Wealthy elite

“ This is the progress of your wealthy parties, where plum is matched to plum. But what of your unequal matches — your poor and rich parties? Why, sir, if the relative wealth of one is to that of the other as four to one, the poor man will get about one fourth part of the way. ”

“ First comes the Plutocracy, which is composed of wealthy bankers, railway magnates, corporation directors, and trust magnates. Second, is the middle class, your class, gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants, small manufacturers, and professional men. And third and last comes my class, the proletariat, which is composed of the wage-workers. ”

“ A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas. ”

“ Where are the élite of our aristocracy? Where are our country gentlemen who used to keep open house at their estates, disseminating their wealth and producing happiness? All driven abroad—society disjointed—no leader of fashion to set the example, by luxurious entertainments, of disseminating that wealth which ultimately finds its way into the greasy pocket of the labourer or mechanic. ”

“ We staggered under the load of a wealthy and titled upper class. They consumed the people’s time and imposed infinite misery on some millions of toilers, and for these things we rewarded the men at the top with fresh titles. ”

“ Those addressed are the wealthy and powerful upper class, whose luxury and wanton extravagance had consumed the resources of the country, and left no sustenance for the poorer members of the community. ”

“ If millionaires are enemies of society, and I assume that they are—not because they have property, but because, as a rule, they have acquired it by unjust processes and use it tyrannically—what excuse have we for aristocracies, an idle class, a privileged class, who toil not, nor spin? What is a recognized aristocracy, such as England maintains? From what perennial fountain did it draw its nobility and wealth? Came they not through Norman conquest and robbery? Who pay the heavy taxes levied upon the people to support the privileged classes of England? ”

“ Being brought together in large shops with those in like condition, he talked over his wrongs and sufferings with them. A class-feeling was developed. The heartlessness and assumed superiority of those who had become suddenly, and often by mere chance, wealthy were looked upon with frowns and gloomy countenances foreboding no good. ”

“ Minor plutocrats swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be answered—"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures ”

“ The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries there are large and influential circles of society in which all considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an intense thirst for [Pg 294] wealth and for the things that it can give. ”

“ We had our monarchy, our hierarchy and our aristocracy,—God be praised for the benefits which have been derived from all three, and God in his mercy continue them to us! but we had no plutarchy, no millionaires, no great capitalists to break down the honest and industrious trader with the weight of their overbearing and overwhelming wealth. ”

“ But with the swift footsteps of the future there is coming an hour when banded gold, soulless wealth, will oppress the lowlier classes—an event that marks an era in every republic, when leagued capital, not claiming worth or services as its right to sway, but wielding as its scepter only so much yellow dust, seeks to force men to bow to its ignoble supremacy. ”

“ And what is so extraordinary is that, at the very time when the inequality of fortunes is extending and an aristocracy is springing into being, the great levelling movement outside obliges the industrial or landed proprietors to hide their luxury, to dissimulate their wealth, for fear of being knocked on the head by their neighbours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This new comfort, knowledge, and wealth went not merely to nobles and prelates; it was noticeable most of all in a new class, the "bourgeoisie." In the towns of Europe lived bankers, merchants, and shop-keepers,—intelligent, able, and wealthy enough to live like kings or princes. These bourgeois or townspeople (bourg = town) were to grow in intelligence, in wealth, and in political influence; they were destined to precipitate revolutions in industry and politics, thereby establishing their individual rule over factories, and their collective rule over legislatures. ”

“ This creation of a powerful aristocracy of wealth, which originated in a diseased system of finance, must ultimately become a source of very serious social and political disorder. The descendants of the mushroom millionaires of the present generation will consolidate into a broad and almost omnipotent money power, whose [Pg 308] sympathies and influence will conflict with our political institutions at every point of contact. ”

“ The vices of our organisation begot these over-rich folk, begot their diamond-decked women, and their clipped French poodles with gold bangles spanning their aristocratic legs. These are the spawn of land-owning, of capitalism, of military domination, of High Finance, of all the social ills that flesh is heir to. I feel as I pace the terrace in the broad Mediterranean sunshine, that I am here in the midst of the very best society Europe affords. That is to say, the very worst. The dukes and the money-lenders, the Jay Goulds and the Reinachs. ”

“ Thus wealth and poverty contributed alike to the ruin of the republic. The rich employed their wealth in the acquisition of power, and their power in every kind of oppression and rapine for the acquisition of more wealth. ”

“ But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power; it is the means to power, and power is governmental. Who controls the government to-day? The proletariat with its twenty millions engaged in occupations? ”

“ From your labour and industry arises all that can be called riches, and by your hands it must be defended: Kings, nobility, gentry, clergy, lawyers, and military officers, do all support their grandeur by your sweat and hazard, and in tyrannical governments upon the people’s spoils: They there riot upon the subsistence of the poor people, whose poverty is their riches. ”

“ Although its ideal was money, and although it set up the acquisition of wealth as the all-stimulating incentive and goal of human effort, it viewed sullenly and enviously the development of an established magnate class which could look haughtily and dictatorially down upon it even as it constantly looked down upon the working class. ”

“ Thus the middle class is constantly recruited from the upper. Besides, the upper is all the time recruited from the wealthy middle; the union of aristocracy and plutocracy may be said to be complete. But merit makes its way continually from even the lower ranks upward, in the professions, in the army, the law, the church, in letters, in trade, and, what Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Socially, the influence of nobles and clergy steadily declined. As steadily arose the numbers, the ability, and the importance of the traders and commercial magnates, the moneyed people, all those who were identified with the new wealth that the Commercial Revolution was creating, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the merchants,—the so-called middle class, the bourgeoisie, who gradually grew discontented with the restrictive institutions of their time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the power of money augments and vast riches are piled higher and higher, it is becoming the more apparent that an opposing force of bitter antagonism is being created which may one day gain strength enough to sweep away the vampire of capitalism.
“Wealth is in the hands of the few rich and the suffrage in the hands of the many poor. In the concentration of wealth and the diffusion of political power lies the great danger of Modern Society. ”

“ People had gotten into the habit of fancying that, because certain men had grown very, very rich through their own genius for money-making, supplemented perhaps by accidental favors from law and public officials, therefore politics in some way might possibly concern the private citizen, might account for the curious discrepancy between his labor and its reward. The impression was growing that, while the energy of the citizen determined the PRODUCTION of wealth, it was politics that determined the distribution of wealth. ”

“ I saw suddenly spring up in all hearts an insatiable thirst for riches. I saw men form in a moment a detestable conspiracy to acquire wealth, not by honest labour and liberal industry, but by the ruin of the sovereign, of the state, and of their fellow-citizens. ”

“ Will it be long before they perceive, that this credit will follow close upon the solidity of public engagements,—a solidity demonstrated by the evidence of the inutility of a base and infamous robbery?
Will it be long before they feel that all the actual wealth of a State, its real wealth, is nothing more or less than the mass of its present industry; that all its possible wealth can arise only from the sum of all its possible labour; that the greatest riches are only the greatest sum of labour? ”

“ They had all the pride and social tastes of the upper class but not its wealth. Then came the 'pretenders,' men of industry and enterprise but not of established families, ...Below these classes were the 'yeomen,' most of whom were very poor. ”

“ It is not that the capitalist is richer, and the operative poorer—though this is true to the letter—than was the prince, than was the serf of those days. It is not only that the aristocrat of capital, the noble by the grace of gold, is ten times more arrogant, more insulting, more soulless, cold-hearted, and calmly cruel, than the aristocrat of the sword, the noble by the grace of God ”

“ We find the upper classes enormously rich, and the lower classes miserably poor. We find those by whose labour the wealth is created, receiving the smallest possible share of it; the remainder being absorbed by the higher ranks in the form either of rent or of profit. And as wealth is, after intellect, the most permanent source of power, it has naturally happened that a great inequality of wealth has been accompanied by a corresponding inequality of social and political power. ”

“ That the wealth of the country has greatly increased, is not a matter of doubt. This is not only an acknowledged truth, but it is the boast of the millocracy. It is at the head of all their demands—"Mark our wealth—our importance to the conntry." ”

“ And this power of the rich is as strong and effective as that of the most absolute monarch that ever lived, as far as relates to the labour of the poor; indeed, probably more so, since it is doubtful whether any power ever existed, in any kind of government whatever, that could impose on the people what is imposed on them by the power of wealth. ”

“ People would have relied more upon their own energies and less upon the Government to make them rich. But, in my opinion at least, the aggregate production of wealth and the general state of popular prosperity would not have been less. ”

“ It is rapidly increasing, and I am not sure that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connection with large and lavishly expended wealth, is an unmixed good, even in a society in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the governing class, is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy with which it is viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own—I dare not, perhaps, apply a harsher term than—levity. ”

“ At one or another stage in the life cycle of every civilization aggressive bourgeois greed for wealth and power makes itself felt. Their role in western civilization has been outstanding. The business class through its control of the productive apparatus and the sources of credit has been able to surround itself with subordinates, scientists and other experts, apologists, strong-arm squads (police and military) , spies and assassins. II. A middle class, made up of business class subordinates plus self employed tradesmen, professionals, independent farmers and craftsmen. ”