centralize still greater wealth in the circumscribed
ownership of a few families. In estimating, therefore, the collective
wealth of the Astors, as in fact of nearly all of the great fortunes,
the measure should not be merely the possessions of one family, but
should embrace the combined wealth of interrelated rich families.

The wedding of William Astor (as was that of his son John Jacob Astor
thirty-eight years later to a daughter of one of the richest landholding
families in Philadelphia) was an event of the day if one judges by the
commotion excited among what was represented as the superior class, and
the amount of attention given by the newspapers. In reality, viewing
them in their proper perspective, these marriages of the rich were
infinitesimal affairs, which would scarcely deserve a mention, were it
not for the effect that they had in centralizing wealth and for the
clear picture that they give of the ideas of the times. Posterity, which
is the true arbiter in distinguishing between the enduring and the
evanescent, the important and the trivial, rightly cares nothing for
essentially petty matters which once were held of the highest
importance. Edgar Allan Poe, wearing his life out in extreme poverty,
William Lloyd Garrison, thundering against chattel slavery from a Boston
garret, Robert Dale Owen spending his years in altruistic
endeavors--these men were contemporaries of the Astors of the second
generation. Yet a marriage among the very rich was invested by the
self-styled creators and dispensers of public opinion with far more
importance than the giving out of the world of the most splendid
products of genius or the enunciation of principles of the profoundest
significance to humanity. Yet why slur the practices of past generations
when we to-day are confronted by the same perversions? In the month of
February, 1908, for instance, several millions of men in the United
States were out of work; in destitution, because something or other
stood between them and their getting work; and consequently they and
their wives and children had to face starvation. This condition might
have been enough to shock even the most callous mind, certainly enough
to have impressed the community. But what happened? The superficial
historian of the future, who depends upon the newspapers and who gauges
his facts accordingly, will conclude that there was little or no misery
or abject want; that the people were interested in petty happ