t
of postponing the payment of taxes for six months and more, and the
Common Council are necessitated to borrow money on interest to meet the
ordinary disbursements of the city."[111] If a man of very moderate
means were backward in payment of taxes, the city promptly closed him
out, and if a tenant of any of these delinquent landlords were
dispossessed for non-payment of rent, the city it was which undertook
the process of eviction. The rich landlord, however, could do as he
pleased, since all government represented his interests and those of his
class. Instead of the punishment for non-payment of taxes being visited
upon him, it was imposed upon the whole community in the form of
interest-bearing bonds.

PILLAGE, PROFITS AND LAND.

The money that Astor secured by robbing the Indians and exploiting the
workers by means of monopolies, he thus put largely into land. In 1810,
a story runs, he offers to sell a Wall Street lot for $8,000. The price
is so low that a buyer promptly appears. "Yes, you are astonished,"
Astor says. "But see what I intend to do with that eight thousand
dollars. That Wall Street lot, it is true, will be worth twelve thousand
dollars in a few years. But I shall take that eight thousand dollars
and buy eighty lots above Canal street and by the time your one lot is
worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty
thousand dollars." So goes one of the fine stories told to illustrate
his foresight, and to prove that his fortune came exclusively from that
faculty and from his industry.

This version bears all the impress of being undoubtedly a fraud. Astor
was remarkably secretive and dissembling, and never revealed his plans
to anyone. That he bought the lots is true enough, but his attributed
loquacity is mythical and is the invention of some gushing eulogist. At
that time he was buying for $200 or $300 each many lots on lower
Broadway, then, for the most part, an unoccupied waste. What he was
counting upon was the certain growth of the city and the vastly
increasing values not that he would give his land, but which would
accrue from the labor of an enlarged population. These lots are now
occupied by crowded business buildings and are valued at from $300,000
to $400,000 each.

Throughout those years in the first decade of the nineteenth century he
was constantly buying land on Manhattan Island. Practically all of it
was bought, not with the idea of using it, but of holding it