and
allowing future populations to make it a thousand times more valuable.
An exception was his country estate of thirteen acres at Hurlgate
(Hellgate) in the vicinity of Sixtieth street and the East River. It was
curious to look back at the fact that less than a century ago the upper
regions of Manhattan Island were filled with country estates--regions
now densely occupied by huge tenement houses and some private dwellings.
In those days, not less than in these, a country seat was considered a
necessary appendage to the possessions of a rich man. Astor bought that
Hurlgate estate as a country seat; but as such it was long since
discontinued although the land comprising it has never left the hold of
the Astor family.

What were the intrinsic circumstances of the means by which he bought
land, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars? For once, we get a
gleam of the truth, but a gleam only, in the "popular writer's" account
when he says: "John Jacob Astor's record is constantly crossed by
embarrassed families, prodigal sons, mortgages and foreclosure sales.
Many of the victims of his foresight were those highest in church and
state. He thus acquired for $75,000 one-half of Governor George
Clinton's splendid Greenwich country place [in the old Greenwich village
on the west side of Manhattan Island].... After the Governor's death, he
kept persistently at the heirs, lent them money and acquired additional
slices of the family property.... Nearly two-thirds of the Clinton farm
is now held by Astor's descendants, and is covered by scores of business
buildings, from which is derived an annual income estimated at
$500,000."

THE FATE OF OTHERS HIS GAIN.

In this transaction we see the beginnings of that period of conquest on
the part of the very rich using their surplus capital in effacing the
less rich--a period which really opened with Astor and which has been
vastly intensified in recent times. Clinton was accounted a rich man in
his day, but he was a pigmy in that respect compared to Astor. With his
incessant inflow of surplus wealth, Astor was in a position where on the
instant he could take advantage of the difficulties of less rich men and
take over to himself their property. A large amount of Astor's money was
invested in mortgages. In times of periodic financial and industrial
distress, the mortgagers were driven to extremities and could no longer
keep up their payments. These were the times that Astor waited for