Multimillionaire

“ Two men starving on a raft. The pauper has a Boston cracker, resolves to keep it till the multimillionaire is beginning to starve, then make him pay $50,000 for it. Millionaire agrees. Pauper's cupidity rises, resolves to wait and get more; twenty-four hours later asks him a million for the cracker. Millionaire agrees. Pauper has a wild dream of becoming enormously rich off his cracker; backs down; lies all night building castles in the air; next day raises his price higher and higher, till millionaire has offered $100,000,000, every cent he has in the world. Pauper accepts. ”

“ They were the ascetics of wealth. At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed their smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken eyes and wrinkled brows. With bodies more withered, complexions yellower, lips drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism than those of the old Spanish monks, these multimillionaires gave themselves up with inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of banking and industry. ”

“ They give no explanation of the fundamental laws and movements of the present system, which have resulted in these vast fortunes; nor is there the least glimmering of a scientific interpretation of a succession of states and tendencies from which these men of great wealth have emerged. With an entire absence of comprehension, they portray our multimillionaires as a phenomenal group whose sudden rise to their sinister and overshadowing position is a matter of wonder and surprise. ”

“ Can a game be beaten where so many multimillionaires are created among those who are on the "inside" and where so large a percentage of the speculator's money must come out every year to pay the enormous cost of maintaining a vast system of stock-brokerage offices, stock exchanges, telegraph and telephone wires, newspapers, publicity bureaus, yachts, Fifth Avenue palaces, huge contributions to national and State political campaigns, etc.? ”

“ The multimillionaires have so much that is common among themselves, and so little that they share with us of moderate means, that they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue of their palaces, their picture-galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their large hospitality, constitute a kind of exclusive aristocracy. ”

“ That is why I decline to recognize the mere multi-millionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him of real benefit, of real use,—and such is often the case,—why, then he does become an asset of worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I have preferred to have this inspired employer a millionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ, and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind, old-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ Finance-capital and the banks make this superiority of the biggest enterprises, as we shall see, still more crushing, in the most literal sense of the word, since millions of employers, small, average, and even great are in reality attached completely to some hundreds of millionaire financiers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the past two or three years two well-known millionaires in the United States, millionaires many times over, have died. The one started into life with the idea of acquiring a great name by accumulating great wealth. These two things he had in mind,—self and great wealth. ”

“ And in all the infinity of great undertakings which engage the restless activities of our leaders of industry, capital is demanded, not in thousands, but in millions—not in millions, but in hundreds of millions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You’ve no idea of the money engaged in productive industry, money earned by hard years of labor and economy, money held in trust for widows and orphans, money stolen from banks and corporations, money abstracted by clerks and office boys, is carried into Wall Street, in the vain hope of acquiring a sudden fortune, and there remains. ”

“ O all ye holy and blessed millionaires, who, despising (with the singular Captain Wilson, the vigorous Belfort Bax, the Beatific Butler, with all other adulterating and admirable plutocrats) who, despising the joys of poverty, the delights of Conformity, the pleasures of submission, all ye who, trampling on celestial joys, have gloriously elected to trample on the poor, who have amassed enormous sums in sound Government securities, in investments which nothing can touch, who thinking nought of the treasure in heaven have laid up vast treasure on earth—all ye blessed ones, intercede for us. ”

“ Our great captains of industry, our multi-millionaires, have, most of them, made their fortunes in commerce. This is an age, perhaps—especially in the United States—which rather makes a hero of the business man. ”

“ The rapidity with which large fortunes have been acquired is one of the wonders of the modern world. At the present time, the United States numbers its millionaires by thousands. The mere mention of such names as Vanderbilt, Gould, Astor, Rockefeller, Morgan, Havemeyer, Belmont, Whitney, Goelet, Carnegie, Armour, Harriman and Dupont (all of them families numbered among the multi-millionaires whose wealth was acquired, for the most part, since the Civil War) calls to mind the immense concentration of income-yielding wealth which has been going on within the past century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the last fifteen years of his life, M*** was party to more confidential jobs and deals than all other contemporaneous financiers, and he handled them with great skill and high art. Big, jolly, generous, a royal eater and drinker, an associate of the rich, the friend of the poor, a many-times millionaire. ”

“ For the last few centuries, commercial ability, financial capacity, knowledge of how to manipulate men and measures in a way to increase fortune, and so to secure more of what fortune will buy, have been more and more appreciated, until to-day aristocracy and royalty clip coupons, families whose ancestors trace from the Conqueror invest in stocks and draw dividends, and the bluest blooded of all great families engage with avidity in the struggle for business and wealth. ”

“ And some who have been reckoned poor will be found to be the shrewdest of investors. They will be the millionaires of the Kingdom time and in the homeland. I do not mean dollar-millionaires, but life-millionaires. The standard of wealth in the homeland is lives, not dollars.
And some too there will be, and not few in numbers, who have given of their strength in business pursuits to the making of money, as the Spirit has guided them, or to whom it has been left in trust by others, and who have been steadily investing the wealth that has come in the lives of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Railroad presidents cannot know too much about mechanics and electricity if they want to pay heavier dividends than their rivals—in a word, it is the millionaire who knows most of those subjects of which most millionaires know nothing who rules all the other millionaires. You see, I have let my imagination run away with me—I already saw you aloft on a gold pedestal. ”

“ Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! Three millions at thirty-three—and millions beget millions!"
... Power—millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. ”

“ Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday’s men of wealth turned into beggars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know a billionaire, at least this is his reputation, who has no standing merely because he is vulgar—that is, ill-bred. I have met another man, a great financier, who would give a million to have the entrée to the very best houses. ”

“ The capital which has paid for these costly places of business and elegant residences, and is invested in these gigantic enterprises, has been created out of the immense material wealth of the State—not borrowed on a factitious credit. Its merchants do not make princely fortunes in a day, but what they acquire they keep. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ The multi-millionaire cannot possibly spend his income save by a recourse to wild and demoralizing extravagance, and in some instances not even extravagance is sufficient for the purpose. Fortunes of a certain size either remorselessly accumulate or else are given away. ”

“ But by permitting the representatives of wealth—money—to have the power to increase, the makers of money have been able to filch all the net earnings from labour, and as a result of this, most of the accumulated wealth of the world is in the hands of the makers of money instead of in those of the makers of wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen produce panics and who were applauded by ‘the Street’ and the press for their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful, they have never been detected or suspected. ”