The Daily Morning Astorian

THE ASTOR FAMILY.
Its
Place in New York Society.
The Astor family claims pre-eminence in the social world of New York, and now that Mrs. John Jacob Astor has passed from the scene of fashion's whims and revelries, the social leadership is supposed to fall on Mrs. William Astor. The combined wealth of the Astor family is easily $150,000,000. They own 700 houses in New York, or so many that it does not pay to insure them. The founder of the house, old John Jacob Astor, came to this country late in the last century, and died forty years ago, worth $20,000,000, after a lifetime devoted to the sale of skins, pelts, tea, ginseng and other interesting suggestions for a coat-of-arms, when the successful pelt-dealer or his descendants should aspire to social leadership. The original Astor possessed exceptional commercial skill, but was in no sense the great man that spaniel-like cringers at the heels of wealth would have it appear. He was a great trader, close, hard-headed, bowing before one altar on which stands the golden image of Mammon. He left as monuments to his memory the Astor house, the Astor library, Astoria on Long Island, the name of this city for which he never did anything, and a charitable institution also bearing his name at Waldorf on the Rhine, where he was born, and which he founded at an expense of $500,000; the Astor library, in New York, cost him or his family nearly or quite that sum. His successor was Wm. B. Astor, who devoted his life to the preservation of the estate left him. He increased it by judicious real estate investments in the upper part of the city, and died with a fortune five times as large as that of the original Astor. He had no social aspirations and did not plume himself on his wealth. Walking down Broadway one morning to his office, he stepped into a puddle in the gutter and he accidentally splattered the boots of a pedestrian behind him. The man plainly showed that he was annoyed, whereupon Mr. Astor invited him into his office, close at hand, and taking out a blacking brush the hundred-millionaire was proceeding to brush the stranger's boots, whereupon the latter, having discovered that the tall, fair complexioned, would be bootblack was Wm. B. Astor, one of the richest men in the world, refused to allow him to carry out his intention, and blushing to the roots of his hair, turned away with new and strange ideas of millionaires. Wm. B. Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his son, John Jacob Astor, and, it is said, was inclined to practically disinherit his other son, William, who seemed to have no business capacity whatever, but John Jacob magnanimously insisted on his brother's receiving a considerable share of the estate, and now John is worth $100,000,000 and William $50,000,000.

Mrs. John Jacob Astor, who has just died, aspired to the social leadership of New York. There has been considerable said in local newspapers about her benefactions, which, considering her vast wealth, seem to have been conducted on a very moderate scale compared with those of the late Miss Catharine Wolfe, who was one of New York's wealthiest and most amiable of millionaires. Mrs. Astor's social eminence and the well known closeness of the Astor family made whatever charitable gift she might make seem of far greater consequence than it really was. Often the petty benefactions of the wealthy are simply futile attempts to crawl through the eye of a needle into the larger world of charity and humanity beyond the narrowing, mean-spirited confines of money and money-grabbing. The simple truth is that Mrs. Astor was a well-meaning woman of very ordinary caliber, who occasionally gave moderate sums for charitable objects, and was accordingly lauded to the skies by the sickening sycophants who crook a fawning knee to the "Almighty Dollar."

William Astor's only son is "Jack" Astor, a youth of 21, just out of college, who may possibly know enough to get out of a thunder-shower, though this is open to serious question. At college Jack Astor was dubbed "Jackass," an anagram borrowed from his name and perhaps open to the objection of twitting on facts.

William Waldo Astor, late minister to Italy and a son of John Jacob Astor, is the most cultivated member of the family. He has literary aspirations and has written several books. He was a candidate for congress several years ago, but was badly defeated. He went around among the saloons on the east side, treating all and sundry, and leaving twenty dollar gold pieces to treat others. But the jingle of his coin was the knell of his congressional hopes, for he brought out the idea of bargain and sale too plainly, and none would vote for a man who thought he could buy them up like cattle.

This is a hurried glance at a family that assumes to lead New York society. Its only claim to leadership is the possession of colossal wealth.