hey are eligibly
located, many of them surrounded by a fashionable population....
Mr. Astor owned most of these corner lots but kept the corners for
a rise. He would neither sell nor improve them.... He knew that no
parties can improve the center of a block without benefiting the
corners.

He was sombre and solitary, dwelt alone, mixed little with general
society, gave little and abhorred beggars.[143]

It was a common saying of him "when he paid out a cent he wanted a cent
in return;" and as to his abject meannesses we forbear relating the many
stories of him. He pursued, in every respect, his father's methods in
using the powers of city government to obtain valuable water grants for
substantially nothing, and in employing his surplus wealth for further
purchases of land and in investments in other profitable channels. No
scruples of any kind did he allow to interfere with his constant aim of
increasing his fortune. His indifference to compunctions was shown in
many ways, not the least in his open support of notoriously corrupt city
and State administrations.

This corruption was by no means one existing despite him and his class,
and one that was therefore accepted grudgingly as an irremediable evil.
Far from it. Corrupt government was welcomed by the landholding, trading
and banking class, for by it they could secure with greater facility the
perpetual rights, franchises, privileges and the exemptions which were
adapted to their expanding aims and riches. By means of it they were not
only enabled to pile up greater and greater wealth, but to set
themselves up in law as a conspicuously privileged body, distinct from
the mass of the people.

THE PURCHASE OF LAWS.

Publicly they might pretend a proper and ostentatious horror of
corruption. Secretly, however, they quickly dispensed with what were to
them idle dronings of political cant. As capitalists they ascribed their
success to a rigid application and practicality; and being practical
they went about purchasing laws by the most short-cut and economical
method. They had the money; the office-holders had the votes and
governmental power; consequently the one bought the other. It was a
systematic corruption springing entirely from the propertied classes;
they demanded it, were responsible for it and kept it up. It worked like
an endless chain; the land, charters, franchises and privileges
corruptly obtained in one set of years