er. Most
of his long day was taken up with close attention to his many business
interests of which no detail escaped him. However execrated he might be
in the Indian territories far in the West, he assumed, and somewhat
succeeded in being credited with, the character of a patriotic,
respectable and astute man of business in New York.

ASTOR SUPERIOR TO LAW.

During (taking a wide survey) the same series of years that he was
directing gross violations of explicit laws in the fur-producing
regions--laws upon the observance of which depended the very safety of
the life of men, women and children, white and red, and which laws were
vested with an importance corresponding with the baneful and bloody
results of their infraction--Astor was turning other laws to his
distinct advantage in the East. Pillaging in the West the rightful and
legal domain, and the possessions, of a dozen Indian tribes, he, in the
East, was causing public money to be turned over to his private treasury
and using it as personal capital in his shipping enterprises.

As applied to the business and landowning class, law was notoriously a
flexible, convenient, and highly adaptable function. By either the tacit
permission or connivance of Government, this class was virtually, in
most instances, its own law-regulator. It could consistently, and
without being seriously interfered with, violate such laws as suited its
interests, while calling for the enactment or enforcement of other laws
which favored its designs and enhanced its profits. We see Astor
ruthlessly brushing aside, like so many annoying encumbrances, even
those very laws which were commonly held indispensable to a modicum of
fair treatment of the Indians and to the preservation of human life.
These laws happened to conflict with the amassing of profits; and always
in a civilization ruled by the trading class, laws which do this are
either unceremoniously trampled upon, evaded or repealed.

For all the long-continued violations of law in the West, and for the
horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor
ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a
triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of
acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity
that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the
Government had already begun to assume the role of looking upon the
Indians as its wards, and thu