But it should be noted that those who thus benefited, singularly enjoyed the advantages of laws and practices. For city land that they bought they were allowed to pay on easy terms; not infrequently the city had to bring action for final payment. But the tenants of these landlords had to pay rent on the day that it fell due, or within a few days of the time; they could not be in arrears more than three days without having to face dispossess proceedings. Nor was this all the difference. On land which they corruptly obtained from the city and which, to a large extent, they fraudulently caused to be filled in, regulated, graded or otherwise improved at the expense of the whole community, the landlords refused to pay taxes promptly, just as they refused to pay them on land that they had bought privately. What was the result? "Some of our wealthiest citizens," reported the Controller in 1831, "are in the habit of postponing the payment of taxes for six months and more, and the Common Council are necessitated to borrow money on interest to meet the ordinary disbursements of the city."[111] If a man of very moderate means were backward in payment of taxes, the city promptly closed him out, and if a tenant of any of these delinquent landlords were dispossessed for non-payment of rent, the city it was which undertook the process of eviction. The rich landlord, however, could do as he pleased, since all government represented his interests and those of his class. Instead of the punishment for non-payment of taxes being visited upon him, it was imposed upon the whole community in the form of interest-bearing bonds. PILLAGE, PROFITS AND LAND. The money that Astor secured by robbing the Indians and exploiting the workers by means of monopolies, he thus put largely into land. In 1810, a story runs, he offers to sell a Wall Street lot for $8,000. The price is so low that a buyer promptly appears. "Yes, you are astonished," Astor says. "But see what I intend to do with that eight thousand dollars. That Wall Street lot, it is true, will be worth twelve thousand dollars in a few years. But I shall take that eight thousand dollars and buy eighty lots above Canal street and by the time your one lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars." So goes one of the fine stories told to illustrate his foresight, and to prove that his fortune came exclusively from that faculty and from his industry.