payment of a small designated sum, and a full and clear title was then given by the city. In this rush to get water-grants—grants many of which are now solid land filled with business and residential buildings—many of the ancestors of those families which pride themselves upon their exclusive air participated. The Lorillards, the Goelets, William F. Havemeyer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, W. H. Webb, W. H. Kissam, Robert Lenox, Schermerhorn, James Roosevelt, William E. Dodge, Jr.—all of these and many others—not omitting Astor's American Fur Company—at various times down to, and including the period of, the monumentally corrupt Tweed "ring," got grants from corrupt city administrations. Some of these water rights, that is to say, such fragmentary parts of them as pertained to wharves and bulkheads, New York City, in recent years, has had to buy back at exorbitant prices. From the organization of the Dock Department down to 1906 inclusive, New York City had expended $70,000,000 for the purchase of bulkhead and wharf property and for construction.
During all the years from 1800 on, Astor, in conjunction with other landholders, was manipulating the city government not less than the State and Federal Government. Now he gets from the Board of Aldermen title to a portion of this or that old country road on Manhattan which the city closes up; again and