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 over and over again, Law did not represent the ethics or ideals of advanced humanity; it exactly reflected, as a pool reflects the sky, the demands and self-interest of the growing propertied classes. And if here and there a law was passed (which did not often happen) contrary to the expressed opposition of property, it was either so emasculated as to be harmless or it was not enforced. The direct sacrifice of human life, however, was merely one substratum of the Astor fortune. It is very likely, if the truth were fully known, that the stupendous sums in total that the Astors cheated in taxation, would have been more than enough to have constructed a whole group of railroads, or to have bought up whole sections of the outlying parts of the city, or to have built dozens of palaces. Incessantly they derived immense rentals from their constantly expanding estate, and just as persistently they perjured themselves, and defrauded the city, State and Nation of taxes. It was not often that the facts were disclosed; obviously the city or State officials, with whom the rich acted in collusion, tried their best to conceal them. GREAT THEFTS OF TAXES.