THE GROWTH OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
While at the outposts, and in the depths, of the Western wilderness an armed host was working and cheating for Astor, and, in turn, being cheated by their employer; while, for Astor's gain, they were violating all laws, debauching, demoralizing and beggaring entire tribes of Indians, slaying and often being themselves slain in retaliation, what was the beneficiary of this orgy of crime and bloodshed doing in New York?
For a long time he lived at No. 223 Broadway in a large double house, flanked by an imposing open piazza supported by pillars and arches. In this house he combined the style of the ascending capitalist with the fittings and trappings of the tradesman. It was at once residence, office and salesroom. On the ground floor was his store, loaded with furs; and here one of his sons and his chief heir, William B. could be seen, as a lad, assiduously beating the furs to keep out moths. Astor's disposition was phlegmatic and his habits were extremely simple and methodical. He had dinner regularly at three o'clock, after which he would limit himself to three games of checkers and a glass of beer. Most of his long day was taken up with close attention to his many business interests of which no detail escaped him. However execrated he might be in the Indian territories far in the West, he assumed, and somewhat succeeded in being credited with, the character of a patriotic, respectable and astute man of business in New York.
ASTOR SUPERIOR TO LAW.
During (taking a wide survey) the same series of years that he was directing gross violations of explicit laws in the fur-producing regions—laws upon the observance of which depended the very safety of the life of men, women and children, white and red, and which laws were vested with an importance corresponding with the baneful and bloody results of their infraction—Astor was turning other laws to his distinct advantage in the East. Pillaging in the West the rightful and legal domain, and the possessions, of a dozen Indian tribes, he, in the East, was causing public money to be turned over to his private treasury and using it as personal capital in his shipping enterprises.
As applied to the business and landowning class, law was notoriously a flexible, convenient, and highly adaptable function. By either the tacit permission or connivance of Government, this class was virtually, in most instances, its own law-regulator. It could consistently, and without being seriously interfered with, violate such laws as suited its interests, while calling for the enactment or enforcement of other laws which favored its designs and enhanced its profits. We see Astor ruthlessly brushing aside, like so many annoying encumbrances, even those very laws which were commonly held indispensable to a modicum of fair treatment of the Indians and to the preservation of human life. These laws happened to conflict with the amassing of profits; and always in a civilization ruled by the trading class, laws which do this are either unceremoniously trampled upon, evaded or repealed.
For all the long-continued violations of law in the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to assume the role of looking upon the Indians as its wards, and thus of theoretically extending to them the shield of its especial protection. If Government allowed a people whom it pleased to signify as its wards to be debauched, plundered and slain, what kind of treatment could be expected for the working class as to which there was not even the fiction of Government concern, not to mention wardship?
LAW BREAKERS AND LAW MAKERS.
But when it came to laws which, in the remotest degree, could be used or manipulated to swell profits or to buttress property, Astor and his class were untiring and vociferous in demanding their strict enforcement. Successfully ignoring or circumventing laws objectionable to them, they, at the same time, insisted upon the passage and exact construction and severe enforcement of laws which were adjusted to their interests. Law breakers, on the one hand, they were law makers on the other. They caused to be put in statute, and intensified by judicial precedent, the most rigorous laws in favor of property rights. They virtually had the extraordinary power of choosing what laws they should observe and what they should not. This choice was invariably at the expense of the working class. Law, that much-sanctified product, was really law only when applied to the propertyless. It confronted the poor at every step, was executed with summary promptitude and filled the prisons with them. Poverty had no choice in saying what laws it should obey and what it should not. It, perforce, had to obey or go to prison; either one or the other, for the laws were expressly drafted to bear heavily upon it.
It is illustrative, in the highest degree, of the character of Government ruled by commercial interests, that Astor was allowed to pillage and plunder, cheat, rob and (by proxy) slaughter in the West, while, in the East, that same Government extended to him, as well as to other shippers, the free use of money which came from the taxation of the whole people—a taxation always weighted upon the shoulders of the worker. In turn, this favored class, either consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, cheated the Government of nearly half of the sums advanced. From the foundation of the Government up to 1837, there were nine distinct commercial crises which brought about terrible hardships to the wage workers. Did the Government step in and assist them? At no time. But during all those years the Government was busy in letting the shippers dig into the public funds and in being extremely generous to them when they failed to pay up. From 1789 to 1823 the Government lost more than $250,000,000 in duties,[90] all of which sum represented what the shippers owed and did not, or could not, pay. And no criminal proceedings were brought against any of these defaulters.