and demands of the scarcely heard working class of his day with
its altruistic aspirations, nor of more advanced present ideas, but by
the standards of his own class, that commercial aristocracy which
arrogated to itself superiority of aims and infallibility of methods.

He died the richest man of his day. But vast fortunes could not be
heaped up by him and his contemporaries without having their
corresponding effect upon the mass of the people. What was this effect?
At about the time that he died there was in New York City one pauper to
every one hundred and twenty-five inhabitants and one person in every
eighty-three of the population had to be supported at the public
expense.[142]

FOOTNOTES:

[134] "Reminiscences of John Jacob Astor," New York "Herald," March 31,
1848.

[135] Doc. No. 24, Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant
Aldermen, xxix. The Merchant's Bank, for instance, was assessed in 1833
at $6,000; it had cost that sum twenty years before and in 1833 was
worth three times as much.

[136] Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant Aldermen,
xxix, Doc. No. 18.

[137] Many eminent lawyers, elected or appointed to high official or
judicial office, were financially interested in corporations, and very
often profited in dubious ways. The case of Roger B. Taney, who, from
1836, was for many years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, is a conspicuous example. After he was appointed United
States Secretary of the Treasury in 1833, the United States Senate
passed a resolution inquiring of him whether he were not a stockholder
in the Union Bank of Maryland, in which bank he had ordered public funds
deposited. He admitted that he was, but asserted that he had obtained
the stock before he had selected that bank as a depository of public
funds. (See Senate Docs., First Session, 23rd Congress, Vol. iii, Doc.
No. 238.) It was Taney, who as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, handed down the decision, in the Dred Scott case, that
negro slaves, under the United States Constitution, were not eligible to
citizenship and were without civil rights.

[138] These frauds at the polls went on, not only in every State but
even in such newly-organized Territories as New Mexico. Many facts were
brought out by contestants before committees of Congress. (See
"Contested Elections," 1834 to 1865, Second Session, 38th Congress,
1864-65, Vol. v, Doc. No. 57.) In th