his real estate were uninterruptedly enormous.

"Downtown real estate in Chicago," wrote "a popular writer" in a
typically effusive biographical account of Field, published in 1901, "is
about as valuable, foot for foot, as that in the best locations in New
York City. From $8,000 to $15,000 a front foot are not uncommon figures
for property north of Congress street, in the Chicago business district.
Marshall Field owns not less than twenty choice sites and buildings in
this section; not including those used for his drygoods business. In the
vicinity of the Chicago University buildings he owns square block after
block of valuable land. Yet farther south he owns hundreds of acres of
land in the Calumet region--land invaluable for manufacturing
purposes."

This extension and centralization of land ownership were accompanied by
precisely the same results as were witnessed in other cities, although
these results were the sequence of the whole social and industrial
system, and not solely of any one phase. Poverty grew in exact
proportion to the growth of large fortunes; the one presupposed, and was
built upon, the existence of the other. Chicago became full of slums and
fetid, overcrowded districts; and if the density and congestion of
population are not as great as in New York, Boston and Cincinnati, it is
only because of more favorable geographical conditions.

Field's fortune was heaped up in about the last twenty years of his
life. The celerity of its progress arose from the prolific variety and
nature of his possessions. To form even an approximate idea of how fast
wealth came in to him, it is necessary to picture millions of men, women
and children toiling day after day, year in and year out, getting a
little less than two parts of the value of what they produced, while
almost nine portions either went to him entirely or in part. But this
was not all. Add to these millions of workers the rest of the population
of the United States who had to buy from, or in some other way pay
tribute to, the many corporations in which Field held stock, and you get
some adequate conception of the innumerable influxions of gold which
poured into Field's coffers every minute, every second of the day,
whether he were awake or asleep; whether sick or well, whether traveling
or sitting stock still.

HIS INCOME: $500 TO $700 AN HOUR.

This one man had the legal power of taking over to himself, as his
inalienable property, his to enjoy,