residences of the Astors are only a mere portion
of their many palaces. They have impressive mansions, costing great
sums, at Newport. At Ferncliffe-on-the-Hudson John Jacob Astor has an
estate of two thousand acres. This country palace, built in chaste
Italian architecture, is fitted with every convenience and luxury. John
Jacob Astor's cousin, William Waldorf, some years since expatriated
himself from his native country and became a British subject. He bought
the Cliveden estate at Taplow, Bucks, England, the old seat of the Duke
of Westminster, the richest landlord in England. Thenceforth William
Waldorf scorned his native land, and has never even taken the trouble
to look at the property in New York which yields him so vast a revenue.
This absentee landlord, for whom it is estimated not less than 100,000
men, women and children directly toil, in the form of paying him rent,
has surrounded himself in England with a lofty feudal exclusiveness.
Sweeping aside the privilege that the general public had long enjoyed of
access to the Cliveden grounds, he issued strict orders forbidding
trespassing, and along the roads he built high walls surmounted with
broken glass. His son and heir, Waldorf Astor, has avowed that he also
will remain a British subject. William Waldorf Astor, it should be said,
is somewhat of a creator of public opinion; he owns a newspaper and a
magazine in London.

* * * * *

The origin and successive development of the Astor fortune have been
laid bare in these chapters; not wholly so, by any means, for a mass of
additional facts have been left out. Where certain fundamental facts are
sufficient to give a clear idea of a presentation, it is not necessary
to pile on too much of an accumulation. And yet, such has been the
continued emphasis of property-smitten writers upon the thrift, honesty,
ability and sagacity of the men who built up the great fortunes, that
the impression generally prevails that the Astor fortune is preeminently
one of those amassed by legitimate means. These chapters should dispel
this illusion.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] See Testimony taken before the [New York] Senate Committee on
Cities, 1890, iii:2312, etc.

[159] Testimony taken before the [New York] Senate Committee on Cities,
1890, iii: 2314-2315.

[160] As one of many illustrations of the ethics of the propertied
class, the appended newspaper dispatch from Newport, R. I., on Jan. 2,
1903, brin