Part 19 (1/2)
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 s.p.a.ce 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 trespa.s.sing, and along the roads he built high walls surmounted with broken gla.s.s. 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 ma.s.s 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 acc.u.mulation. 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 ama.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.trations of the ethics of the propertied cla.s.s, 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 citizens.h.i.+p in Rhode Island. Since that time Mr. Schermerhorn's residence has been in this state. In last year's tax-list he was a.s.sessed for $150,000.
”Mr. Schermerhorn was a member of both the fas.h.i.+onable clubs on Bellevue avenue, the Newport Casino and the Newport Reading-Room.”
[161] For further details on this point see Chapter ix, Part II.
CHAPTER VIII
OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED
The founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed.
Next to the Astors' estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000.
THE GOELET FORTUNE.
The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters.
Of Peter Goelet's business methods and personality no account is extant.
But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity.