People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1895 — THE LANDED LORDS. [ARTICLE]

THE LANDED LORDS.

MFN WHO CHARGE OTHERS FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF LIVING. The Landlord Claat la Growing in Ita Hold Inga and Power; the Landless Class Has Lost Ita Independence—Half of the American People Homeless. George Montford Simonson, writing in Munsey’s for August, describes the remarkable growth of the great landed estates In America and discusses the cause of the movement and its possible meaning for good or ill. We have a landed aristocracy, and a correlated class called the proletariat, or landless class. The latter class now number over half of the 70,000,000 of our population. The landlord class is growing in its holdings and power, the landless class has lost its Independence. We recently referred to Lord Scully, the alien rack renter, who, with rents from his original purchase of 100,000 acres in Illinois in the ’so’B, has been increasing his holdings until he now owns in addition an entire county in Kansas, 42,000 acres in Gage county, Nebraska, 30,000 in Nuckolls county, and other large tracts. In this article, using Mr. Simonson for authority, we will call attention to some other landed gentry. The Vanderbilt family is naturally taking the lead in grasping the basis of all power and authority, the land. George W. Vanderbilt, the youngest of William H. Vanderbilt’s sons, "is making of Baltimore, near Asheville, North Carolina, one of the most remarkable mansions. This Vanderbilt has bought 30,000 acres there, land that made many small farms, and has put up a mansion, the foundation of which cost 1400,000. The top of a mountain was leveled off to make the site, and Immense quantities of rich soil for the gardens were transported by rail from distant valleys and river bottoms. A temporary railroad was constructed to convey building material to the site of the mansion. This vast Vanderbilt estate Is to be devoted to tree culture and a game preserve. The raising of wild deer and foxes Is more importan* than the rearing of men. John Jacob Astor has a similar es tate in Florida. Still greater in extent is the mana of Dr. William Seward Webb (whost wife was the William H. Vanderbllt’i daughter) in the Adirondacks, an es tate of 153,000 acres, including part o two counties. Of this amount 112,00( acres has been incorporated by Dr Webb under the name of the Nehasane Park Association, as the manager of the estate says, “in order to facilitate the perpetual holding in a solid body of so much of this land as Dr. Webb should finally decide it desirable to devote permanently to the purpose of a private park and game preserve.' Much of this estate will be fenced tc confine large game, moose, elk an> deer having already been placed in tiu enclosure for breeding purposes, with a view to the final stocking of th* whole park. (Let men die; let million, of families be homeless; but providi the rich a range to breed wild animals that they and the English dukes and marquises who come to trade names foi fortunes may have the fun of shooting them.) Dr. Webb has also one of the finest country seats in America on the east side of Lake Champlain. It contains 30,500 acres, and twenty-eight small farms, homes, were absorbed to form this single family estate. M. McK. Twombly, another son-in-law of William H. Vanderbilt, has an estate adjoining Webb’s in the Adirondacks which contains about 100,000 acres, besides a splendid country seat at Madison, N. J., containing several hundred acres of ground. Austin Corbin, president of the Long Island railroad, has a vast estate in New Hampshire, containing 26,006 acres. The declared object of farming this great game preserve is "to provide a living book on natural history for the instruction of his son.” How fine a thing it would be for the whole United States to be bought up by millionaires and converted into private parks to furnish shooting and instruction for their eons in natural history! Corbin has had thirty miles of barbed wire fence placed around his park, at a cost of |70,000, and has placed within reindeer from Labrador, wild boars from Germany, moose from Montana, while elk from the northwest, deei from the Maine forests, partridges from Virginia and hares from Belgium. A herd of American bison which Corbin had previously kept on his 600 acre farm on Long Island he has also taken to his New Hampshire preserve. The William Walter Phelps estate at Tea Neck Ridge, New Jersey, comprises 15,000 acres and extends from the Hackensack river to the Hudson, where it overlooks the northern boundary of New York city. The homestead is a series of connected cottages with gables and peaked roofs of quaint design. Sixteen miles of drives cross and recross the estate. There are five miles of tree lined avenues in a single stretch, and over 200,000 large trees, the majority of which were replanted. William Rockefeller of the Standard Oil trust has started out to beat all others in a private park and game pre serve. It is on the Pocantlco Hills. It is said that twenty years’ labor will be required to complete the Standard Oil magnate’s plans for making the finest private park in the United States, if not in the whole world. The house, Rockwood Hall, has cost $1,500,000, but very much more is to be spent upon an elaborate scheme of landscape gardening. The property extends from the hills to the river, where it has a frontage of a mile. Over a dozen farms and country seats were absorbed to form the tract. One residence that cost »

$200,000 was torn down because it interfered with the view. A million dollars has already been spent upon the grounds under Frederick Law Olmitead’s direction. Adjoining this estate is that of John D. Rockefeller. The brothers are next door neighbors, but their houses are two miles and a half apart John D. Rockefeller also owns an extensive and ornate place near Cleveland, called Forest Hill. Frederick W. Vanderbilt has recently bought six hundred acres on the Hudson, near Ayde Park, formerly the Walter Langdon estate. Clarence Densmore has a manor at Stahtsburgh on the Hudson; Archibald Rogers’ lordly demesne is called Crumwold Hall; John Jacob Astor’s Ferncliff contains 800 acres, in the same region, and James Roosevelt’s seat is known as Springwood. Governor Morton, twenty times a millionaire, has a celebrated place near New York called Ellerslie, where a thousand acres are under artistic cultivation. His barn is 500 feet long and cost nearly a million dollars. The late Gay Gould’s country seat contains a thousand acres. With its marble mansion it cost over a million dollars. George Gould has a notable summer seat at Furlough Lodge, in the Catskills with 2,300 acres of mountain forest. Part of this is inclosed in a fence of thirty-two strands of barbed wire, within which are preserved herds of elk and deer besides quantities of pheasants and other small game. But it is a weariness to describe and read of the American millionaires’ palaces, pleasure grounds and game preserves. It would take pages and pages of print and hours and hours of reading to tell of all. Volumes might also be written describing the summer palaces and merely ornamental parks of Tuxedo, Lenox, Newport, Saratoga, Lake George and the Thousand Islands. Half and more of our American people homeless, and a class of millionaires turning the country back Into a wilderness where they can raise game to hunt as they do in England.—Wealthmaker.