RS OF SOCIETY.

This was the prevalent commercial system. The most infamous frauds were
carried on; and so dominant were the traders' standards that these
frauds passed as legitimate business methods. The very men who profited
by them were the mainstays of churches, and not only that, but they were
the very same men who formed the various self-constituted committees
which demanded severe laws against paupers and petty criminals. A study
of the names of the men, for instance, who comprised the New York
Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1818-1823, shows that nearly
all of them were shippers or merchants who participated in the current
commercial frauds. Yet this was the class that sat in judgment upon the
poverty of the people and the acts of poor criminals and which dictated
laws to legislatures and to Congress.

Girard and Astor were the superfine products of this system; they did in
a greater way what others did in a lesser way. As a consequence, their
careers were fairly well illumined. The envious attacks of their
competitors ascribed their success to hard-hearted and ignoble
qualities, while their admirers heaped upon them tributes of praise for
their extraordinary genius. Both sets exaggerated. Their success in
garnering millions was merely an abnormal manifestation of an ambition
prevalent among the trading class. Their methods were an adroit
refinement of methods which were common. The game was one in which,
while fortunes were being amassed, masses of people were thrown into the
direst poverty and their lives were attended by injustice and suffering.
In this game a large company of eminent merchants played; Girard and
Astor were peers in the playing and got away with the greater share of
the stakes.

POST-REVOLUTIONARY CONDITIONS.

Before describing Girard's career, it is well to cast a retrospective
fleeting glance into conditions following the Revolution.

Despite the lofty sentiments of the Declaration of
Independence--sentiments which were submerged by the propertied class
when the cause was won--the gravity of law bore wholly in favor of the
propertied interests. The propertyless had no place or recognition. The
common man was good enough to shoulder a musket in the stress of war but
that he should have rights after the war, was deemed absurd. In the
whole scheme of government neither the feelings nor the interests of the
worker were thought of.

The Revolution brought no immediate bettermen