Part 15 (2/2)
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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.n.a.lyst might well be tempted to smile at the puerility of this logic. If Astor was ent.i.tled to one-half of the value created by the collective industry of the community, why was he not ent.i.tled 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 inst.i.tutions demanded by the commercial aristocracy.
So the arch multimillionaire pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutional 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 cla.s.s of his day with its altruistic aspirations, nor of more advanced present ideas, but by the standards of his own cla.s.s, 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 ma.s.s 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.[142]
FOOTNOTES:
[134] ”Reminiscences of John Jacob Astor,” New York ”Herald,” March 31, 1848.
[135] Doc. No. 24, Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of a.s.sistant Aldermen, xxix. The Merchant's Bank, for instance, was a.s.sessed in 1833 at $6,000; it had cost that sum twenty years before and in 1833 was worth three times as much.
[136] Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of a.s.sistant Aldermen, xxix, Doc. No. 18.
[137] 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.serted 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 Const.i.tution, were not eligible to citizens.h.i.+p and were without civil rights.
[138] 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 doc.u.ments 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 towns.h.i.+ps.
[139] ”The Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of the City of New York.” By Moses Yale Beach.
[140] ”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 scholars.h.i.+p 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 a.s.serted: ”Before the Civil War there were three millionaires; now there are 4,000.” The error of this a.s.sertion is evident.
[141] Parton's ”Life of John Jacob Astor”:80-81.
[142] Proceedings of the Board of a.s.sistant 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 United States before the Civil War is wholly incorrect.
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