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Updated: June 26, 2025


It might have been built in accord with Sir Christopher's own design; and, flanked by the thirty-two storeys of the Park Row Building, it has the look of a small and dainty toy. Though Trinity Church, dedicated to the glory of God and the Astors, stands in an equally strange environment, it is less incongruous, as it is less elegant, than St Paul's.

"Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and the lot, provided you don't look at their clothes. And think of it! they told me for they tell one EVERYTHING in the most alarming way that those clothes were bought to please US. A scramble of things bought at La Grange, without reference to size or style. And to hear these creatures talk, why, you'd think they were Astors or Rothschilds.

His career has been presented in the most forbidding colors; and in order to show that he was an abnormal exception, and not a familiar type, his methods have been darkly contrasted with those of such illustrious capitalists as the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and others.

Such an avalanche of riches tumbled in upon him that, perforce, like the Astors, the Goelets and other multimillionaires, he was put constantly to the terrible extremity of seeking new fields for investment. Luxuriously live, as he did, it would have required a superior inventive capacity to have dissipated his full income.

Why, boy, his deserting his country will have about as much effect as it would for that man working in the street to pack up his household goods and move to Indiana. Do you suppose this state would tip up sideways if he should quit running that scraper and move out of the state? Not much. The Astors have been rich so long that they are un-American.

The Schermerhorns were powerful New York City landholders; and if not quite on the same pinnacle in point of wealth as the Astors, were at any rate very rich. The immensely valuable areas of land then held by the Schermerhorns, and still in their possession, were largely obtained by precisely the same means that the Astors, Goelets, Rhinelanders and other conspicuous land families had used.

As for New York City, we have seen how the Astors, the Schermerhorns, the Goelets the whole aggregate of the propertied class systematically defrauded in taxes for many decades. It is estimated that in New York City, at present, not less than five billion dollars of property, real and personal, entirely escapes taxation. This estimate is a conservative one.

With it, one can see the witches of Salem Village sailing out of those little square windows, which look as if they were made on purpose for them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze at "Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts of the Astors and Goulds and Vanderbilts, as she comes swimming into the harbor in all her gilded glory.

The example of the Astors and the Vanderbilts on the one hand, and Mr. Rockefeller's Benevolent Trust, on the other, show that these ways are infinitely varied and easily learned. Will it take the capitalists longer to learn to use the government for their purposes rather than to abuse it?

But I should just like to take him round in this little old metropolis awhile, and show him 'Every Other Week' on the centre tables of the millionaires the Vanderbilts and the Astors and in the homes of culture and refinement everywhere, and let him judge for himself.

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