PILLAGE, PROFITS AND LAND.
The money that Astor secured by robbing the Indians and exploiting the workers by means of monopolies, he thus put largely into land. In 1810, a story runs, he offers to sell a Wall Street lot for $8,000. The price is so low that a buyer promptly appears. "Yes, you are astonished," Astor says. "But see what I intend to do with that eight thousand dollars. That Wall Street lot, it is true, will be worth twelve thousand dollars in a few years. But I shall take that eight thousand dollars and buy eighty lots above Canal street and by the time your one lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars." So goes one of the fine stories told to illustrate his foresight, and to prove that his fortune came exclusively from that faculty and from his industry.
This version bears all the impress of being undoubtedly a fraud. Astor was remarkably secretive and dissembling, and never revealed his plans to anyone. That he bought the lots is true enough, but his attributed loquacity is mythical and is the invention of some gushing eulogist. At that time he was buying for $200 or $300 each many lots on lower Broadway, then, for the most part, an unoccupied