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and allowing future populations to make it a thousand times more valuable. An exception was his country estate of thirteen acres at Hurlgate (Hellgate) in the vicinity of Sixtieth street and the East River. It was curious to look back at the fact that less than a century ago the upper regions of Manhattan Island were filled with country estates--regions now densely occupied by huge tenement houses and some private dwellings. In those days, not less than in these, a country seat was considered a necessary appendage to the possessions of a rich man. Astor bought that Hurlgate estate as a country seat; but as such it was long since discontinued although the land comprising it has never left the hold of the Astor family. What were the intrinsic circumstances of the means by which he bought land, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars? For once, we get a gleam of the truth, but a gleam only, in the "popular writer's" account when he says: "John Jacob Astor's record is constantly crossed by embarrassed families, prodigal sons, mortgages and foreclosure sales. Many of the victims of his foresight were those highest in church and state. He thus acquired for $75,000 one-half of Governor George Clinton's splendid Greenwich country place [in the old Greenwich village on the west side of Manhattan Island].... After the Governor's death, he kept persistently at the heirs, lent them money and acquired additional slices of the family property.... Nearly two-thirds of the Clinton farm is now held by Astor's descendants, and is covered by scores of business buildings, from which is derived an annual income estimated at $500,000." THE FATE OF OTHERS HIS GAIN. In this transaction we see the beginnings of that period of conquest on the part of the very rich using their surplus capital in effacing the less rich--a period which really opened with Astor and which has been vastly intensified in recent times. Clinton was accounted a rich man in his day, but he was a pigmy in that respect compared to Astor. With his incessant inflow of surplus wealth, Astor was in a position where on the instant he could take advantage of the difficulties of less rich men and take over to himself their property. A large amount of Astor's money was invested in mortgages. In times of periodic financial and industrial distress, the mortgagers were driven to extremities and could no longer keep up their payments. These were the times that Astor waited for
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