There cannot be the slightest doubt that the rich, as a class, were eager to have the Tweed régime continue. They might pose as fine moralists and profess to instruct the poor in religion and politics, but this attitude was a fraud; they deliberately instigated, supported, and benefited by, all of the great strokes of thievery that Tweed and Connolly put through. Thus to mention one of many instances, the foremost financial and business men of the day were associated as directors with Tweed in the Viaduct Railroad. This was a project to build a railroad on or above the ground on any New York City street. One provision of the bill granting this unprecedentedly comprehensive franchise compelled the city to take $5,000,000 of stock; another exempted the company property from taxes or assessments. Other subsidiary bills allowed for the benefit of the railroad the widening and grading of streets which meant a "job" costing from $50,000,000 to $60,000,000.[152] This bill was passed by the Legislature and signed by Tweed's puppet Governor Hoffman; and only the exposure of the Tweed régime a few months later prevented the complete consummation of this almost unparalleled steal.
Considering the fact that the richest and most influential and respectable men were direct allies of the Tweed clique, it was not surprising that men such as John Jacob Astor, Jr., Moses Taylor, Edward Schell and company were willing enough to sign a testimonial certifying to Controller Connolly's honesty. The Tweed "ring" supposed that a testimonial signed by these men would make a great impression upon the public. Yet, stripping away the halo which society threw about them simply because they had wealth, these rich citizens themselves were to be placed in even a lower category than Tweed, on the principle that the greater the pretension, the worst in its effect upon society is the criminal act. The Astors cheated the city out of enormous sums in real estate and personal property taxation; Moses Taylor likewise did so, as was clearly brought out by a Senate Investigating Committee in 1890; Roberts had been implicated in great swindles during the Civil War; and as for Edward Schell, he, by collusion with corrupt officials, compelled the city to pay exorbitant sums for real estate owned by him and which the city needed for public purposes. And further it should be pointed out that Tweed, Connolly and Sweeny were but vulgar political thieves who retained only a small part of their thefts. Tweed died in prison quite poor; even the very extensive area of real estate that he bought with stolen money vanished, one part of it going in lieu of counsel fees to one of his lawyers, Elihu Root, United States Secretary of State under Roosevelt.[153] Connolly fled abroad with $6,000,000 of loot and died there, while Sweeny settled with the city for an insignificant sum. The men who really profited directly or indirectly by the gigantic thefts of money and the franchise, tax-exemption, and other measures put through the legislature or common council were men of wealth in the background, who thereby immensely increased their riches and whose descendants now possess towering fortunes and bear names of the highest "respectability."[154]
The original money of the landholders came from trade; and then by a combination of cunning, bribery, and a moiety of what was considered legitimate investment, they became the owners of immense tracts of the most valuable city land. The rentals from these were so great that continuously more and more surplus wealth was heaped up. This surplus wealth, in slight part, went to bribe representative bodies for special laws giving them a variety of exclusive property, and another part was used in buying stock in various enterprises the history of which reeked with corruption.
From being mere landholders whose possessions were confined mainly to city land, they became part owners of railroad, telegraph, express and other lines reaching throughout the country. So did their holdings and wealth-producing interests expand by a cumulative and ever-widening process. The prisons were perennially filled with convicts, nearly all of whom had committed some crime against property, and for so doing were put in chains behind heavy bars, guarded by rifles and great stone walls. But the men who robbed the community of its land and its railroads (most of which latter were built with public land and money) and who defrauded it in a thousand ways, were, if not morally exculpated, at least not molested, and were permitted to retain their plunder, which, to them, was the all-important thing. This plunder, in turn, became the basis for the foundation of an aristocracy which in time built palaces, invented impressive pedigrees and crests and coats-of-arms, intermarried with European titles, and either owned or influenced newspapers and journals which taught the public how it should think and how it should act. It is one thing to commit crimes against property, and a vastly different thing to commit crimes in behalf of property. Such is the edict of a system inspired by the sway of property.
RENTALS FROM DISEASE AND DEATH.
But the sources of the large rentals that flowed into the exchequers of the landlords—what were they? Where did these rents, the volume of which was so great that the surplus part of them went into other forms of investments, come from? Who paid them and how did the tenants of these mammoth landlords live?
A considerable portion came from business buildings and private residences on much of the very land which New York City once owned and which was corruptly squirmed out of municipal ownership. For the large rentals which they were forced to pay, the business men recouped themselves by marking up the prices of all necessities. Another, and a very preponderate part, came from tenement houses. Many of these were also built on land filched from the city. And such habitations! Never before was anything seen like them. The reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866, 1867 and succeeding years revealed the fact that miles upon miles of city streets were covered with densely populated tenements, where human beings were packed in vile rooms, many of which were dark and unventilated and which were pestilential with disease and overflowed with deaths. In its first report, following its organization, the Metropolitan Board of Health pointed out:
The first, and at all times the most prolific cause of disease, was found to be the very insalubrious condition of most of the tenement houses in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. These houses are generally built without any reference to the health and comfort of the occupants, but simply with a view to economy and profit to the owner. They are almost invariably overcrowded, and ill-ventilated to such a degree as to render the air within them constantly impure and offensive.
Here follows a mass of nauseating details which for the sake of not overshocking the reader we shall omit. The report continued:
The halls and stairways are usually filthy and dark, and the walls and banisters foul and damp, while the floors were not infrequently used ... [for purposes of nature] ... for lack of other provisions. The dwelling rooms are usually very inadequate in size for the accommodation of their occupants, and many of the sleeping rooms are simply closets, without light or ventilation save by means of a single door.... Such is the character of a vast number of tenement houses, especially in the lower part of the city and along the eastern and western border. Disease especially in the form of fevers of a typhoid character are constantly present in these dwellings and every now and then become an epidemic.[155]