ith it, parks
laid out, a title of nobility purchased; and the income, wasted in
barren and stupid magnificence would have maintained a host of idle,
worthless, and pampered menials. Here, on the contrary, it is expended
almost wholly in providing for the people of New York the very
commodity of which they stand in most pressing need; namely, _new
houses_. The simple reason why the rent of a small house in New York
is two thousand dollars a year is, because the supply of houses is
unequal to the demand. We need at this moment five thousand more
houses in the city of New York for the decent accommodation of its
inhabitants at rents which they can afford to pay. The man who does
more than any one else to supply the demand for houses is the patient,
abstemious, and laborious heir of the Astor estate. He does a good
day's work for us in this business every day, and all the wages he
receives for so much care and toil is a moderate subsistence for
himself and his family, and the very troublesome reputation of being
the richest man in America. And the business is done with the minimum
of waste in every department. In a quiet little office in Prince
Street, the manager of the estate, aided by two or three aged clerks
(one of them of fifty-five years' standing in the office), transacts
the business of a property larger than that of many sovereign princes.
Everything, also, is done promptly and in the best manner. If a tenant
desires repairs or alterations, an agent calls at the house within
twenty-four hours, makes the requisite inquiries, reports, and the
work is forthwith begun, or the tenant is notified that it will not be
done. The concurrent testimony of Mr. Astor's tenants is, that he is
one of the most liberal and obliging of landlords.

So far, therefore, the Astor estate, immense as it is, appears to have
been an unmixed good to the city in which it is mainly invested. There
is every reason to believe that, in the hands of the next heir, it
will continue to be managed with the same prudence and economy that
mark the conduct of its present proprietor. We indulge the hope that
either the present or some future possessor may devote a portion of
his vast revenue to the building of a new order of tenement houses, on
a scale that will enable a man who earns two dollars a day to occupy
apartments fit for the residence of a family of human beings. The time
is ripe for it. May we live to see in some densely populated portion
of