wer and equalizes all things, and gives the new generation
a chance.

Astor hated gamblers. He never confused gambling, as a mode of
money-getting, with actual production. He knew that gambling produces
nothing--it merely transfers wealth, changes ownership. And since it
involves loss of time and energy it is a positive waste. Yet to buy
land and hold it, thus betting on its rise in value, is not production,
either. Nevertheless, this was to Astor legitimate and right.

Henry George threw no shadow before, and no economist had ever written
that to secure land and hold it unused, awaiting a rise in value, was a
dog-in-the-manger, unethical and selfish policy. Morality is a matter of
longitude and time.

Astor was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and yet he lived out
his days with a beautiful and perfect disbelief in revealed religion. He
knew enough of biology to know that religions are not "revealed"--they
are evolved. Yet he recognized the value of the Church as a social
factor. To him it was a good police system, and so when rightly
importuned he gave, with becoming moderation, to all faiths and creeds.

A couple of generations back in his ancestry there was a renegade Jew
who loved a Christian girl, and thereby molted his religion. When Cupid
crosses swords with a priest, religion gets a death-stroke. This stream
of free blood was the inheritance of John Jacob Astor.

William B. Astor, the son of John Jacob, was brought up in the financial
way he should go. He was studious, methodical, conservative, and had the
good sense to carry out the wishes of his father. His son, John Jacob
Astor, was very much like him, only of more neutral tint. The time is
now ripe for another genius in the Astor family. If William B. Astor
lacked the courage and initiative of his parent, he had more culture,
and spoke English without an accent. The son of John Jacob Astor second
is William Waldorf Astor, who speaks English with an English accent, you
know.

John Jacob Astor, besides having the first store for the sale of musical
instruments in America, organized the first orchestra of over twelve
players. He brought over a leader from Germany, and did much to foster
the love of music in the New World.

Every worthy Maecenas imagines that he is a great painter, writer,
sculptor or musician, sidetracked by material cares thrust upon him by
unkind Fate. John Jacob Astor once told Washington Irving that it was
only business respon