t up or down
the value of farming lands. The building of a canal would augment the
value of land in section and cause stimulation, and depress conditions
in another section not so favored. Even this stimulation, however, was
often transient. With each fresh settlement of the West and with the
construction of each pioneer railroad, new and complex factors turned up
which generally had a depreciating effect upon Eastern lands. A country
estate worth a large sum in one generation might very well succumb to a
mortgage in the next.

THE NEW ARISTOCRACY.

But fortunes based upon land in the cities were indued with a
mathematical certainty and a perpetuity. City real estate was not
subject to the extreme fluctuating processes which so disordered the
value of rural land. All of the tendencies and currents of the times
favored the building up of an aristocracy based upon ownership of city
property. Compared to their present colossal proportions the cities were
then mere villages. There was a nucleus of perhaps a mile or two of
houses, beyond which were fields and orchards, meadows and wastes. These
could be bought for an insignificant sum. With the progressing growth
of commerce and population, with immigration continually going on, every
year witnessing a keener pressure for occupation of the land, the value
of this latter was certain to increase. There was no chance of its being
otherwise.

Up to 1825 it was a mooted question whether the richest landowners would
arise in New York, Philadelphia, Boston or Baltimore. For many years
Philadelphia had been far in the lead in extent of commerce. But the
opening of the Erie Canal at once settled this question. At a bound New
York attained the rank of the foremost commercial city in the United
States, completely outstripping its competitors. While the trade of
these fell off precipitately, the population and trade of New York City
nearly doubled in a single decade. The value of land began to increase
stupendously. The swamps, rocky wastes and flats and the land under
water of a few years before became prolific sources of fortunes. Land
which had been worth a paltry sum ten or twenty years before sprang to a
considerable value and, in course of time, with the same causes in a
more intense ratio of operation, was vested with a value of hundreds of
millions of dollars. This being so, it was not surprising that the
richest landowners should appear first in New York City and should be