for if millionaires were immortal, their money would cause
them great misery and the swollen fortunes would crowd mankind, not
only 'gainst the wall, but into the sea. Death is the deliverer, for
Time checks power 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 moulted 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