popularly assumed to be honest, will go to greater lengths in selling out the rights of the people than the most corrupt political machine, for the reason that their administrations are not generally suspected of corruption and therefore are not closely watched. Moreover, corruption by bribes is not always the most effective kind. There is a much more sinister form. It is that which flows from conscious class use of a responsive government for insidious ends. Practically all of the American "reform" movements have come within this scope.
This is no place for a dissertation on these pseudo reform movements; it is a subject deserving a special treatment by itself. But it is well to advert to them briefly here since it is necessary to give constant insights into the methods of the propertied class. Whether corruption or "reform" administrations were in power the cheating of municipality and State in taxation has gone on with equal vigor.4
A VAST ANNUAL INCOME.
The collective Astor fortune, as we have said, amounts to $450,000,000. This, however, is merely an estimate based largely upon their real estate possessions. No one but the Astors themselves know what are their holdings in bonds and stocks of every description. It is safe to venture the opinion that their fortune far exceeds $450,000,000. Their surplus wealth piles up so fast that a large part of it is incessantly being invested in buying more land. Originally owning land in the lower part of Manhattan, they then bought land in Yorkville, then added to their possessions in Harlem, and later in the Bronx, in which part of New York City they now own immense areas. Their estate is growing larger and larger all the time.
In rents in New York City alone it is computed that the Astors collect twenty-five or thirty million dollars a year. The "Astor Estates" are managed by a central office, the agent in charge of which is said to get a