This was, and is still, the system. Thoroughly riveted in law, it was regarded as a rational, beneficent and everlasting fixture of civilized life--by the beneficiaries. And as these latter happened to be, by virtue of their possessions, among the real rulers of government, their conceptions and interests were embodied in law, thought and custom as the edict of civilization. The whole concurrent institutions of society, which were but the echo of property interests, pronounced the system wise and just, and, as a reigning force, do still so proclaim it. In such a state there was nothing abnormal in any man monopolizing land and exclusively appropriating its revenues. On the contrary, it was considered a superior stroke of business, a splendid example of astuteness. Marshall Field was looked upon as a very sagacious business man. FIELD'S REAL ESTATE TRACTS. Field bought much land when it was of comparatively inconsequential value, and held on to it with a tenacious grip. In the last years of his life, his revenues from his real estate were uninterruptedly enormous. "Downtown real estate in Chicago," wrote "a popular writer" in a typically effusive biographical account of Field, published in 1901, "is about as valuable, foot for foot, as that in the best locations in New York City. From $8,000 to $15,000 a front foot are not uncommon figures for property north of Congress street, in the Chicago business district. Marshall Field owns not less than twenty choice sites and buildings in this section; not including those used for his drygoods business. In the vicinity of the Chicago University buildings he owns square block after block of valuable land. Yet farther south he owns hundreds of acres of land in the Calumet region--land invaluable for manufacturing purposes." This extension and centralization of land ownership were accompanied by precisely the same results as were witnessed in other cities, although these results were the sequence of the whole social and industrial system, and not solely of any one phase. Poverty grew in exact proportion to the growth of large fortunes; the one presupposed, and was built upon, the existence of the other. Chicago became full of slums and fetid, overcrowded districts; and if the density and congestion of population are not as great as in New York, Boston and Cincinnati, it is only because of more favorable geographical conditions.