fortunes of New York City; the typical examples given
doubtless serve as expositions of how, in various and similar ways,
others were acquired. We shall advert to some of the great fortunes in
the West based wholly or largely upon city real estate.

While the Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders and others, or rather
the entire number of inhabitants, were transmuting their land into vast
and increasing wealth expressed in terms of hundreds of millions in
money, Nicholas Longworth was aggrandizing himself likewise in
Cincinnati.

HOW LONGWORTH BEGAN.

Longworth had been born in Newark, N. J., in 1782, and at the age of
twenty-one had migrated to Cincinnati, then a mere outpost, with a
population of eight hundred sundry adventurers. There he studied law and
was admitted to practice. The story of how Longworth became a landowner
is given by Houghton as follows: His first client was a man accused of
horse stealing. In those frontier days, a horse represented one of the
most valuable forms of property; and, as under a system wherein human
life was inconsequential compared to the preservation of property, the
penalty for stealing a horse was usually death. No term of reproach was
more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a
horse thief. The case looked black. But Longworth somehow contrived to
get the accused off with acquittal. The man--so the story further
runs--had no money to pay Longworth's fee and no property except two
second-hand copper stills. These also were high in the appraisement of
property values, for they could be used to make whisky, and whisky could
be in turn used to debauch the Indian tribes and swindle them of furs
and land. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel
Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. In exchange,
Longworth received thirty-three acres of what was then considered
unpromising land in the town.[167] From time to time he bought more land
with the money made in law; this land lay on what were then the
outskirts of the place. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each.

As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently
took on enhanced value. By 1830 the population was 24,831; twenty years
later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. For a
Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. The
growth of the city kept on increasingly. His land lay in the very center
of