hich, however great the
superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality,
inexpensive. As fast as millions are dissipated they are far more than
replaced in these private coffers by the collective labor of the
American people through the tributary media of rent, interest and
profit. In the last ten years the value of the Goelet land holdings has
enormously increased, until now it is almost too conservative an
estimate to place the collective fortune at $200,000,000.

This large fortune, as is that of the Astors and of other extensive
landlords, is not, as has been pointed out, purely one of land
possessions. Far from it. The invariable rule, it might be said, has
been to utilize the surplus revenues in the form of rents, in buying up
controlling power in a great number and variety of corporations. The
Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise
virtually all of the other big landlords. The rent-racked people of the
City of New York, where rents are higher proportionately than in any
other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the
people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their
earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold. In turn these
rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories,
utility plants and always more and more land.

WHERE SURPLUS REVENUE HAS GONE.

But the singular continuity does not end here. Land acquired by
political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission
of other frauds. The railroads now controlled by a few men, among whom
the large landowners are conspicuous, were surveyed and built to a
great extent by public funds, not private money. As time passes a
gradual transformation takes place. Little by little, scarcely known to
the people, laws are altered; the States and the Government,
representing the interests of the vested class, surrender the people's
rights, often even the empty forms of those rights, and great railroad
systems pass into the hands of a small cabal of multimillionaires.

To give one of many instances: The Illinois Central Railroad, passing
through an industrial and rich farming country, is one of the most
profitable railroads in the United States. This railroad was built in
the proportion of twelve parts to one by public funds, raised by
taxation of the people of that State, and by prodigal gifts of public
land grants. The balance represents the