rent-racked

Updated: June 28, 2025

The rent-racked people of the City of New York, where rents are higher proportionately than in any other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold.

Myers Gustavus - History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times

With the money squeezed out of his legions of poverty-stricken employees and out of his rent-racked tenants he became an industrial monarch. The inventory of his estates filed in court by his executors revealed that he owned stocks and bonds in about one hundred and fifty corporations.

Myers Gustavus - History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times