ASTOR'S WEALTH MULTIPLIES.
Within a few years after the panic of 1837 Astor's wealth multiplied to an enormous extent. Business revived, values increased. It was now that immigration began to pour in heavily. In 1843 sixty thousand immigrants entered the port of New York. Four years later the number was 129,000 a year. Soon it rose to 300,000 a year; and from that time on kept on ever increasing. A large portion of these immigrants remained in New York City. Land was in demand as never before; fast and faster the city grew. Vacant lots of a few years before became congested with packed humanity; landlordism and slums flourished side by side, the one as a development of the other. The outlying farm, rocky and swamp lands of the New York City of 1812, with its 100,000 population became the thickly-settled metropolis of 1840, with 317,712 inhabitants and the well-nigh half-million population of 1850. Hard as the laborer might work, he was generally impoverished for the reason that successively rents were raised, and he had to yield up more and more of his labor for