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