Million dollars

“ What would you say to half a million dollars?”
“I don’t know,” replied the ingenuous Harman. “I only know chaps generally begin to make asses of themselves when they talk about millions of dollars. It’s my opinion no man ever came out of the big end of the horn with the million dollars in his hand he’d gone in to fetch at the little. Most of the million-dollar men I’ve heard of have started as newsies with their toes stickin’ through their boots—but go on, what was you sayin’?” ”

“ Keeshwar exploded. "Look! Do you see how much money a million dollars is?"
I do not wish to pose as a man over-stocked with principles. A million dollars is more money than I ever hope to see again at one time. ”

“ But I was comforted by the fact that though there were plenty of wealthy men in our sanitarium, they were all in the same box. There were a half-dozen millionaires whose united fortunes represented at least fifty million dollars, but they could not raise five hundred dollars on it. ”

“ Not even if madam and himself are at home from toadying up and down through Europe in search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak through which over $1,000,000,000 of American money has already disappeared. We will sustain this with facts in its proper place.) One million dollars divided among ten men will do ten times more good than if owned by one man. One million dollars owned by one man is like one million acres owned by one man. ”

“ By the provisions of the remarkable will, which revealed such enormous wealth as to make almost every other millionaire feel comparatively poor, the greater portion of 200 million dollars was divided among the eight children of the testator. Millions were distributed in this case as other millionaires have been in the habit of dealing with thousands. The ordinary human mind fails to grasp the idea of such a vast amount of wealth. ”

“ A very attractive proposition by which I could earn three, possibly four, million dollars within a few months was put up to me. I’m worth no more than three hundred thousand dollars,—a pauper as rich men go,—and I’ve earned every penny of it. ”

“ Now, look at the capitalist. For one million dollars, and without the straining of a muscle, he receives five million dollars direct, which, reinvested from time to time as it increases, amounts at the end of the forty years to not less than fifteen millions dollars. ”

“ The increase of such business throughout the State has been so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach the million list in the next five years. ”

“ That is, the millionaires, rich, and well-to-do, making altogether but nine per cent of the whole nation, owned forty-five billions of the total national valuation of sixty-two billions. The remaining ninety-one per cent of the whole nation, constituting the bulk of the people, were classed as the poor, and divided among themselves the remaining seventeen million dollars. ”

“ You won't care who's President, or who robbed the treasury of half a million dollars. You'll forget that there is a Pope who washed his hands in the blood of brave men and heroic women. You'll not be anxious about the rate of stock; whether money is tight or easy, shall not trouble you one jot. ”

“ How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars? ”

“ The interesting thing is, as I understand it, that less than fifty years ago, a great author, living in Paris, when he wanted to write about a man with as much money as anybody could imagine, much less really have, gave him only three million dollars, which in those days seemed beyond belief; whereas now within a single lifetime, some of our American millionaires are so much richer that three million dollars would seem like a small sum to them. ”

“ For instance, one man I know told me that once he was down in Mexico without a cent (he'd lost his five in striking Central America) and he noticed that they had no power plants. So he started some and made a mint of money. Another man that I know was once stranded in New York, absolutely without a nickel. Well, it occurred to him that what was needed were buildings ten stories higher than any that had been put up. So he built two and sold them right away. Ever so many millionaires begin in some such simple way as that. ”

“ I'm coming to that—wait. Now the idea of money grubbing is distasteful to me. What I want is a great opportunity which only money can give. I have, I suppose, if a conservative estimate could be made, pretty close to two million dollars—which means around one hundred thousand a year. Now if I want to settle down and marry, that's a lot; but if I want to go in and compete with other men, the leaders, that's nothing at all. ”

“ I have a splendid claim—I am just going to have a hundred thousand dollars for it." We have plenty of this class around, and whenever I see a man going along with an old mule that can hardly stand up, and a frying pan and an old quilt, I say, There goes a millionaire in prospect! He is after a million, he calculates to find a mine that he can get a million for next summer. These millionaires are all over our country; they are in the mountains, on our highways and in our streets. But ask them, "Can you give me a sixpence to buy me a morsel of meat?" ”

“ Don't hesitate, man. Remember you are up against it."
"Well, yes, sir."
"How much money do you want?"
"One thousand dollars."
"Dear me! For such a small amount as that I shall have to charge you at least six per cent. If you were a regular millionaire and wanted, say, half a million, I could let you have it for three or four per cent."
"Yes, sir. I appreciate your generosity."
The depositor handed the president of the bank, who was now almost completely bathed in a cold perspiration, a blank form. ”

“ It's too sad and funny to go with the rattling of billiard balls. I've just come from my late uncle's firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars?"
"I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee shows in a vinegar cruet, "that the late Septimus Gillian was worth something like half a million." ”

“ I have before me a newspaper slip on which a writer expresses the opinion that no one should be allowed to possess more than one million dollars' worth of property. ”

“ In the year 1801, the opening year of the century, the ideas entertained of riches differed remarkably from what they do now. At that time it is doubtful if there was a person in this country worth more than a quarter million of dollars. ”

“ Since 1849, we have probably paid to them at the rate of nearly a million of dollars each year. Is there any scarcity of money? No. Are you fearful that one man is going to get all the gold in the world and sift it to the four winds, so that it never can be gathered? ”

“ The Southerners of Wall Street, with but very few exceptions, entered that great field of finance with but one consolation, and that was the calm consciousness of being thoroughly protected against loss from the simple fact that they had nothing to lose. [Applause and laughter.] A hundred millions of dollars is no small pile when stacked up beside—nothing. ”

“ When one looks about, however, and notes happenings of which one personally knows, and the degradation and dishonor to which public opinion is seemingly indifferent, nothing is incredible.
One sees a certain man openly displaying five hundred millions of dollars, a sum which represents the life earnings of 150,000 of our population, and knows that this man has secured this incredible amount during forty years of his life. ”

“ Multi-millionaires sometimes pay twenty-five cents cash, but otherwise the notes is the same like millionaires, three, six and nine months, and you could wrap up dill pickles in 'em for all the good they'll do you."
"What are you talking nonsense, Abe? This feller, Pfingst, is a millionaire. He's got a big oitermobile business and sells ten cars a week at twenty-five hundred dollars apiece. Here it is only Tuesday, Abe, and that feller sold two oitermobiles already." ”

“ When you come right down to it, money’s your first, last, best and only friend. Others promise well but when the scratch comes, they fail. Money never fails.”
A boy of fifteen asked him one day when he was mellow with liquor, “McLeod, which would you rather be, President of the United States or a big millionaire?”
“Boys,” he replied, smacking his lips, and running his tongue around his cheeks inside and softly caressing them with one hand, while he half closed his eyes, “They say old Simon Legree is worth fifty millions of dollars, and that his actual income is twenty per cent on that. ”

“ It's always, always that some millionaire may leave me a fortune one day, and that I shall be very rich, rolling in money."
"D'you think so much of money, then, Miss Beatrice?" said Million, bustling over the black-and-white chequered linoleum to the range, and setting the lid on to her saucepan full of potatoes. "Rich people aren't always happy——"
"That's their own fault for not knowing how to spend the money!" ”

“ To make their industry most effective, and to enable them, individually, to put into their own pockets as large a portion as possible of their own earnings, they need, on an average, one thousand dollars each of money capital. ”

“ Well, capital now is exactly what crags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, though it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having got it, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below pay toll to his million, and build another tower of his money castle. ”

“ She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman of great ability and courage. She once took with her five millions of dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her banker on Wall street.
The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work, self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. ”

“ Fifteen millions is a large sum to vanish in a night. The great exchange, once the pride and boast of the sellers and buyers of cash, is a heap. There is money yet in Wall street, and "Draper, Underwood," and others, ready to help incorporated bodies to plates and dyes, to make more. ”

“ They could readily have secured, indeed they were urged to accept, fifty millions of dollars, the equivalent of gold coin, in securities which became in a few years the favorite investment of the wisest capitalists in the world. ”

“ I believe in the future of this country, in its latent wealth and its possibilities, and I am prepared to take on the town's uncompleted enterprise and assume its one hundred and thirty thousand dollars of liability. Gentlemen, what I have in mind goes further than any of you have ever imagined, and it needs more millions than you have conceived. Millions will be forthcoming. In the financial markets of the world, capital must be assured of certain fundamentals. These fundamentals established, there is no difficulty whatever in securing as much money as may be required. ”

“ Thirty millions! And they were powerless to persuade Dede to ride on Mab--Mab, whom he had bought, and who was unused and growing fat on pasture. What were thirty millions when they could not buy a man a ride with the girl he loved? Thirty millions!--that made him come here and go there, that rode upon him like so many millstones, that destroyed him while they grew, that put their foot down and prevented him from winning this girl who worked for ninety dollars a month. ”

“ The real value of the total accumulations of the whole group is perhaps about $10,000,000, or $5,000 a piece. Pitiful, is it not, beside the fortunes of oil kings and steel trusts, but after all is the fortune of the millionaire the only stamp of true and successful living? ”

“ The moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a vision of the kind of man of wealth—the kind of employer they want, the moment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national expectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people, the people will have the millionaire they want. ”

“ And even if we should allow sixteen millions to have represented the value of a hundred and sixty millions—a purely arbitrary supposition—as compared with our times, what are a hundred and sixty, millions of dollars, or thirty-three millions of pounds sterling—as the whole net revenue of the greatest empire that had ever existed in the world, when compared with the accumulated treasures over which civilized and industrious countries can now dispose? ”

“ Suppose the revenue of the solid property of the country to be worth also a million a year; and that if the fund itself could be sold, it might be worth twenty millions of the same specie. Suppose no such thing as credit or paper money to be known, and that every man who inclines to make any consumption, must be provided previously with a part of the circulating million, before he can satisfy his inclination. ”

“ The government collects a little on one thing that is imported, [Pg 7] and a little on another, and no one cares, because the amount is so small on each thing, and yet look at the total—hundreds of millions of dollars! ”

“ I make their dreams live in my paper. It's everything to them, melodrama, society, romance; it's a peep-hole into the worlds they can't touch. I show 'em millionaires moving behind their [Pg 172] house-walls, rolling in wealth, fighting one another, battling for one another's wives, flinging a billion against a billion, ruining thousands for a whim. 'Monte Cristo'? It's tame to what I serve 'em. 'Mr. X Gives a Hundred Thousand Dollar Lunch'—'Secret Drama of Oil Trust's Home'—'Deserts Millionaire Husband for Chauffeur'—'Ten Millions in Five Years'! That's life—that's emotion! ”