their incessant guerilla upon his defenseless rights have
unquestionably amounted to millions."

[99] Doc. No. 134, Twenty-fourth Congress, 2d Session, Vol. ii.

[100] Doc. 129, State Papers, 1819-21, Vol. ii.

[101] See Part I, Chapter II.

[102] "Allowed itself." The various New York legislatures from the end
of the eighteenth century on were hotbeds of corruption. Time after time
members were bribed to pass bills granting charters for corporations or
other special privileges. (See the numerous specific instances cited in
the author's "History of Tammany Hall," and subsequently in this work.)
The Legislature of 1827 was notoriously corrupt.

[103] Journal of the [New York] Senate, 1815:216--Journal of the [New
York] Assembly, 1818:261; Journal of the Assembly, 1819. Also "A
Statement and Exposition of The Title of John Jacob Astor to the Lands
Purchased by him from the surviving children of Roger Morris and Mary,
his Wife"; New York, 1827.

[104] MSS. Minutes of the (New York City) Common Council, xvi:239-40 and
405.

[105] Ibid., xx: 355-356.

[106] MSS. Minutes of the Common Council, xiii: 118 and 185.

[107] MSS. Minutes of the Common Council, xvii: 141-144. See also Annual
Report of Controller for 1849, Appendix A.

[108] MSS. Minutes of the Common Council, xviii: 411-414.

[109] Doc. No. 33, Documents of the Board of Aldermen, xxii:26.

[110] Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, 1832-33, iv: 416-418.

[111] Controller's Reports for 1831:7. Also Ibid. for 1841:28.

CHAPTER IV

THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE

Astor flourished at that precise time when the traders and landowners,
flushed with revenues, reached out for the creation and control of the
highly important business of professionally dealing in money, and of
dictating, personally and directly, what the supply of the people's
money should be.

This signalized the next step in the aggrandizement of individual
fortunes. The few who could center in themselves, by grace of
Government, the banking and manipulation of the people's money and the
restricting or inflating of money issues, were immediately vested with
an extraordinary power. It was a sovereign power at once coercive and
proscriptive, and a mighty instrument for transferring the produce of
the many to a small and exclusive coterie. Not merely over the labor of
the whole working class did this gripping process extend, but it was
severely felt by that large part of t