Wealthy citizen

“ We are already wealthy; we have greater resources and higher credit than any other nation; we have more wealth than any save one; we have vast accumulations of fortune, in private hands and in enormous corporations. There exists already, what could not be said to exist a quarter of a century ago, a class who have leisure. Now what is the object in life of this great, growing class that has money and leisure, what does it chiefly care for? ”

“ Full of the importance which the commercial interest is to acquire under a republic, the wealthy man of business is easily reconciled to the oppression of the superior classes, and enjoys, with great dignity, his new elevation. ”

“ Greed, false economy and heartless indifference to the welfare of others are unfortunately too prevalent among the wealthy class. No ordinary argument could induce owners to expend money in strengthening or rebuilding their income-producing properties. But I get after them in my picture with a prod that ought to rouse them to action. ”

“ To those who have greater riches than one thousand dollars for each individual of their family, is to be said, that they are only administrators of that property to make the poor rich and the rich truly happy. ”

“ Now, if fifteen millions of such people would be a source of national wealth before unheard of, would not every individual of this whole number be a source of wealth? And would not every element which should go to make up the sum total of the excellences of each individual, be a part of this mighty treasure?
If the richer part of the community have money to spare, why should they not spend it in increasing the health, the knowledge, and the morality of the needy around them—by giving employment to those who are capable of promoting these blessings, and who want employment? ”

“ Here is an opportunity for, and an appeal to, citizens of wealth. Money cannot be more worthily or wisely bestowed than in feeding the streams in whose life-giving power is the strength of the republic. ”

“ It is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; and wealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become a great social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be rich because they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because the hold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service—getting what we have earned—has come in. ”

“ They seek to excite what they call “the poor” against what they call “the rich”—in this land of great opportunities for all, where, now as ever, so many of the poor of yesterday are among the rich of to-day, and so many of the rich of to-day may be among the poor of to-morrow. ”

“ With money and property comes the means of knowledge and power. A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise. This part of our destiny is in our own hands. ”

“ In a preceding chapter, we have endeavoured to show that wealth is power over the labour of the poor. But it seems that wealth is not only a certain definite species of power in the rich over the labour of the poor ”

“ Our moralists were prattling of Captains of Industry, exploitation—but under a prettier name—and the remote sacredness of being a millionaire; public office was a matter of victory and patronage; the saving of pennies and the spending of lives was preached as an ideal of the perfect existence. ”

“ If industry, frugality, and disinterested integrity were alike the virtues of all, there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit, in making all property a common stock, and giving to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of the whole. ”

“ The rich and fat and sleek—the safe and secure—what know they of want! Want, not of money, but of work: the only capital of the honest and industrious poor! It is the spectre that ever haunts the poor. It makes the world look as though the whole system of society were out of joint—as if all men were in conspiracy against you—as if God had forgotten you. ”

“ Now it goes into the hands of the privileged few who use the power their money gives them to keep their less fortunate fellow men in servile subjection. I want to be rich, very rich, but I will use my wealth for good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our public system, when economies are concerned, first considers money, property. It seems sometimes as if our free individualistic plan of government were, after all, adapted for the minority of the bright-witted. ”

“ It is like a nobleman whom I will not name, a duke, the biggest of our shareholders, whose life is a scandal of prodigality, millions thrown into the street on women, feasting, and useless luxury. But we who live quietly, like good citizens as we are, who do not speculate, who are content to live wholesomely on what we have, giving a part to the poor! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then 'tis the same, no matter which
Of us is poor, or which is rich.
Let each man have enough this day,
Since those that can are glad to pay;
There's nothing now too rich or good
For poor men, not the King's own food. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a result, the people as a mass would enjoy all the benefits of great wealth, minus its burdens, abuses, temptations and dangers. In this, any one of them might be envied by the competitive millionaires. ”

“ No man in his right mind would make an assault upon wealth as such, or upon property as such, or upon the honest acquisition of property—we simply call upon those who have the good fortune to have accumulated wealth to respond to the expenses of the great government under which they live and thrive. ”

“ But if these common advantages, these public means of society, offering so many important agents to the individual for the gratification of his wants, alone are worth more to him than all the precarious power of the savage state—how incomparably greater are his advantages when we consider the wonderful accumulations, in the form of private wealth, which are ready to be exchanged with the labour of all those who are in a condition to add to the store. ”

“ Can you do it alone, and feed and pay yourselves? But if the rich must do it, what shall be their reward? They give you money—what will you pay them in? Money, or money’s worth, and human bodies, are the only values that the world has ever known. ”

“ That the rich were become poor, and the poor rich; that many who formerly had influenced the politics, directed the counsels, and commanded the reverence of their fellow-citizens, had been precipitated by Fortune to the bottom of her wheel. ”

“ I accept no Companion by whom I am not convinced that the Society will be aided rather than burdened; and although I value intelligence, resolution, and personal strength, more than any other riches, I hope to find, in a little while, that there are people in the world who can hold money without being blinded, by their possession of it, to justice or duty. ”

“ You should also realise the advantages arising from the fact, that whilst elevating knowledge, and rendering the rich happy in the possession of their wealth, my laws protect those who formerly would have been called poor. ”

“ I wondered, everywhere, under stress of this perception, at the general associations of the word that best describes them and that remains so quaintly and admirably their word even when their supreme right in it is most vulgarly and loudly disputed. They are the rich presences, even in the “rich” places, among the sky-scrapers, the newspaper-offices, the highly-rented pews and the billionaires, and they assert, with a blest imperturbable serenity, not only that everything would be poor without them, but that even with them much is as yet deplorably poor. ”

“ Every influence conspired to drive men into making desperate attempts to break away from the stigma and thraldom of poverty, and gain economic independence and social prestige by the ownership of wealth. ”

“ Riches, no doubt, will ever have their influence; and where they are suffered to increase to large amounts in a few hands, there they may become dangerous to the public—particularly when, from the cheapness of labor and the scarcity of money, a great proportion of the people are poor. ”

“ Do you rich people suppose you are going to help this matter greatly by leaving money in your wills to build asylums for the moral and physical wrecks for which our incredible folly and selfish indifference is responsible?
“Your time will come; sooner or later you will find much the same condition of things in your own great cities. Do not believe that in some mysterious way—as your politicians and newspapers are trying to teach you—you, in America, are different from us.
“We are all in the same boat, because the structure of society is everywhere the same. Money is literally king and god. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our countrymen are prone to enterprise, and are scattered over every sea and every land in pursuit of that wealth which will not screen them from disease and infirmity, which is missed much oftener than found, and which, when gained, by no means compensates them for the hardships and vicissitudes endured in the pursuit.
But what if the truth of these pretensions be admitted? The money must be restored to its right owner. I know that, whatever inconveniences may follow the deed, thou wilt not hesitate to act justly. Affluence and dignity, however valuable, may be purchased too dear. ”

“ And what claim have a class—who come to this country only to make money, and who make nothing but money, and who, if they could make more money anywhere else on the earth, would go there to-morrow—to an equality of right with the manly, honest, and attached son of England, every day of whose life adds something to the comfort or the credit of the community? ”

“ 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 reader will, of course, understand that the political or industrial power of capital is entirely a separate thing from the ability of wealth to buy luxury, deference or social recognition for its possessor. ”

“ Riches may be considered by a statesman in three different lights; as a mine when they are locked up; as an object of trade when they are employed in order to gain more; or as an object of luxury, and fund for taxation, when they are spent in the gratification of our political wants. ”

“ Rich men, with true patriotism, have spent their lives in painfully searching for, and collecting, beautiful things, to leave them, afterwards, freely to the nation. Millionaires, too, have, it would seem, their uses. And we are thus all, in a sense, millionaires, for we inherit the priceless treasures of others, and we enjoy the fruits of their lifelong toil. ”

“ The possessor of wealth (rich or poor) has the legal title to it; and he gets his living—that is, his food, clothing, and shelter—and such other necessaries or luxuries as he can use. He gets nothing more. ”

“ Remember that a government based upon gold, {7} wealth, sordidness, must end unhappily. We must have other and higher ideals for our people.
Do not misunderstand me; I do not decry individual, and, in certain degrees, aggregate wealth. Let our citizens accumulate money "beyond the dreams of avarice." Through the natural channels open for its circulation, it will gradually flow back to the community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are all “individuals”! but money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence; money at the present time acts as a greater or lesser moral prejudice for a man in proportion to the amount he may possess. ”

“ When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones: few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket. ”

“ And this state of danger the soft speeches of the Whigs try to conceal from the people by directing their attention almost exclusively to the financial concerns of the country. Wealth, in other countries,—as, for instance, in England,—acts as the vis inertiæ of the state; talent from above, and the wants of the labouring classes from below, acting as motors. ”