices of past generations
when we to-day are confronted by the same perversions? In the month of
February, 1908, for instance, several millions of men in the United
States were out of work; in destitution, because something or other
stood between them and their getting work; and consequently they and
their wives and children had to face starvation. This condition might
have been enough to shock even the most callous mind, certainly enough
to have impressed the community. But what happened? The superficial
historian of the future, who depends upon the newspapers and who gauges
his facts accordingly, will conclude that there was little or no misery
or abject want; that the people were interested in petty happenings of
no ultimate value whatsoever; that an Oriental dance and pantomime given
in New York by "society" women, led by Mrs. Waldorf Astor, where a rich
young woman reaped astonishment and admiration by coiling a live boa
constrictor around her neck, was one of the great events of the day,
because the newspapers devoted two columns to it, whereas scarcely any
mention was made of armies of men being out of work.
MONEY AND HUMANITY.
As it was in 1908 so was it in the decades when the capitalists of one
kind or another were first piling up wealth; they were the weighty class
of the day; their slightest doings were chronicled, and their flimsiest
sayings were construed oracularly as those of public opinion. Numberless
people sickened and died in the industrial strife and in miserable
living quarters; ubiquitous capitalism was a battle-field strewn with
countless corpses; but none of the professed expositors of morality,
religion or politics gave heed to the wounded or the dead, or to the
conditions which produced these hideous and perpetual slaughters of men,
women and children. But to the victors, no matter what their methods
were, or how much desolation and death they left in their path, the
richest material rewards were awarded; wealth, luxury, station and
power; and the Law, the majestic, exalted Law, upheld these victors in
their possessions by force of courts, police, sheriffs, and by rifles
loaded with bullets if necessary.
Thus, to recapitulate, the Astors debauched, swindled and murdered the
Indians; they defrauded the city of land and of taxes; they assisted in
corrupting legislatures; they profited from the ownership of blocks of
death-laden tenement houses; they certified to thieving administrations.
Once having wrested into their possession the results of all of these
and more fraudulent methods in the form of millions of dollars in
property, what was their strongest ally? The Law. Yes, the Law,
theoretically so impartial and so reverently indued with awe--and with
force. From fraud and force the Astor fortune came, and by force, in the
shape of law, it was fortified in their control. If a starving man had
gone into any one of the Astor houses and stolen even as much as a
silver spoon, the Law would have come to the rescue of outraged property
by sentencing him to prison. Or if, in case of a riot, the Astor
property was damaged, the Law also would have stepped in and compelled
the county to idemnify. This Law, this extraordinary code of print which
governs us, has been and is nothing more or less, it is evident, than so
many statutes to guarantee the retention of the proceeds of fraud and
theft, if the piracy were committed in a sufficiently large and
impressive way. The indisputable proof is that every single fortune
which has been obtained by fraud, is still privately held and is greater
than ever; the Law zealously and jealously guards it. So has the Law
practically worked; and if the thing is to be judged by its practical
results, then the Law has been an instigator of every form of crime, and
a bulwark of that which it instigated. Seeing that this is so, it is
not so hard to understand that puzzling problem of why so large a
portion of the community has resolved itself into a committee of the
whole, and while nominally and solemnly professing the accustomed and
expected respect for Law, deprecates it, as it is constituted, and often
makes no concealment of contempt.
LAW THE STRONGEST ASSET.
In penetrating into the origin and growth of the great fortunes, this
vital fact is constantly forced upon the investigator: that Law has been
the most valuable asset possessed by the capitalist class. Without it,
this class would have been as helpless as a babe. What would the
medieval baron have been without armed force? But note how sinuously
conditions have changed. The capitalist class, far shrewder than the
feudalistic rulers, dispenses with personally equipped armed force. It
becomes superfluous. All that is necessary to do is to make the laws,
and so guide things that the officials who enforce the laws are
responsive to the interests of the propertied classes. Back of the laws
are police forces and sheriffs and militia all kept at the expense of
city, county and State--at public expense. Clearly, then, having control
of the laws and of the officials, the propertied classes have the full
benefit of armed forces the expense of which, however, they do not have
to defray. It has unfolded itself as a vast improvement over the crude
feudal system.
In complete control of the laws, the great propertied classes have been
able either to profit by the enforcement, or by the violation, of them.
This is nowhere more strikingly shown than in the growth of the Astor
fortune, although all of the other great fortunes reveal the same, or
nearly identical, factors. With the millions made by a career of crime
the original Astors buy land; they get more land by fraud; the Law
throws its shield about the property so obtained. They cheat the city
out of enormous sums in taxation; the Law does not molest them. On the
contrary it allows them to build palaces and to keep on absorbing up
more forms of property. In 1875 William Astor builds a railroad in
Florida; and as a gift of appreciation, so it is told, the Florida
Legislature presents him with 80,000 acres of land. It is wholly
probable, if the underlying circumstances were known, that it would be
found that an influence more material than a simple burst of gratitude
prompted this gift. Where did the money come from with which this
railroad was built? And what was the source of other immense funds which
were invested in railroads, banks, industrial enterprises, in buying
more land and in mortgages--in many forms of ownership?
The unsophisticated acceptor of current sophistries or the apologist
might reply that all this money came from legitimate business
transactions, the natural increase in the value of land, and thus on.
But waiving these superficial explanations and defenses, which really
mean nothing more than a forced justification, it is plain that the true
sources of these revenues were of a vastly different nature. The
millions in rents which flowed in to the Astor's treasury every year
came literally from the sweat, labor, misery and murder of a host of
men, women, and children who were never chronicled, and who went to
their death in eternal obscurity.
THE BASIS OF WEALTH'S STRUCTURE.
It was they who finally had to bear the cost of exorbitant rents; it was
their work, the products which they created, which were the bases of
the whole structure. And in speaking of murder, it is not deliberate,
premeditated murder which is meant, in the sense covered by statute, but
that much more insidious kind ensuing from grinding exploitation; in
herding human beings into habitations unfit even for animals which need
air and sunshine, and then in stubbornly resisting any attempt to
improve living conditions in these houses. In this respect, it cannot be
too strongly pointed out, the Astors were in nowise different from the
general run of landlords. Is it not murder when, compelled by want,
people are forced to fester in squalid, germ-filled tenements, where the
sunlight never enters and where disease finds a prolific breeding-place?
Untold thousands went to their deaths in these unspeakable places. Yet,
so far as the Law was concerned, the rents collected by the Astors, as
well as by other landlords, were honestly made. The whole institution of
Law saw nothing out of the way in these conditions, and very
significantly so, because, to repeat over and over again, Law did not
represent the ethics or ideals of advanced humanity; it exactly
reflected, as a pool reflects the sky, the demands and self-interest of
the growing propertied classes. And if here and there a law was passed
(which did not often happen) contrary to the expressed opposition of
property, it was either so emasculated as to be harmless or it was not
enforced.
The direct sacrifice of human life, however, was merely one substratum
of the Astor fortune. It is very likely, if the truth were fully known,
that the stupendous sums in total that the Astors cheated in taxation,
would have been more than enough to have constructed a whole group of
railroads, or to have bought up whole sections of the outlying parts of
the city, or to have built dozens of palaces. Incessantly they derived
immense rentals from their constantly expanding estate, and just as
persistently they perjured themselves, and defrauded the city, State and
Nation of taxes. It was not often that the facts were disclosed;
obviously the city or State officials, with whom the rich acted in
collusion, tried their best to conceal them.
GREAT THEFTS OF TAXES.
Occasionally, however, some fragments of facts were brought out by a
legislative investigating committee. Thus, in 1890, a State Senate
Committee, in probing into the affairs of the tax department, touched
upon disclosures which dimly revealed the magnitude of these annual
thefts, but which in nowise astonished any well-informed person, because
every one knew that these frauds existed. Questioned closely by William
M. Ivins, counsel for the committee, Michael Coleman, president of the
Board of Assessments and Taxes, admitted that vast stretches of real
estate owned by the Astors were assessed at half or less than half of
their real value.[158] Then followed this exchange, in which the
particular "Mr. Astor" referred to was not made clear:
Q.: You have just said that Mr. Astor never sold?
A.: Once in a while he sells, yes.
Q.: But the rule is that he does not sell?
A.: Well, hardly ever; he has sold, of course.
Q.: Isn't it almost a saying in this community that the Astors buy
and never sell?
A.: They are not looked upon as people who dispose of real estate
after they once get possession of it.
Q.: Have you the power to exact from them a statement of their
rent rolls?
A.: No.
Q.: Don't you think that ... if you are going to levy a tax
properly and fully ... you ought to be vested with that power to
learn what the returns and revenues of that property are?
A.: No, sir; it's none of our business.[159]
This fraudulent evasion of taxation was anything but confined to the
Astor family. It was practiced by the entire large propertied interests,
not only in swindling New York City of taxes on real estate, but also
those on personal property. Coleman admitted that while the total
valuation of the personal property of all the corporations in New York
was assessed at $1,650,000,000, they were allowed to swear it down to
$294,000,000.
Here we see again at work that fertile agency which has assisted in
impoverishing the masses. Rentals are exacted from them, which represent
on the average the fourth part of their wages. These rentals are based
upon the full assessment of the houses that they live in. In turn, the
landlords defraud the city of one-half of this assessment. In order to
make up for this continuous deprivation of taxes, the city proceeds time
and time again to increase taxes and put out interest-bearing bond
issues. These increased taxes, as in the case of all other taxes, fall
upon the workers and the results are seen in constantly rising rents and
in higher prices for all necessities.
LICENSED PIRACY RAMPANT.
Was any criminal action ever instituted against these rich defrauders?
None of which there is any record.
Not a publicist, editor, preacher was there who did not know either
generally or specifically of these great frauds in taxation. Some of
them might protest in a half-hearted, insincere or meaningless way. But
the propertied classes did not mind wordy criticism so long as it was
not backed by political action. In other words, they could afford to
tolerate, even be amused by, gusty denunciation if neither the laws were
changed, nor the particular enforcement or non-enforcement which they
demanded. The essential thing with them was to continue conditions by
which they could keep on defrauding.
Virtually all that was considered best in society--the men and women who
lived in the finest mansions, who patronized art and the opera, who set
themselves up as paramount in breeding, manners, taste and fashions--all
of these were either parties to this continuous process of fraud or
benefited by it. The same is true of this class to-day; for the frauds
in taxation are of greater magnitude than ever before. It was not
astonishing, therefore, when John Jacob Astor II died in 1890, and
William Astor in 1892, that enconiums should be lavished upon their
careers. In all the accounts that appeared of them, not a word was there
of the real facts; of the corrupt grasping of city land; of the
debauching of legislatures and the manipulation of railroads; of their
blocks of tenements in which disease and death had reaped so rich a
harvest, or of their gigantic frauds in cheating the city of taxes. Not
a word of all of these.
Without an exception the various biographies were fulsomely laudatory.
This excessive praise might have defeated the purpose of the authors
were it not that it was the fashion of the times to depict and accept
the multimillionaires as marvels of ability, almost superhuman. This was
the stuff fed out to the people; it was not to be wondered at that a
period came when the popular mind reacted and sought the opposite
extreme in which it laved in the most violent denunciations of the very
men whom it had long been taught to revere. That period, too, passed to
be succeeded by another in which a more correct judgment will be formed
of the magnates, and in which they will appear not as exceptional
criminals, but as products of their times and environment, and in their
true relation to both of these factors.
The fortune left by John Jacob Astor II in 1890 amounted to about
$150,000,000. The bulk of this descended to his son William Waldorf
Astor. The $75,000,000 fortune left by William Astor in 1892 was
bequeathed to his son John Jacob Astor. These cousins to-day hold the
greatest part of the collective Astor fortune.
Having reached the present generation, we shall not attempt to enter
into a detailed narrative of their multifarious interests, embracing
land, railroads, industries, insurance and a vast variety of other forms
of wealth. The purpose of this work is to point out the circumstances
underlying the origin and growth of the great private fortunes; in the
case of the Astors this has been done sufficiently, perhaps overdone,
although many facts have been intentionally left out of these chapters
which might very properly have been included. But there are a few
remaining facts without which the story would not be complete, and
lacking which it might lose some significance.
THE ASTOR FORTUNE DOUBLES.
[Illustration: WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR.
Now a British Subject, Self-Expatriated. He Derives
an Enormous Income from His American Estate.]
We have seen how at William B. Astor's death in 1876 the Astor fortune
amounted to at least $100,000,000, probably much more. Within sixteen
years, by 1892, it had more than doubled in the hands of his two sons.
How was it possible to have added the extraordinary sum of $125,000,000
in less than a decade and a half? Individual ability did not
accomplish it; it is ludicrous to say that it could have done so. The
methods by which much of this increase was gathered in have already been
set forth. A large part came from the rise in the value of land, which
value arose not from the slightest act of the Astors, but from the
growth of the population and the labor of the whole body of workers.
This value was created by the producers, but far from owning or even
sharing in it, they were compelled to pay heavier and heavier tribute in
the form of rent for the very values which they had created. Had the
Astors or other landlords gone into a perpetual trance these values
would have been created just the same. Then, not content with
appropriating values which others created, the landlord class defrauded
the city of even the fractional part of these values, in the form of
taxation.
Up to the present generation the Astors had never set themselves out as
"reformers" in politics. They had plundered right and left, but withal
had made no great pretenses. The fortune held by the Astors, so the
facts indubitably show, represents a succession of piracies and
exploitation. Very curious, therefore, it is to note that the Astors of
the present generation have avowed themselves most solicitous reformers
and have been members of pretentious, self-constituted committees
composed of the "best citizens," the object of which has been to purge
New York City of Tammany corruption. Leaving aside the Astors, and
considering the attitude of the propertied class as a whole, this posing
of the so-called better element as reformers has been, and is, one of
the most singular characteristics of American politics, and its most
colossal sham. Although continuously, with rare intermissions, the
landholders and the railroad and industrial magnates have been either
corrupting public officials or availing themselves of the benefits of
corrupt politics, many of them, not in New York alone, but in every
American city, have been, at the same time, metamorphosing themselves
into reformers. Not reformers, of course, in the true, high sense of the
word, but as ingenious counterfeits. With the most ardent professions of
civic purity and of horror at the prevailing corruption they have come
forward on occasions, clothed in a fine and pompous garb of
righteousness.
THE QUALITY OF "REFORMERS."
The very men who cheated cities, states and nation out of enormous sums
in taxation; who bribed, through their retainers, legislatures, common
councils and executive and administrative officials; who corruptly put
judges on the bench; who made Government simply an auxiliary to their
designs; who exacted heavy tribute from the people in a thousand ways;
who forced their employees to work for precarious wages and who bitterly
fought every movement for the betterment of the working classes--these
were the men who have made up these so-called "reform" committees,
precisely as to-day they constitute them.[160]
If there had been the slightest serious attempt to interfere with their
vested privileges, corruptly obtained and corruptly enhanced, and with
the vast amount of increment and graft that these privileges bought
them, they would have instantly raised the cry of revolutionary
confiscation. But they were very willing to put an end to the petty
graft which the politicians collected from saloons, brothels, peddlers,
and the small merchants, and thereby present themselves as respectable
and public-spirited citizens, appalled at the existing corruption. The
newspapers supported them in this attitude, and occasionally a
sufficient number of the voters would sustain their appeals and elect
candidates that they presented. The only real difference was that under
an openly corrupt machine they had to pay in bribes for franchises, laws
and immunity from laws, while under the "reform" administrations, which
represented, and toadied to, them, they often obtained all these and
more without the expenditure of a cent. It has often been much more
economical for them to have "reform" in power; and it is a well known
truism that the business-class reform administrations which are
popularly assumed to be honest, will go to greater lengths in selling
out the rights of the people than the most corrupt political machine,
for the reason that their administrations are not generally suspected of
corruption and therefore are not closely watched. Moreover, corruption
by bribes is not always the most effective kind. There is a much more
sinister form. It is that which flows from conscious class use of a
responsive government for insidious ends. Practically all of the
American "reform" movements have come within this scope.
This is no place for a dissertation on these pseudo reform movements; it
is a subject deserving a special treatment by itself. But it is well to
advert to them briefly here since it is necessary to give constant
insights into the methods of the propertied class. Whether corruption or
"reform" administrations were in power the cheating of municipality and
State in taxation has gone on with equal vigor.[161]
A VAST ANNUAL INCOME.
The collective Astor fortune, as we have said, amounts to $450,000,000.
This, however, is merely an estimate based largely upon their real
estate possessions. No one but the Astors themselves know what are their
holdings in bonds and stocks of every description. It is safe to venture
the opinion that their fortune far exceeds $450,000,000. Their surplus
wealth piles up so fast that a large part of it is incessantly being
invested in buying more land. Originally owning land in the lower part
of Manhattan, they then bought land in Yorkville, then added to their
possessions in Harlem, and later in the Bronx, in which part of New York
City they now own immense areas. Their estate is growing larger and
larger all the time.
In rents in New York City alone it is computed that the Astors collect
twenty-five or thirty million dollars a year. The "Astor Estates" are
managed by a central office, the agent in charge of which is said to get
a salary of $50,000 a year. All the business details are attended to
entirely by this agent and his force of subordinates. Of these annual
rents a part is distributed among the various members of the Astor
family according to the degree of their interest; the remainder is used
to buy more land.
The Astor mansions rank among the most pretentious in the United States
and in Europe. The New York City residence long occupied by Mrs. William
Astor at Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street is one of extraordinary
luxury and grandeur. Adjoining and connected with it is the equally
sumptuous mansion of John Jacob Astor. In these residences, or rather
palaces, splendor is piled upon splendor. In Mrs. William Astor's
spacious ball-room and picture gallery, balls have been given, each
costing, it is said, $100,000. In cream and gold the picture gallery
spreads; the walls are profuse with costly paintings, and at one end is
a gallery in wrought iron where musicians give out melody on festive
occasions. The dining rooms of these houses are of an immensity.
Embellished in old oak incrusted with gold, their walls are covered with
antique tapestries set in huge oak framework with margins thick with
gold. Upon the diners a luxurious ceiling looks down, a blaze of color
upon black oak set off by masses of gold borders. Directly above the
center of the table are painted garlands of flowers and clusters of
fruit. In the hub of this representation is Mrs. Astor's monogram in
letters of gold. From the massive hall, with its reproductions of
paintings of Marie Antoinette and other old French court characters, its
statuary, costly vases and draperies, a wide marble stairway curves
gracefully upstairs. To dwell upon all of the luxurious aspects of these
residences would compel an extended series of details. In both of the
residences every room is a thing of magnificence.
PROXIMITY OF PALACES AND POVERTY.
From these palaces it is but a step, as it were, to gaunt neighborhoods
where great parts of the population are crowded in the most inhuman way
into wretched tenement houses. It is an undeniable fact that more than
fifty blocks on Manhattan Island--each of which blocks is not much
larger than the space covered by the Astor mansions--have each a teeming
population of from 3,000 to 4,000 persons. In each of several blocks
6,000 persons are congested. In 1855, when conditions were thought bad
enough, 417,476 inhabitants were crowded into the section south of
Fourteenth street; but in 1907 this district contained fully 750,000
population. Forty years ago the lower sections only of Manhattan were
overcrowded, but now the density of congestion has spread to all parts
of Manhattan, and to parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. On an area of two
hundred acres in certain parts of New York City not less than 200,000
people exist. It is not uncommon to find eighteen men, women, and
children, driven to it by necessity, sleeping in three small,
suffocating rooms.
[Illustration: THE ASTOR MANSIONS IN NEW YORK CITY.
Occupied by the Late Mrs. William Astor and by John Jacob Astor.]
But the New York City residences of the Astors are only a mere portion
of their many palaces. They have impressive mansions, costing great
sums, at Newport. At Ferncliffe-on-the-Hudson John Jacob Astor has an
estate of two thousand acres. This country palace, built in chaste
Italian architecture, is fitted with every convenience and luxury. John
Jacob Astor's cousin, William Waldorf, some years since expatriated
himself from his native country and became a British subject. He bought
the Cliveden estate at Taplow, Bucks, England, the old seat of the Duke
of Westminster, the richest landlord in England. Thenceforth William
Waldorf scorned his native land, and has never even taken the trouble
to look at the property in New York which yields him so vast a revenue.
This absentee landlord, for whom it is estimated not less than 100,000
men, women and children directly toil, in the form of paying him rent,
has surrounded himself in England with a lofty feudal exclusiveness.
Sweeping aside the privilege that the general public had long enjoyed of
access to the Cliveden grounds, he issued strict orders forbidding
trespassing, and along the roads he built high walls surmounted with
broken glass. His son and heir, Waldorf Astor, has avowed that he also
will remain a British subject. William Waldorf Astor, it should be said,
is somewhat of a creator of public opinion; he owns a newspaper and a
magazine in London.
* * * * *
The origin and successive development of the Astor fortune have been
laid bare in these chapters; not wholly so, by any means, for a mass of
additional facts have been left out. Where certain fundamental facts are
sufficient to give a clear idea of a presentation, it is not necessary
to pile on too much of an accumulation. And yet, such has been the
continued emphasis of property-smitten writers upon the thrift, honesty,
ability and sagacity of the men who built up the great fortunes, that
the impression generally prevails that the Astor fortune is preeminently
one of those amassed by legitimate means. These chapters should dispel
this illusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] See Testimony taken before the [New York] Senate Committee on
Cities, 1890, iii:2312, etc.
[159] Testimony taken before the [New York] Senate Committee on Cities,
1890, iii: 2314-2315.
[160] As one of many illustrations of the ethics of the propertied
class, the appended newspaper dispatch from Newport, R. I., on Jan. 2,
1903, brings out some significant facts:
"William C. Schermerhorn, whose death is announced in New York, and who
was a cousin of Mrs. William Astor, was one of Newport's pioneer summer
residents. He was one of New York's millionaires, and his Newport villa
is situated on Narragansett avenue near Cliffside, opposite the Pinard
cottages.
"Mr. Schermerhorn, with Mrs. Astor and ex-Commodore Gerry, of the New
York Yacht Club, in order to avoid the inheritance tax of New York, and
to take advantage of Newport's low tax-rate, obtained in January last
through their counsel, Colonel Samuel R. Honey, a decree declaring their
citizenship in Rhode Island. Since that time Mr. Schermerhorn's
residence has been in this state. In last year's tax-list he was
assessed for $150,000.
"Mr. Schermerhorn was a member of both the fashionable clubs on Bellevue
avenue, the Newport Casino and the Newport Reading-Room."
[161] For further details on this point see Chapter ix, Part II.