so conspicuous an
exemplar, took from the whole people for the benefit of a few; and that
this system was unceasingly turning out more and more wretches.

Long after Longworth had become a multimillionaire he took a savage,
perhaps a malicious, delight in doing things which shocked all current
conceptions of how a millionaire should act. To understand the intense
scandal caused by what were considered his vagaries, it is only
necessary to bear in mind the ultra-lofty position of a multimillionaire
at a period when a man worth $250,000 was thought very rich. There were
only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer
multimillionaires. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. On one
occasion a beggar called at Longworth's office and pointed eloquently at
his gaping shoes. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and
told the beggar to try it on. It fitted. Its mate followed. Then after
the beggar left, Longworth sent a boy to the nearest shoe store, with
instructions to get a pair of shoes, but in no circumstances to pay more
than a dollar and a half.

This remarkable man lived to the age of eighty-one; when he died in 1863
in a splendid mansion which he had built in the heart of his vineyard,
his estate was valued at $15,000,000. He was the largest landowner in
Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States.
The value of the land that he bequeathed has increased continuously; in
the hands of his various descendants to-day it is many times more
valuable than the huge fortune which he left. Cincinnati, with its
population of 325,902,[168] pays incessant tribute in the form of a vast
rent roll to the scions of the man whose main occupation was to hold on
to the land he had got for almost nothing. Unlike the founder of the
fortune the present Longworth generation never strays from the set
formulas of respectability; it has intermarried with other rich
families: and Nicholas, a namesake and grandson of the original, and a
representative in Congress, married in circumstances of great and lavish
pomp a daughter of President Roosevelt, thus linking a large fortune,
based upon vested interests, with the ruling executive of the day and
strategically combining wealth with direct political power.

The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in
every large city. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of
population and its vast array of workers, immense for