THE BASIS OF WEALTH'S STRUCTURE.
It was they who finally had to bear the cost of exorbitant rents; it was their work, the products which they created, which were the bases of the whole structure. And in speaking of murder, it is not deliberate, premeditated murder which is meant, in the sense covered by statute, but that much more insidious kind ensuing from grinding exploitation; in herding human beings into habitations unfit even for animals which need air and sunshine, and then in stubbornly resisting any attempt to improve living conditions in these houses. In this respect, it cannot be too strongly pointed out, the Astors were in nowise different from the general run of landlords. Is it not murder when, compelled by want, people are forced to fester in squalid, germ-filled tenements, where the sunlight never enters and where disease finds a prolific breeding-place? Untold thousands went to their deaths in these unspeakable places. Yet, so far as the Law was concerned, the rents collected by the Astors, as well as by other landlords, were honestly made. The whole institution of Law saw nothing out of the way in these conditions, and very significantly so, because, to repeat