What did Astor pay his men for engaging in this degrading and dangerous business? Is it not a terrifying commentary on the lengths to which men are forced to go in quest of a livelihood, and the benumbing effects on their sensibilities, that Astor should find a host of men ready to seduce the Indians into a state of drunkenness, cheat and rob them, and all this only to get robbed and perhaps murdered in turn? For ten or eleven months in the year Astor's subaltern men toiled arduously through forest and plain, risking sickness, the dangers of the wilderness and sudden death. They did not rob because it benefited them; it was what they were paid to do; and it was likewise expected of them that they should look upon the imminent chances of death as a part of their contract. For all this what was their pay? It was the trifling sum of $130 for the ten or eleven months. But this was not paid in money. The poor wretches who gave up their labor, and often their health and lives, for Astor were themselves robbed, or their heirs, if they had any. Payment was nearly always made in merchandise, which was sold at exorbitant prices. Everything that they needed they had to buy at Astor's stores; by the time that they had bought a year's supplies they not only had nothing coming to them, but they were often actually in debt to Astor. But Astor--how did he fare? His profits from the fur trade of the West were truly stupendous for that period. He, himself, might plead to the Government that the company was in a decaying state of poverty. These pleas deceived no one. It was characteristic of his habitual deceit that he should petition the Government for a duty on foreign furs on the ground that the company was being competed with in the American markets by the British fur companies. At this very time Astor held a virtual monopoly of fur trading in the United States. One need not be surprised at the grounds of such a plea. Throughout the whole history of the trading class, this pathetic and absurdly false plea of poverty has incessantly been used by this class, and used successfully, to get further concessions and privileges from a Government which reflected, and represented, its interests. Curiously, enough, however, if a mendicant used the same plea in begging a mite of alms on the streets, the law has invariably regarded him as a vagrant to be committed to the Workhouse. ASTOR'S ENORMOUS PROFITS.