THE PASSING OF THE IDLE RICH
THE PASSING
OF THE IDLE RICH
BY
FREDERICK TOWNSEND MARTIN
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE KINGDOM OF SOCIETY 3
II. THE MADNESS OF EXTRAVAGANCE 23
III. THE SUBJUGATION OF AMERICA 61
IV. WHO ARE THE SLAVES? 89
V. THE AWAKENING OF SOCIETY 109
VI. FOR THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER 133
VII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE 153
VIII. FIGHTING FOR LIFE 169
IX. THE SOCIAL NEMESIS 197
X. THE DEATH-KNELL OF IDLENESS 219
XI. THE END OF THE STORY 243
“_The habits of our whole species fall into three great
classes--useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these, the
first only is meritorious, and to it all the products of labour
rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy
pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its
just rights. The only remedy for this is to, so far as possible,
drive useless labour and idleness out of existence...._”
--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_Chapter One_
THE KINGDOM OF SOCIETY
I know Society. I was born in it, and have lived in it all my life,
both here and in the capitals of Europe. I believe that I understand as
well as any man what are the true traditions and the true conditions of
American Society; and for comparison, I also know and understand the
conditions and traditions of Society in other lands. My honest opinion
is that American Society, for all its faults, and it has many, and
for all the hideous abnormalities that in these later years have been
grafted upon it, stands to-day a cleaner, saner and more normal Society
than that of any other highly civilized nation in the world.
In this nation, the very soul of which is the spirit of democracy, we
have evolved a very elaborate and extremely complex society. Like all
such organizations, in all the lands under the sun, it is an oligarchy;
one might almost say a tyranny. Its rulers for the most part inherit
their power and rule by hereditary right. The foundations of this
society and the foundations of the power of its rulers were laid in
generations now dead and gone. Time has crystallized its rules into
laws and formulated its conventions into tenets.
It is not my desire, in writing about Society, to describe in detail
its practices, to dwell upon its rules and regulations, to dilate upon
its normal condition or its duties. Rather, I intend to dwell upon a
phase of its existence that does not traditionally belong to it, and
that is not normally a part of it. This phase or condition I choose to
describe in the phrase “The Idle Rich.”
If, in the writer’s license of generality, I seem at times to deal too
harshly with the world of which I am a part, let the reader put himself
for a moment in my place. Let him imagine himself a member of a class
judged and condemned according to a distorted popular conception based
upon a semi-knowledge of the acts, habits, morals and ethics of the
very worst of the class; nay, even of men and women who, while aping
to the best of their poor ability the fashions, the habits, and the
customs of that class, ignore every one of its best traditions, forget
every one of its laws, and break every one of its commandments.
It is hard for me to write with patience of the small class that has
done so much to disgrace and discredit the spirit of American Society.
For I know that it is true that in the mind of an enormous number of
our people, and of the people of other civilized countries, American
Society is brought to shame and ridicule by the extraordinary excesses
that have been brought within its gates and grafted into its system by
the idle rich.
Yet there are excuses. This is the most rapid age in history. In the
progress of this nation we have ignored and turned our back upon that
process which Tennyson so well described in the happy phrase, “slow
broadening down from precedent to precedent.” We laugh at precedent.
We choose instead to tumble riotously down from step to step of
progress, marking swift epochs with every bump.
Naturally I am a conservative, and I deplore the process by which we
sweep away the precedents of the nations. I prefer orderly evolution
to disorderly revolution, either in business, in politics, or in
the making of a social world; but I cannot change the things that I
deplore. The fact, in the face of my protests, is as unblinking as the
Sphinx in the roar of Napoleon’s cannon. And that fact is that in the
making of our social world, as in the making of everything else that
goes to make America, we have ignored the traditions of our fathers.
Let me put this a little more fully. For this, after all, is the great
cause that explains so much that needs explanation in the structure
of our social world, in the rules that govern it, and in the habits,
deplorable or otherwise, which have fastened themselves upon it. Let
me speak first of banking, for by profession I am a banker. To-day
the English banker and the French banker follow, in the pursuit
of business, paths beaten to smooth running by the feet of their
ancestors. To-day you will find in the banking world of England and of
France the same rules of personal conduct and personal honour, the same
principles of business nursing and business repression that you would
have found a century ago.
How different it is in this country! Through our early history, if you
care to study it in detail, you would have found us pacing step by step
the progress of England; but more than half a century ago, when this
nation rejected as unsuited to its ideals the notion of a central bank,
our ways divided in the banking world. From that day to this there has
hardly been a single important step--until very recently--that has not
carried us farther from the traditions of our English cousins. In the
matter of currency, we stumbled blindly through a maze of ignorance,
piling error upon error, plunging desperately from the early madness of
wild-cat State currency into the preposterous and abnormal system which
to-day threatens periodically the throttling of our commerce and the
disruption of the business world.
In the twin worlds of railroads and manufacturing, too, we blazed out
paths entirely our own. Even to this day, in the face of industrial
marvels here and in Germany, England clings desperately to the
conditions that made her what she is. I would not dare generalize and
say that the industrial world of England does not know the idea of
centralization and concentration, but I will say this, that if one seek
at its best the individual factory, the separate plant, the trade-mark
that cannot be bought, the personal name that never can be submerged,
he may go look in England for them now and he will find them, just as
he would have found them a century ago.
Here a new magic grew. It came not as a heaven-born inspiration to
one man’s mind, but as an evolution born of the land and the air and
the water. I shall dwell upon it more in a later chapter. Here it
is enough merely to indicate it. It was that the individual plant
and the individual name must be submerged in the combine of plants
and individuals. The personal name must vanish in the trust. The
trust in turn must disappear into a greater trust, and yet a greater
trust--and so on until, at last, a dozen mighty combinations were
gathered together into one great trust of trusts, bringing under one
hand the finding, the production, the marketing, and the transportation
of the raw material, and the assembling, manufacture, selling, and
transportation of the finished product.
So we struck out methods, manners, customs, and traditions all our
own. We did it--this marvellous evolution--in half the lifetime of a
man. In fact, in the industrial world one might almost say it was a
process of twenty years--merely a moment of the nation’s history. Well
may one say it is a rapid age in which we live. Madly we rush at our
great problems. We did not know--we do not know yet--what the result
is to be. There is no precedent to guide us; the road to to-morrow
bears no sign-posts. Not yet has our new system been tried by a panic
that disturbed the depths of the commercial and industrial seas. Only,
we hope for the best, for optimism is the sign-manual of the true-born
American.
I dwell upon these matters not because I care to pose or dare to pose
as an authority upon them, but because the principles and ideas upon
which they rest underlie also the making of the Kingdom of Society of
which I would write. For social evolution is, after all, but a part
of this same evolution that has given us our own distinctive banking
system--good as it is or bad as it may be--and our own industrial
system--giant or weakling as it may prove to be.
And if our banking system and our great industrial system were born
in a day and a night, what may one say of the plutocracy that in
this later day has been grafted upon and has grown to be a part of
the American social world? Here, indeed, the traditions of the world
of history flashed past us, in our forward rush, as dead leaves fly
backward from a speeding train. We saw them as they flew--yet we did
not clearly see them. We knew they were, but we could not distinguish
them one from the other; and, after all, little we cared for them, and
little we care now.
Perhaps, as I write, my mind will carry me back to the days before
these new phenomena transpired; and I shall be moved to write of
social America in the days of its true glory, before the glitter of
tinsel and the tawdry finery of mere wealth overlaid it. For that
is the background against which stand out in all their hideousness
the empty follies of the idle rich and the vapid foolishness of the
ultra-fashionable in America to-day.
Forty years ago, as a boy, I lived in a true American home. The
atmosphere of that home was still under the vitalizing influence of
the nation’s great struggle for emancipation. Lincoln was a saint. The
writings of Longfellow and Emerson, Hawthorne and Washington Irving,
were constantly read. The traditions of European Society had not
struck their roots deep into the social soil of the United States.
We were provincial, to be sure, but there was bliss in simplicity
and innocence. Morally and intellectually the life of the family and
the life of the State were settled. We knew there was a God. We were
positive as to just what was right and what was wrong. The Bible, the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States,
the fact of the assured greatness of our country, the power of our
religious, political, and social ideals to save the world--our faith
in these was our Rock of Ages; and to these must be added the absolute
belief in the theory that it was the sacred duty of every human being
to serve his kind.
Just in how far these fundamentals are now broken and scattered I shall
not here attempt to say. But it is simply true that the Bible is no
longer read, that religion has lost its hold, that the Constitution
and laws are trampled upon by the rich and powerful, and are no longer
held sacred by the poor and weak. Instead of Hawthorne, we read Zola
and Gorky; instead of Longfellow and Bryant, Ibsen and Shaw. Among how
many perfectly respectable, ay, even religious, people is the name of
Nietsche not more familiar than that of Cardinal Newman! I do not know
whither we are going, but I do know that we are going.
Come search the records of generations long dead for the seeds of our
social system. You will find them planted deep, and long ago. They are
the same seeds of class destruction that lay in darkness through the
early centuries of Rome’s history, to spring to life in the sunshine
of the triumphs of the Republic, and reach their perfect flower in the
era of plethoric wealth that marked the apogee of the Empire--and then
to fall, as full-blown blossoms will. They are the same seeds that for
half a thousand years lay buried in simple England, to come to tardy
life in the afterglow of Elizabeth’s triumphs, and reach their fulness
in the social glory of the mid-Victorian era.
Less than half a century ago the aristocracy of America worked with
its hands, laboured in its broad fields, ate its bread in the sweat of
its brow. The cities were small and inconsequential, and the laws of
hospitality far overbalanced the traditions of class. Here and there
was wealth--but wealth was shackled to the wheels of Opportunity.
Often I have pondered over the startling wisdom of that succinct
description of the American ideal written, strange to say, a hundred
and forty years ago, by Adam Smith:
In our North American colonies, where uncultivated land is still to
be had upon easy terms, no manufactures for distant sale have ever
yet been established in any of their towns. When an artificer has
acquired a little more stock than is necessary for carrying on his
own business and supplying the neighbouring country, he does not,
in North America, attempt to establish with it a manufacture for
more distant sale, but employs it in the purchase and improvement
of uncultivated lands. From artificer, he becomes planter, and
neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence which the country
affords to artificers, can bribe him rather to work for other
people than for himself. He feels that an artificer is the servant
of his customers, from whom he derives his subsistence, but that
a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary
subsistence from the labour of his own family, is really a master,
and independent of all the world.
That was the America of 1760--and it was the America that Lincoln knew.
In the region that he knew as a boy and a man, there were neither great
plantations, great factories, nor combines. The bulk of the population
lived on small farms, toiled with their own hands, and remained in
possession of their own products. A few owned and operated small stores
or factories for the making of necessities. These could not grow rich.
Great riches must be derived from the labour of many. The rich of
the Eastern states fifty years ago were the owners of banks, large
importing houses, railroads, and factories. These industries, being
small, gave rise to fortunes that now seem small. They were riches, but
not great riches.
Think, then, of the transition that I myself have seen! Sometimes, as
I sit alone in my library reading and thinking about these matters,
and reflecting upon the years that make up my brief lifetime, a sort
of terror of to-morrow seizes me. I do not need to guess at the facts
of my own world. I _know_ the facts that such satirists as Mr. Upton
Sinclair vaguely guess, or gather from the gossip of the stables and
the kitchen. The miserable excesses of Society are an open book. I
cannot blind my eyes or deafen my ears or close my nostrils and forget
them. That decay has set in I know; that it has struck deep, as yet I
cannot bring myself to believe. And this book is but my feeble effort
to prevent it striking deeper, if I may.
“_The wilfully idle man, like the wilfully barren woman, has no
place in a sane, healthy, vigorous community._”
--THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
_Chapter Two_
THE MADNESS OF EXTRAVAGANCE
I remember very well indeed that bitter period of transition when first
the ideal, or lack of ideals, of the newer America began to corrode the
old society. I remember with what intense bitterness and chagrin the
early excesses of the earliest of the idle rich were condoned by the
leaders of society in that day. At first the social world fought hard
for its traditions, and the leaders of American Society of my father’s
day were never reconciled to the changes that came about in the body
social. In Boston and Philadelphia, to this day, society maintains its
battle against the invader. Now, as then, society frowns upon the idle
men. Only recently one of the leaders of Boston society quoted in the
course of a conversation with me that powerful sentence from one of Mr.
Roosevelt’s speeches:
“The wilfully idle man, like the wilfully barren woman, has no place in
a sane, healthy, vigorous community.”
That, after all, is as much a tradition of true society as it is of
the plains and the fields. I do not yield to any man or any class in
America in my detestation of idleness in man or woman. And I believe
that the traditions of real American society support me in this
attitude.
In spite of ourselves, we drifted into a period in which idleness
became the fashion. We did not know just why the thing was true; but
we were forced to recognize its truth. Now, looking back rather than
forward over the past quarter of a century, one may see quite clearly
how it came about. And I purpose, in the course of this book, to write
down, perhaps for the amusement of my own contemporaries, perhaps for
the guidance of those who have not yet begun to think about these
matters, the causes that gave us this plague of idleness.
First of all, however, I would merely set down in a phrase the
immediate cause of it, and then proceed to sketch the phenomenon
itself, that one may know the things which are right. It was the magic
of gold; it was the poison of idle wealth. It came at first like
a little spot upon the body of a man. Quickly it spread from limb
to limb, and part to part, until, in the fulness of time, it was a
leprosy, following the body of society almost from head to foot. It
was the curse of gold, no more, no less--the same condition that laid
in the dust the glory of Athens, that hurled to ruin the splendour of
Rome, that brought upon Bourbon France the terror of the Revolution.
Think, if you can, of the swift stages through which we pass. Picture
the solid, conventional, Christian, and cleanly society of New York
immediately after the Civil War. To think of it now, even as I learned
it by hearsay, very likely, brings me a feeling of personal regret,
as though I had lost a fine old friend. Picture, then, the beginning
of a revolution, small, inconsequent--yet, to the most discerning,
portentous of evil and pregnant of disaster. A few young men, sons of
society, set up new idols in the ancient temples. They began to ape the
habits and to imitate the morals of that world which, while possessing
wealth in plenty, had never possessed the refinement or the ethical
standards of true society.
It is a melancholy fact that the impetus toward extravagance, excess,
debauchery, and shamelessness came to us from the under-world.
For always, in every country, just outside the gates, there lives a
people peculiar to itself. They have wealth equal, perhaps, to that of
any in the social world. They have education, it may be, of the finest.
They have desires, just as all men have. They have instincts, it may
be, little better or little worse than those of the best in the land.
The gates are shut against them for reasons that, to those inside, seem
quite sufficient. It may be vulgarity; it may be immorality; it may be
mere _gaucherie_ of manners; it may be lack of education; or it may
be any one of a dozen other reasons that puts them beyond the pale.
Whatever may be the reason, the fact remains that they are beyond the
pale.
In this class of society, always, in all races, morals, and manners
tend to excesses. They are not restrained by sane conventions and laws
that regulate society; nor are they held in the leash of respectability
or in the chains of religion or of honour, as are the sturdy men and
women of the so-called middle class. Constantly they are in rebellion
against these laws and these traditions. Ever they are prone to
substitute license for liberty, to plunge into immorality, to draw upon
the stage in its worst moods for their passions and their pleasures,
and to practise in their lives the vices of the decadent nations.
In this stage of our social life of which I write, the manners, the
morals, and the practices of this social class crept into even that
small section of society which calls itself “the Upper Class.” The
young men--and unhappily the young women--of the finest families in
our great cities began to copy the vices and to imitate the manners of
this other class, and to plunge into the same excesses that marked its
manner of life.
There is a vast difference between the healthy, wholesome spending
of money for amusements, pleasures, and recreations and the feverish
searching for some new sensation that can be had only at a tremendous
cost. The simple expenditure of money, even in startling amounts,
eventually fails to produce the thrill that it ought to have, and when
the man or woman of fortune, with little to think of but the constant
hunt for amusement and novelty, begins to suffer from continuous
_ennui_, the result is frequently amazing and sometimes sickening.
A wearied, bored group of men arranged a dinner. They had been
attending dinners until such functions had lost interest for them.
Similarly their friends were wearied by the conventional dinner of the
time. Why not prepare a meal, the like of which had never been before?
Why not amuse society and astonish the part of the community that is
outside of society? They did so. The dinner was served on horseback
on the upper floor of a fashionable New York resort, the name of
which is known from coast to coast; the guests were attired in riding
habits; the handsomely groomed horses pranced and clattered about the
magnificent dining-room, each bearing, besides its rider, a miniature
table. The hoofs of the animals were covered with soft rubber pads to
save the waxed floor from destruction. At midnight a reporter for an
active and sensational morning newspaper ran across the choice bit of
news. He telephoned the information to his city editor and the reply of
that moulder of opinion was brief and to the point.
“You’re lying to me,” said the editor.
The most sensational paper in town refused to believe its reporter, who
attempted later on to reach the scene of the event, but was repulsed
and driven away.
“How much did it cost?” the public inquired interestedly. The man
who paid the bill knew. The public and its newspapers guessed, their
estimates running from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars.
The fond owner of a diminutive black-and-tan dog gave a banquet in
honour of the animal. The dog was worth, perhaps, fifty dollars. The
festivities were very gay. The man’s friends came to his dinner in
droves, the men in evening clothes and the women bedecked in shimmering
silks and flashing jewels. In the midst of the dinner, the man formally
decorated his dog with a diamond collar worth fifteen thousand dollars.
It contained seven hundred small brilliants, varying in weight from one
sixth to one carat. The guests shouted their approval, and the dinner
was regarded as a huge success.
The leader of a wealthy clique in a Western city was struck with a
unique idea. He was tired of spending money. There was nothing new
for which to spend it. He gave a “poverty social.” The thirty guests
came to his palatial home in rags and tatters. Scraps of food were
served on wooden plates. The diners sat about on broken soap boxes,
buckets, and coal-hods. Newspapers, dust cloths, and old skirts were
used as napkins, and beer was served in a rusty tin can, instead of the
conventional champagne. They played being poor for one night, and not
one of them but joined in ecstatic praise of their host and his unusual
ability to provide a sensation.
A bored individual with a fondness for gems covered as much of his
person as possible with diamonds. When he walked abroad, he flashed and
sparkled in the sunlight. He, also, became the possessor of a happy
inspiration. He went to his dentist and had little holes bored in his
teeth, into which the tooth expert inserted twin rows of diamonds. He
had found another way of spending money.
A Southern millionaire purchased an imported motor car. It cost him
twelve thousand dollars when it came off the ship. He looked at it in
scorn and called in decorators. The car was refitted completely. It was
equipped with two diminutive rooms, a living apartment, and a sleeping
room. Hot and cold water fixtures were put in and space was found for a
small bath-tub. A kitchen with a full equipment of cooking utensils was
added, and, when the various tradesmen and mechanics completed their
work, the car resembled a complete and luxuriously furnished home on
wheels. The original cost of twelve thousand dollars had been brought
up to thirty thousand and the owner was temporarily contented.
Very young and very wealthy was the young man whose attentions to an
embryonic actress amused a community a few years back. It was the young
man’s opinion that he was desperately in love with the lady, who in
later years married a publisher of songs. The millionaire youngster
showered the girl with gifts. He gave her rings, bracelets, necklaces,
and diamond-studded combs for her black tresses until she glistened
from head to foot. The very buttons of her gloves were diamonds and her
shoes were fastened with monster pearls. The question of taste never
entered into the situation. It was simply the spending of money and
the bedecking of a coarse, but crafty, stage girl. In three years, she
succeeded in throwing away almost a million dollars for the deluded
youngster, at the end of which time they parted.
At the conclusion of an elaborate affair in New York City, the guests
leaned back in their chairs to listen to the singers. The cigarettes
were passed around. Oddly enough, the banquet had not been marked until
that moment, and, as the host was famous for the unusualness of his
dinners, many of the diners were disappointed. Their disappointment
gave way to admiration. Each cigarette was rolled, not in white paper,
but in a one hundred dollar bill and the initials of the host were
engraved in gold letters. This strange conceit was applauded until the
voices of the singers struggled amid the uproar.
A member of the idle rich rumbled along a Jersey highway in his motor
car. He approached an excavation where workmen were manœuvring cranes
and hoists. At the side of the road lay a dying horse. It had fallen
into a hole and two of its legs were broken. The workmen were waiting
for the arrival of a policeman to put the suffering animal to death.
“I’ll save that horse,” decided the wealthy motorist. His decision
was simply an idle whim. When the policeman came, the motorist had
already bought the useless horse for a ten dollar bill. He procured an
ambulance and had the animal removed to his own stable. He summoned
the foremost veterinarians in New York and the crippled work horse was
patched up. For weeks it hung suspended in a sling and finally the
broken bones knitted and the horse hobbled about. The veterinarians
demanded five thousand dollars for their work and were paid without
complaint. In his stoutest days, the saved horse was worth no more than
a hundred dollars.
A well known metropolitan spender has an annual bill of some ten
thousand dollars for shoes alone. His order stands in every manufactory
in America and Europe. Whenever a new style of men’s shoes is designed,
a sample pair is immediately shipped to him. He cannot possibly wear
a tenth of the shoes sent to him, but he has the satisfying knowledge
that he is never behind the style.
The wife of a Western man owns a pet monkey. The little beast lives in
a private room and is constantly attended by a valet. It rides abroad
behind its private trotter, has its own outfit of clothes, its dining
table, and a bed made of solid ivory, tipped with gold ornaments.
All told, perhaps a dozen human beings minister to the comfort of
the little simian and the mistress cheerfully pays from ten to
fifteen thousand dollars yearly on this one extravagance. She became
dissatisfied with the dining service in the monkey-room of her home,
and her pet now eats its meals off solid silver plates.
At a dinner party given by a notorious millionaire, each guest
discovered in one of his oysters a magnificent black pearl. It was a
fitting prelude to a sumptuous banquet and it contained an element of
surprise. It was said that the dinner cost the giver twenty thousand
dollars.
A party of engineers were studying the country in a Southern state
with an eye to a future railroad. Accompanying them was a tired young
man of wealth, who had little interest in what they were doing, and
who had gone with them in search of possible amusement. He found it.
The party discovered an aged family of primitive negroes living in a
wretched hovel on the edge of a swamp. The millionaire was struck by
the utter desolation of the house and its occupants. It occurred to him
that he might find it interesting to aid the darkeys. He parted company
with the engineers, and, with a single friend, he gave himself over to
bettering the condition of the coloured family. Carpenters appeared
from New Orleans. Materials were dragged through the country behind
mules. Decorations were shipped from New York. The tottering shack
came down and a splendid country bungalow was reared in its place. The
interior was furnished with a lavish hand and with a total disregard
for expense. White pillars supported the roof. Old-fashioned fireplaces
were built into the walls and plate-glass windows were set into the
doors. The floors were paved with concrete, and a handsome bath room
was fitted up for the amazed and awe-stricken family. When he had
finished the home, the young man turned his attention to its inmates.
He bought them clothes--such clothes as they had never before dreamed
of. He provided them with toilet articles and trifling luxuries, and,
before he went away, he supplied the larder with enough food to last a
year. That negro family is still the talk of the entire state in which
it lives and its members regard what has happened as a manifestation
from on high. The young man in search of interesting occupation parted
from twenty thousand of his innumerable dollars and probably thinks of
the whole affair with satisfaction.
An Italian savant and student has visited America. He has set down his
opinions and some of them are interesting. He finds, for instance,
that the wife of one of our foremost millionaires wears a necklace that
cost more than six hundred thousand dollars. The infant son of this
favoured lady reposed, during his tenderer years, in a cradle that was
valued at ten thousand dollars and immediately following the birth of
the boy--an event that was flashed by telegraph to the furthest corners
of the earth--a retinue of servants was formed for the sole benefit of
the infant. This corps of retainers consisted of four nurse ladies,
four high-priced physicians, who examined the child four times a day,
and posted serious bulletins for the information of the clamant press
and public.
Another child came to another family, and Fifth Avenue trotted past
the birthplace with bated breath and curious eyes. When the boy came
to that stage of his development wherein the salutary bottle could be
dispensed with, he was clothed in dignity and provided with a staff of
personal attendants consisting of two able cooks, six grooms, three
coachmen, two valets, and one governess. He grew in health and strength
and to-day he manages a railway with acumen and success.
A gentleman of improvident habits and few dollars packed his meagre
belongings in a hand bag and departed for the West. Subsequently, he
achieved fortune and fame and came into possession of a gold mine, the
ledges of which soon placed his name high in the ranks of America’s
millionaires. Overcome by gratitude, he gave a commemorative dinner
party in the sombre depths of the kindly mine. The space devoted
to the festivities was forty feet wide and seventy feet long. One
hundred guests assembled in the bowels of the mine and sat down to a
sumptuous feast. The waiters were clad in imitation of miners. They
hovered about attentively with oil lamps flaring from their foreheads.
Picks and shovels decorated the uneven walls, and the various courses
were lowered from the mouth of the mine in the faithful cage that
had carried up to the grateful millionaire his many dollars. A band
discoursed sweet music and the bill was some fourteen thousand dollars.
A man of common name, but of uncommon wealth, decided to have a home
in New York City. He purchased the palace of a friend who had died and
paid for it two million dollars, which was popularly supposed to be
one half the original cost of the pile. On his garden, to make space
for which he tore down a building that had cost a hundred thousand,
the new owner spent five hundred thousand dollars. His bedstead is of
carved ivory and ebony, inlaid with gold. It cost two hundred thousand
dollars. The walls are richly carved and decorated with enamel and
gold; they cost sixty-five thousand dollars. On the ceiling, the happy
millionaire expended twenty thousand in carvings, enamels, and gold,
and ten pairs of filmy curtains, costing two thousand a pair, wave in
the morning breeze. The wardrobe in this famous bedroom represents an
outlay of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the dressing table
sixty-five thousand. The wash stand cost thirty-eight thousand, and the
bed hangings, fifty dollars a yard. The chimney-piece and overhanging
mantel threw into general circulation eight thousand more, and the
four doors consumed another ten thousand.
A wealthy lover of music paid the highest price ever recorded for a
piano. It was no ordinary piano. Its price was fifty thousand dollars.
For a single painting a Westerner paid fifty-five thousand dollars.
Another collector, whose name is known in the humblest homes, expended
fifty thousand dollars for a silver trinket only four inches high.
An enthusiastic American happened to live in London at the time the
North Pole was discovered. For an indefinite period of time the North
Pole was seemingly discovered by two Americans. That controversy is
ended and dead, but the memory of the dinner given in London by the
proud American will live for many years. Thirty guests accepted
the invitations, and, upon entering the home of their host, found
themselves in a barren and icy waste. The prow of an ice-bound ship
protruded from one side of the wall. Pale electric lights flashed
coldly from a score of points. Icebergs towered above the dinner table,
surmounted by polar bears. In the centre of the room was a huge oval
table to represent a solid block of ice and thereon the brilliant feast
was served. The waiters moved about noiselessly in the costumes of
Eskimos, hooded in the skins of animals and clad in the white fur of
polar bears. The dinner was a tremendous success. It cost the American
ten thousand dollars and not one word of criticism was passed, except
by the suffering waiters in their heavy furs on a warm mid-summer day.
A wealthy mining man wagered upon the outcome of an election and
lost. He proceeded to pay his bet by giving a dinner in his stables.
Thirty-five guests appeared and prepared to enjoy themselves to the
fullest. The table was arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, and the
waiters were jockeys in silken jackets and long peak caps. During the
enthusiastic scenes that followed, the favourite horse of the host was
admitted to the banquet room from his near-by box stall and diverted
the guests by eating the flowers, with which the banquet table was
heavily laden, and by drinking champagne from the punch-bowl. Tiny
Shetland ponies trotted and pranced about the diners and the favourite
steed became mildly intoxicated from the champagne and was ridden about
the room by hilarious men. The entire dinner was the exact opposite of
monotony. It cost the loser of the bet twelve thousand dollars.
A famous ten thousand dollar dinner was given in the heart of the tired
old metropolis. The table was laid out as an oval and over its smooth
surface costly flowers were spread in deep layers. In the centre was a
lake of limpid water, suspended from the ceiling by gold wire network.
Four white swans swam about during the progress of the banquet. From
various rings in the ceiling hung golden cages containing rare song
birds that twittered incessantly and the guests ate fruit from the
branches of dwarf trees especially provided and at a cost that might
seem staggering to the commonplace man of little wealth.
In Paris, a voluntarily exiled millionaire provided a dinner for
twenty-two of his intimate friends. For each guest was a private
carriage with a team of splendid horses, and when the fortunate diners
arrived in state, each found before him a whole leg of mutton, a whole
salmon, an entire fowl, a basket of assorted fruits, and several
bottles of wine. A mysterious bag made its appearance toward the close
of the feast and each diner was invited to explore it for a keepsake.
The souvenirs consisted of pearl studs, emerald links, cigarette
cases of solid gold, inlaid with jewels, diamond rings, and other
trifles. Thirty thousand dollars went into the pockets of the Parisian
shopkeepers from this single dinner.
In searching for an unusual manner to spend a large sum of money upon
a single object, a man of wealth selected a beautiful pair of opera
glasses. They were made of solid gold and the lenses were perfect. The
cost was seventy-five thousand dollars, principally because of a lyre
which surmounted the top, and which was encrusted with diamonds and
sapphires. Without the embellishments, glasses of equal worth may be
purchased in any shop for twenty dollars.
What was at the time designated as a tame waste of wealth, drunkenness
without conviviality, the amusement of dull and unintelligent society,
was a seventy-five thousand dollar feast given a few years ago. Monkeys
sat between the guests and ducks swam about in pools contained in ivory
fountains. An entire theatrical company journeyed from New York to
provide entertainment for the favoured guests.
One of the most prominent band-masters in America was summoned by
telegraph to gather an orchestra of forty pieces. The command came
from a woman of vast wealth in whose service the man of music had
often laboured. A child had been born to her. She desired to have the
occasion fittingly celebrated, and the diligent leader hurried home
from the midst of a vacation, selected an orchestra, rehearsed, and
eventually serenaded the new-come bit of humanity.
The “freak” dinner takes on many forms. One of the most unusual of
this sort was given by a South African millionaire whose wealth had
come from the diamond mines at Kimberly. The dinner was given amidst
scenes of the Kimberly diggings. Beautiful birds flew about, and a
hidden band wafted soft strains upon the assembled guests. Huge quartz
blocks surrounded the table and formed the walls. The floor was inch
deep with sand, and a monster tent raised its head in the centre of
the space. On the wash stand was a rough board on which were scrawled
the words: “Wash your hands before sitting down to eat.” It was all
very amusing and undoubtedly unique. Veldt carts rumbled back and
forth, pickaxes hung suspended from silken cords, and bags of genuine
gold-dust, lay scattered about. Turtle soup was served from a cauldron,
and two armed Boers paced up and down as sentinels. The dinner cost
twenty thousand dollars.
In Boston a man of gold fell ill. From his waist down, he became
nerveless and helpless. The time hung heavily on his hands as he lay
in a hospital bed, and he determined to provide adequate amusement.
His bed was removed to the largest room in the hospital. An entire
musical comedy company was transported from New York City and a popular
production of the day was performed for the benefit of the invalid. It
cost him three thousand five hundred dollars, and it was probably worth
it.
In Pittsburg, workmen went about their task mysteriously. They were
constructing a great glass tank. For five days they laboured and
finally the affair was completed. It was taken into the banquet room
of a hotel and filled with water. A dinner was to be given by the
officials of a corporation. As the hours wore on, the diners waxed
enthusiastic and happy. The more important and dignified officials of
the corporation left. They probably knew what was coming and desired to
be absent in view of possible newspaper investigation. Then came the
solution of the mystery. A human gold fish swam about in the tank--a
shapely girl, clad in golden spangles and scales. The dinner was very
expensive. Those who attended the banquet afterward declined to discuss
it with the reporters when questioned about the human gold fish.
Another celebrated dinner that represented the effort of a wealthy man
to vary the monotony of life and to provide a unique outlet for his
money was the feast that culminated in the appearance of the girl in
the pie. A monster pie was carried before the astounded diners upon
the shoulders of four servants. The top crust was cut open. A slip of
a girl bounded to her feet. A score of birds was released at the same
moment.
In Los Angeles the son of a millionaire mine owner felt the time
hanging heavily upon his hands. He wandered down to where the trains
rumbled in and out of the station, and an idea possessed him. He
ordered a special train of five coaches and informed his friends. Those
who cared to go accompanied the young squanderer. For fifty thousand
dollars the railway company, which cares little about human emotions or
desires, offered to take the young man to New York. Train despatchers
cleared the rails. Switches were nailed fast. The young man and his
special train were shot across the continent like a flying star. He was
buying a fresh experience at a price that in all probability suited him.
A Nebraska individual is the proud owner of a hat that is made of
greenbacks. It is rather a costly hat, as twenty thousand dollars
in bills was used in making it. It weighs twenty ounces and it looks
exactly like the white hats worn by gentlemen. A young Crœsus grew fond
of a lady fair and sought to display a mark of his affection in some
extraordinary manner. He commissioned eight of the foremost artists in
America to paint a fan. The cost was one hundred thousand dollars.
For five years skilled artisans have been carving a tombstone. The man
who ordered the tombstone is still living, but the tombstone is vast in
bulk, and the carvers have plenty of space to display their ingenuity.
It is the order of the patron that work shall not cease until he is
dead, and each year he sends the monument company a check for fifteen
thousand dollars to cover running expenses. If the gentleman lives long
enough, his tombstone will be a spectacle worth seeing when it is
finally bundled into place over his casket.
One of the most lavish and expensive--probably the most
expensive--dinners ever given in America was a hyphenated feast, the
record of which is writ large upon the annals of metropolitan society.
It endured for six hours and cost fourteen thousand dollars per hour.
But why enumerate any more of these instances? Our papers are full of
them. My purpose, however, is larger than gossip and I shall mention
other pieces of extravagance wherever they make a point.
“_No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil
up from poverty--none less inclined to take or touch what they have
not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political
power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will
surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as
they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all
of liberty shall be lost._”
--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_Chapter Three_
THE SUBJUGATION OF AMERICA
In the golden days of American Society, as I have said, great fortunes
were very rare indeed. The few that there were came mostly from
merchandising and trade. The accumulations of John Jacob Astor, John
Hancock, and Stephen Girard, in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia,
respectively, had not been dwarfed by the accumulations of a later era.
They remained, up to about 1850, as the typical marvels of the American
world of business.
The middle of last century was the harvest time of Opportunity in
this land. Agriculture and trade remained the staple occupations
of the race; yet there had grown up throughout the land a wonderful
manufacturing industry. Away back in the days of the embargo, a man
named Samuel Slater had come over from England and built, from memory,
the first American cotton mill. He little knew what seeds he sowed.
That little mill set up in Rhode Island was the mother of American
industry.
It had grown, this infant, until in every valley of the East there
stood factories and mills uncounted. Turning from the little iron mines
of New Jersey, the pioneers of our greatest industry had begun to open
up the hills of Pennsylvania and even Michigan. In that age, which has
been called the golden age of industry, fortune followed swiftly upon
the heels of honest labour.
Always, it was free, democratic, independent, this march of the
manufacturers. A hundred men manufactured cotton cloths in one small
area of New England. No one of them would have listened to the call
of combination. They worked out their own destinies, took their own
profits, built up their own plants from very small to very large.
In the twenty years from 1840 to 1860 the independent American
manufacturer became the true American type. In 1850, for the first
time, the products of industry surpassed in value the products of
agriculture. America came into its destiny.
Often have I heard this tale of the making of America; and I can trace,
by hearsay, the evolution of the mighty industrial enterprises of
to-day from the puny beginnings of the days of Franklin. Then, in our
nation’s youth, manufacturing was carried on in the home, by household
industry. In the homes of New England men spun and wove the cotton; or
beat the stubborn iron implements of agriculture. Long the battle of
industry was fought along these lines.
Then came the change, when, after the War of 1812, the English
manufacturers, armed with new industrial machinery, flooded the United
States with manufactured goods. In self-defence America took to its
arms the hated factory system, realizing that here and here alone
lay its industrial salvation. Instead of the scattered household
manufacturing, the country developed the gathering and working of all
sorts and conditions of manufacturing under one roof. Instead of piece
work, paid for as delivered, men began to work for wages.
How strange, in this day, sounds the warning of Franklin in our ears!
At the risk of being tiresome, let me quote a paragraph from his
writings:
A people spread through the whole tract of country on this side
of the Mississippi, and secured by Canada in our hands, would
probably for some centuries find employment in agriculture, and
thereby free us at home effectually from our fears of American
manufactures. Unprejudiced men well know that all the penal and
prohibitory laws that ever were thought of will not be sufficient
to prevent manufactures in a country whose inhabitants surpass the
number that can subsist by the husbandry of it. That this will be
the case in America soon, if our people remain confined within the
mountains, and almost as soon should it be unsafe for them to live
beyond, though the country be ceded to us, no man acquainted with
political and commercial history can doubt. It is the multitude
of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others
at low wages or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a
manufacture, and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation
of its own exportation.
But no man who can have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by
his labour to subsist his family in plenty, is poor enough to be
a manufacturer, and work for a master. Hence while there is land
enough in America for our people, there can never be manufactures
in any amount or value.--Writings of Benjamin Franklin: Smith Ed.
Vol. IV, pp. 48–49.