History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial TimesMyers, Gustavus
History
History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times
Myers, Gustavus
United States -- Economic conditions; Wealth -- United States
are frequently of the most heartless and unscrupulous character
and make large profits by sub-letting. They leave no space
unoccupied: they rent sheds, basements and even cellars to
families and lodgers; they divide rooms by partitions, and then
place a whole family in a single room, to be used for living,
cooking, and sleeping purposes. In the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh,
Tenth, and Fourteenth Wards may be found large, old fashioned
dwellings originally constructed for one family, subdivided and
sublet to such an extent that even the former sub-cellars are
occupied by two or more families. There is a cellar population of
not less than 20,000 in New York City.
Here, again, shines forth with blinding brightness that superior
morality of the propertied classes. There is no record of a single
landlord who refused to pocket the great gains from the ownership of
tenement houses. Great, in fact, excessive gains they were, for the
landowning class considered tenements "magnificent investments" (how
edifying a phrase!) and all except one held on to them. That one was
William Waldorf Astor of the present generation, who, we are told, "sold
a million dollars worth of unpromising tenement house property in
1890."[156] What fantasy of action was it that caused William Waldorf
Astor to so depart from the accepted formulas of his class as to give up
these "magnificent investments?" Was it an abhorrence of tenements, or
a growing fastidiousness as to the methods? It is to be observed that up
to that time he and his family had tenaciously kept the revenues from
their tenements; evidently then, the source of the money was not a
troubling factor. And in selling those tenements he must have known that
his profits on the transaction would be charged by the buyers against
the future tenants and that even more overcrowding would result. What,
then, was the reason?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account