This large fortune, as is that of the Astors and of other extensive landlords, is not, as has been pointed out, purely one of land possessions. Far from it. The invariable rule, it might be said, has been to utilize the surplus revenues in the form of rents, in buying up controlling power in a great number and variety of corporations. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. The rent-racked people of the City of New York, where rents are higher proportionately than in any other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land.
WHERE SURPLUS REVENUE HAS GONE.
But the singular continuity does not end here. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. The railroads now controlled by a few men, among whom the large landowners are conspicuous, were surveyed and built to a great extent by public funds, not private money. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. Little by little, scarcely known to the people, laws are altered; the States and the Government, representing the interests of the vested class, surrender the people's rights, often even the empty forms of those rights, and great railroad systems pass into the hands of a small cabal of multimillionaires.
To give one of many instances: The Illinois Central Railroad, passing through an industrial and rich farming country, is one of the most profitable railroads in the United States. This railroad was built in the proportion of twelve parts to one by public funds, raised by taxation of the people of that State, and by prodigal gifts of public land grants. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. Of this