Nouveau riche

“ We assume that the blatant, self-advertising nouveau riche, with whom wealth is the standard of success and virtue, is the national American type, instead of the worst of many types, whose bad example is as well recognised as a peril to character in America as in other countries. Wealth in all nations covers a multitude of sins, but in America, to judge from recent developments, it would seem to cover crimes. ”

“ Because it is here that the lean, hungry men of letters, who seldom, if ever, get their thoughts transferred to print, are even now threshing out the nation’s destiny. Threshing it out, consolidating it, whilst the monied men and women, the present all-powerful nouveau riche—the beer, whiskey and tobacco, peers and peeresses—the lords of the Stock Exchange, Banks and Divorce Courts—those who have made their money out of the sins and follies of the world, or by sweating and usury, are lolling in their soft, upholstered [140] chairs, smoking luxurious cigars and quaffing liqueurs. ”

“ For the human stream is of never-ceasing interest. There is the nouveau-riche and his family, not yet accustomed to the wealth the war showered upon them, ill at ease in their new clothes, glancing apprehensively at every one as though expecting an accusation ”

“ No matter what comes they are for gain—for gathering around them riches; and when they get rich how are those riches used? Spent on the lusts of the flesh, wasted as a thing of nought, and they who were once rich are left in poverty, as they are this day. ”

“ To-morrow I inherit all my grandfather's wealth; I shall be rich—a millionaire. All this money that I have never earned, and that I can never spend personally, I shall own, and those fields stretching away from the window for miles and miles—those empty fields that we never use, those woods full of nests and rabbit-burrows—the houses of animals, while human beings lie to sleep in the streets of the cities—they are all mine, mother, all mine, mine! ”

“ Some of these were, of course, mean and sordid souls, to whom wealth was an end in itself. But among them one emerged who was more than a millionaire, who was capable of dreaming great dreams, and had acquired his wealth chiefly in order that he might have the power to realise them. ”

“ Can money be made out of it? Will it make the rich richer, and the strong stronger? How will it effect property? In the eyes of such people, there is no God but wealth; no right and wrong but profit and loss. ”

“ We often hear of an earl or a merchant-prince mourning the want of an heir, but scarcely ever of a Highland couple or an Irish hovel wanting their overflowing brood of little half-naked savages. We occasionally hear of a poor man raising himself by talent and industry to fortune; but in general he does so only by associating his skill with some existing capital, and giving its owner thus the extraordinary advantage of uniting old wealth with a new discovery. ”

“ It was thus that I set out in life—ardent, hopeful, and enthusiastic: if my mental resources were small, they were always ready at hand, like, a banker with a weak capital, but who could pay every trifling demand on the spot, I lived upon credit; and upon that credit I grew rich. Had I gone on freely as I began, I might still enjoy the fame of wealth and solvency, but with the reputation of affluence came the wish to be rich. ”

“ From my childhood I have been accustomed to luxury and idleness, and have been bred as though my fortune were large, and my expectations almost without a limit. The idea of wealth has been familiarised to me from my cradle. I have been taught to look upon those means, by which men raise themselves to riches and distinction, as being beyond my heeding, and beneath my care. ”

“ I recall how in those days of checkered fortune, wherein there came a proportion of one hour of shadow to one moment of sun, I was wont to think on riches and their possession. I would say to myself: “And should it so befall that I make my millions, I’ll have none about me but broken folk: I’ll refuse to so much as permit the acquaintance of a rich man.” ”

“ Even to the same person, and under the same circumstances in all other respects, they may become wealth, or cease to be wealth, merely in consequence of a change in the social position of their possessor. ”

“ But the undue reverence which is everywhere manifested for wealth, the rank which is conceded it, the homage which is paid it, the perpetual worship which is offered it, all tend to magnify its desirableness, and awaken longings for its possession in the minds of those born without inheritance. In society, as at present observed, the acquisition of money would seem to be the height of human aim—the great object of living, to which all other purposes are made subordinate. ”

“ But at my age, together with the fact that I am a stranger, at least a newcomer, in this State, money would be my only resource—perhaps a hopeless one, in any case. The rich man must learn his lesson, which is, that wealth bars the way to honor. ”

“ The goddess of prosperity, with her wings of silver and her feathers of gold, was to bless a people which had long known only paper money. In a twinkling every trade was to flourish, every class to be more comfortable, every man to have work and wage, plenty and no taxes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But this dangerous propensity is not confined to the lower classes—all seem to play with reckless infatuation: the rich prelate, with the aim of still further augmenting his hoarded wealth; the speculative trader, to gratify his love of hazard and excitement; and the poor working-man, with the more simple motive of relieving the sharp penury of the moment, or realizing some vision of prosperity. ”

“ Even now, your dreams are full of money-bags; your cares are how to add superfluity to wealth; ye fawn upon the rich, ye scorn the poor, ye pine and toil both night and day for gold, more gold; and are ye happy? Answer me, ye covetous ones.
Yet are there righteous gains, God's blessing upon labour: yet is there rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter? And who will extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what it feeds on? ”

“ Every day he hears about this, that, and the other one, who started in business but a few years before, with little or no capital, and who are now worth their tens of thousands; and he thus learns to aspire after wealth, without being made to feel sensibly the fact, that the number who grow rich rapidly are as one to a hundred compared with those who succeed as the result of small beginnings united with long continued and untiring application. ”

“ He possessed a heap of numerous virtues, and a heap of money, a result of the accumulation of merit in earlier lives.
As he once pondered in the dead of night, his conclusions took this form: "Even an abundant store of wealth, if pecked at, sinks together like a pile of soot. A very little, if added to, grows like an ant-hill. Hence, even though money be abundant, it should be increased. Riches unearned should be earned. What is earned, should be guarded. What is guarded, should be enlarged and heedfully invested. ”

“ Who are the aristocrats now—who are chosen as the best to rule? Those who have money and the brains for money. It doesn't matter what else they have: but they must have money-brains,—because they are ruling in the name of money. ”

“ The rich of today, the rich of tomorrow, and the rich of yesterday, struggling against disaster, fighting off ruin, millionaires who, having made hay while the sun shone, have well stored their nests, and other millionaires whose hay has flamed up like a rick of straw! ”

“ When all is said and done, it is riches make the man, you know. It is not birth, or virtue, or learning, but money, for money is power; and what is the meaning of the word aristocracy, but the powerful classes, I should like to know? ”

“ You now have the advantage of us in your aggregation of three centuries of accumulated wealth—the spoil of all the world—and in the talent that you have developed for conserving it and adding to it and in the institutions you have built up to perpetuate it—your merchant ships, your insurance, your world-wide banking, your mortgages on all new lands ”

“ The portion of truth, I can hardly say contained in these observations, but recalled by them, I apprehend to be, that a state of complete equality of fortunes would not be favourable to active exertion for the increase of wealth. Speaking of the mass, it is as true of wealth as of most other distinctions—of talent, knowledge, virtue—that those who already have, or think they have, as much of it as their neighbours, will seldom exert themselves to acquire more. ”

“ Money will not be regarded as the means of living, but as the object of life. All nobler ends will be neglected in the eager haste to be rich. No higher pursuit will be recognised than the pursuit of gold—no attainment deemed so desirable as the attainment of wealth. While the great man of every circle is the rich man, in the common mind wealth becomes the synonyme of greatness. ”

“ They appear to think that wealth will gain for them all that may be desired to make life happy. We might illustrate the thought by saying that they sow or plant their money and hope that it will bring forth a fruitage of the blessings for which they long. [Draw the bag of money, the earth line, the stalk of the plant and the outline of the foliage, all with black.] And what do the possessors of riches expect as a harvest in return for the sowing of their wealth? First, let us put down Pleasure. [Put in the word Pleasure, using red for the lettering.] ”

“ They shall be blessed with outward prosperity as far as is good for them: Wealth and riches shall be in the upright man's house, not in his heart (for he is none of those in whom the love of money reigns) , perhaps not so much in his hand (for he only begins to raise the estate) , but in his house; his family shall grow rich when he is gone. ”

“ I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms a race,—I don’t mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. ”

“ When I have got as much wealth as I can desire, I will purchase the finest house I can find, with lands, slaves, and horses. Then I shall set myself on the footing of a prince, and will ask the grand Vizier’s daughter to be my wife. As soon as I have married her, I will buy her ten black servants, the youngest and best that can be got for money. ”

“ I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser. ”

“ And their ambition to become rich may tend to cultivate the common sense which characterises and narrows both their hearts and views, confirming the former to their families, taking the handmaids of it into the circle of pleasure, if not of interest, and the latter to the inspection of their workmen, including the noble science of bargain-making--that is, getting everything at the cheapest, and selling it at the dearest rate. ”

“ The distinction between the vieux riches and the nouveaux riches is one they can fight out between themselves. The former scoffs at the latter while all the time he is setting him, and consciously setting him, the example he is to follow. It is not the gaining, but the spending of the money that must occupy our attention here. ”

“ I'm poor, and yet I don't decently envy the rich. I'm an old bach. I make enough money for a stake, and then I sit around by myself, and shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't contribute to the wealth of Brother Elder or Daddy Cass. ”

“ At the worst it can be left in trust. But when I follow my father, only ten millions will go to—to—relatives. You must be the custodian of the bulk; and when I give you its present figure—reminding you that such wealth rolls up wealth unceasingly, by the mere force of momentum—it may dawn upon you that you still have it in your power to become as great and as mighty as ever your boyish imaginings dictated, and that you will need all the character you have put in storage. What is your idea of a great fortune—an American fortune? ”

“ He had managed the property so successfully during the long minority that even he himself was surprised at the amount of money, both capital and income, which the earl was now master of, without restriction or reservation, and free from the control of any human being. ”

“ In nine cases out of ten, in the case of acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all his earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that it might accumulate and fructify. ”

“ But (and I now return to and explain my former observation) the means by which we can effect this peculiar world can be rendered equally subservient to our advancement and prosperity in that which we share in common with our race; for the riches which by the aid of wisdom we heap up in the storehouses of the mind are, though not the only, the most customary coin by which external prosperity is bought. ”