phrase!) and all except one held on to them. That one was
William Waldorf Astor of the present generation, who, we are told, "sold
a million dollars worth of unpromising tenement house property in
1890."[156] What fantasy of action was it that caused William Waldorf
Astor to so depart from the accepted formulas of his class as to give up
these "magnificent investments?" Was it an abhorrence of tenements, or
a growing fastidiousness as to the methods? It is to be observed that up
to that time he and his family had tenaciously kept the revenues from
their tenements; evidently then, the source of the money was not a
troubling factor. And in selling those tenements he must have known that
his profits on the transaction would be charged by the buyers against
the future tenants and that even more overcrowding would result. What,
then, was the reason?

About the year 1887 there developed an agitation in New York City
against the horrible conditions in tenement houses, and laws were
popularly demanded which would put a stop to them, or at least bring
some mitigation. The whole landlord class virulently combated this
agitation and these proposed laws. What happened next? Significantly
enough a municipal committee was appointed by the mayor to make an
inquiry into tenement conditions; and this committee was composed of
property owners. William Waldorf Astor was a conspicuous member of the
committee. The mockery of a man whose family owned miles of tenements
being chosen for a committee, the province of which was to find ways of
improving tenement conditions, was not lost on the public, and shouts of
derision went up. The working population was skeptical, and with reason,
of the good faith of this committee. Every act, beginning with the mild
and ineffective one of 1867, designed to remedy the appalling conditions
in tenement houses, had been stubbornly opposed by the landlords; and
even after these puerile measures had finally been passed, the landlords
had resisted their enforcement. Whether it was because of the bitter
criticisms levelled at him, or because he saw that it would be a good
time to dispose of his tenements as a money-making matter before further
laws were passed, is not clearly known. At any rate William Waldorf
Astor sold large batches of tenements.

AN EXALTED CAPITALIST.

To return, however, to William B. Astor. He was the owner, it was
reckoned in 1875, of more than seven hundred buildings and houses, not