Millionaire

“ Regard me, my dear sir, as a microbe of millionaires, a parasite upon capitalists. You know the old rhyme:
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And these again have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum!
Well, that’s just how I view myself. You are a capitalist and a millionaire. In your large way you prey upon society. You deal in Corners, Options, Concessions, Syndicates. You drain the world dry of its blood and its money. You possess, like the mosquito, a beautiful instrument of suction—Founders' Shares—with which you absorb the surplus wealth of the community. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Wealth lays its tribute at their feet. The millionaire, who dies to-day grasping his millions as his own, is hissed while he lives, openly cursed while he lies cold in death, and forgotten in contempt. ”

“ We millionaires are a sorry, unimaginative crew. Now, if Gilbert Chesterton, or H. G. Wells, or George Bernard Shaw had several millions each, they would certainly do something original. The American millionaire gives money to found a university, of which there are too many already. The English millionaire leaves his cash to hospitals. Now and then a rich man tries to get out of the rut, but without conspicuous success. ”

“ Young men who have inherited wealth are as chary of losing one hour as their clerks. The busy millionaire sits at his desk all day—his ear to the telephone. We assume that these men are useful because they are busy; but in what does their usefulness consist? What are they busy about? They are setting an example of mere industry, perhaps—but to what end? Simply, in seven cases out of ten, in order to get a few dollars or a few millions more than they have already. Their exertions have no result except to enable their families to live in even greater luxury. ”

“ If I had been wise, being in the swim as I am, I ought to be a millionaire; but it's not too late. There are better chances now than ever. Yes, I ought to have been a millionaire, and I should have been if I had had a man like you at my back. ”

“ I couldn't let John Starkweather, or any other man, get away with the conviction that a millionaire is better than a farmer. "Moreover," I said, "think of the position of the millionaire. He spends his time playing not with life, but with the symbols of life, whether cash or houses. ”

“ There are not two ways of becoming a millionaire.
This is the secret of wealth; find the starving and destitute, pay them half a crown, and make them produce five shillings worth in the day, amass a fortune by these means, and then increase it by some lucky hit, made with the help of the State. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ No less than three Americans tell us that a millionaire, Carnegie, of Pittsburg, says that his class ought to invest their millions for the public good during life, and above all things not to leave wealth to their children. ”

“ They were all men, and nearly all bankers. There were millionaires among them, poor, unhappy millionaires, who had come through the storm and snow and sleet to see a man melt a hole in a safe, and incidentally, to hear the man tell of the wondrous workings of the "Startler" alarm, which was to guard the millionaire's millions and give him a rest. ”

“ One millionaire standing on the top of Mont Blanc, one millionaire standing in the desert by the Sphinx, one millionaire standing in the middle of Stonehenge, is just as comic as one millionaire is anywhere else ”

“ Inasmuch as the dollar might have been turned into capital and given to a laborer who, while earning it, would have reproduced it, it must be regarded as taken from the latter. When a millionnaire gives a dollar to a beggar the gain of utility to the beggar is enormous, and the loss of utility to the millionaire is insignificant. Generally the discussion is allowed to rest there. But if the millionaire makes capital of the dollar, it must go upon the labor market, as a demand for productive services. ”

“ 'Millionaire models,' remarked Alan, 'are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still!' ”

“ Your millionaire, for example,—and millionairism is getting so common as to be almost vulgar,—your millionaire never tires of telling you how he worked the multiplication table until cents became dimes, and dimes [Pg 57] well sown blossomed presently into dollars, till hundreds swelled to hundreds of thousands, and the man who had been a blithe youth but twenty years before became the possessor of an uneasy tumor he calls a fortune. ”

“ Your millionaire is surrounded with luxuries,—your fishermen has dry bread and herring,—your millionaire dies, with a famous doctor counting his pulse-beats, and a respectable clergyman promising him heaven on account of the money he has left to the church in his will ”

“ The millionaire himself, though old, maintained a fairly middle-aged appearance—he was a thin, wiry, well-preserved man, his wizened and furrowed countenance chiefly showing the marks of Time's ploughshare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. ”

“ A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart. He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest souls that ever went out of it. ”

“ Presently, when the performance was at an end, the people passed out. The banker and the burglar each went back to the even tenor of his way. But the millionaire—poor, unhappy millionaire—carried a new fear away with him. In the old days, by the old ways, he could at least hear his chest going to pieces, but with this newfangled device he might slumber sweetly the whiles his safe melted and ran out over his carpet. It worried the millionaire. ”

“ I have no desire to suggest that the millionaires of America as a body are in straitened or difficult circumstances, [21] or that an American here and there has not succeeded in amassing vast sums of money. But I assert flatly that the great majority of them are not within a mile of being anything like so rich as they pretend to be, and that, taking millionaire for millionaire, they are an entirely Brummagem and specious company. They maintain all the appearances of riches, not on solid bullion or property, but on a little paper. ”

“ A friend of mine once said to a millionaire, whom he saw forever engaged in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending, “Pray, Mr ——, will you answer me one question: You are said to have two millions, and you spend L600 a year. In order to rest and enjoy, what will content you?” ”

“ It was a stiff sum, I must say—an extremely stiff sum; but no doubt he was charging us a fancy price for a fancy castle. 'He will come down in time,' Charles said. 'The sum first named in all these transactions is invariably a feeler. They know I'm a millionaire; and people always imagine millionaires are positively made of money.'
I may add that people always imagine it must be easier to squeeze money out of millionaires than out of other people—which is the reverse of the truth, or how could they ever have amassed their millions? ”

“ You are a millionaire."
"'"A what?" gasped my father.
"'"A millionaire!"
"'"Are you a lunatic?"
"'"Are you an idiot? Don't you see that there is a fortune in 'Olotutu'?"
[pg 255] "'"A fortune! How?"
"'"By bringing it out as a Joint Stock Company."
"'"But—but—but you don't understand. 'Olotutu' is only——"
"'"Only an income for life," interrupted Marple excitedly. "Look here, old boy, I'll get you up a syndicate to run it in twenty-four hours." ”

“ Unlike the pauper, the millionaire must forecast if he would try to shape the future; and even if great givers attach their names to their bequests, they know that to most who profit by them their name will soon mean nothing. ”

“ A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast. ”

“ He was once in the company of a great millionaire who was engaged in business, working at it daily and getting richer every year, and the poor man said to the millionaire, "I am a richer man than you are." ”

“ Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. ”

“ Eustace, “that the wealth owners are the rulers of our later civilization, but, so far as I have observed, instead of endeavoring to curb or overthrow them, we are all doing our best to join their ranks and participate in their power. You appear to be the only living millionaire who declaims against his class. ”

“ Each man as he took his profits wished ardently, but with a useless curiosity, that some one could tell him how, and in what amount, and through whom, the eccentric millionaire had acted, and what his profit had been. ”

“ We have no law of entail by which the founder of a fortune can perpetuate it in his descendants. The vices and the brainlessness of the sons of rich men will come to our aid, and in the third or fourth generation the boatman’s oar and the peddler’s pack will be resumed. Let the millionaires add to their millions without molestation, say I. They cannot take their gold away with them. ”

“ For this is the ebb and flow of American wealth. It is heaped up with resistless energy and concentration; it is dissipated in broken and purposeless profusion. Every class resents the extravagance of every other class; but none will practise denial. The millionaire who plays with a yacht and decks his wife with pearls looks askance upon the motor and silk shirt of the artisan. The artisan, with impulses and ambitions as ignoble and as unintelligent as the millionaire's, is sullenly aware that, waste as he may, the rich can waste more, and he is still dissatisfied. ”

“ CHAPTER V THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE
Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological Society the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed to be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along the middle of his life. ”

“ If our millionaires had to earn their wealth cent by cent, and carry each cent home with them at night, it would be some years before they became millionaires. This is but a faint symbol of the slow process by which nature has piled up her riches. ”

“ By day they exhausted their spare cash in horse hire, riding down to the claim in hope of being on hand when the next blast should reveal a bed of ore, immense in breadth and unfathomable in depth.{194}
My Company was made up chiefly of lawyers, doctors, politicians, and editors. They never realized how much they were indebted to me. For four months I made them feel rich,—and if a man feels rich, what more should he want? For a millionaire can do no more than feel rich. ”

“ Here for instance is a business man, a merchant, comes to our neighborhood, with a stock of goods; he sells them at from two to ten hundred per cent. above what they cost. As a matter of course he soon becomes wealthy, and after a time he will be called a millionaire, when perhaps he was not worth a dollar when he commenced to trade. ”

“ The millionaire of two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. ”