Wealthy individuals

“ 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 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ An unusual number of individuals, whose first steps were in humble life, have risen to the possession of riches, not by fortunate accidents, or profuse gains, by lotteries or by war, but through an industry which impoverished none, and a prudence which as resolutely frowned upon waste of time, as waste of money. ”

“ And do you think that he, a merchant, who probably places a very high value on money, because experience has taught him its value, will say, like you, 'Palace or hovel, poverty or wealth, it makes no difference'? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But wealth could come only from universal industry, honesty, thrift, and fair dealing among men. In his own dealings with his fellow men, he required those qualities; and, although his keen sympathies invariably responded to true distress, he had scant patience with those whose false vision saw in wealth honestly acquired a fund to be drawn upon for the support of the lazy and shiftless. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In very few cases does immense wealth seem to [Pg 113] go hand in hand with refinement, reserve and dignity. Millionaires are for the most part ill-mannered and illiterate, and singularly uninteresting in their conversation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rich men of America are either rich men's sons, who, from all I have seen of them, are poor trash enough, or business men, who have made wealth by their own exertions. But how few there are who make money, who do not sacrifice their spiritual and nobler natures to do it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ A large comprehensive soul, purged from vulgar fears and prejudices, able to interpret the works of man and God. A perpetual spring of fresh ideas, and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good Heaven! what other reward can you ask! "But is it not a reproach upon the economy of Providence that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy half a nation?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ With them honour and glory are more powerful and more common motives of action than interest; they are the coin with which many persons are content, the only coin which many persons are ambitious to acquire. In an industrious society, on the other hand, money, the fruit and object of labour, is not to be despised; a man's wealth is the measure of his capacity and of his consideration among his fellow-citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Give your attention wholly to riches; ignore poverty.
Whenever you think or speak of those who are poor, think and speak of them as those who are becoming rich; as those who are to be congratulated rather than pitied. Then they and others will catch the inspiration, and begin to search for the way out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ This young republic has already produced many men and women who are distinguished in the fields of literature, science, art and invention. There hosts of men, who in their youth were as poor as church mice, have, by dint of perseverance and business capacity, become multi-millionaires. There you may see the richest man in the world living a simple and abstemious life, without pomp and ostentation, daily walking in the streets unattended even by a servant. ”

“ And here we will explain that we employ the single terms “rich,” “rich people,” etc., for convenience’ sake, including under this designation other qualifications besides moneyed wealth, and other persons besides those who possess great fortunes; namely, all those who possess any species of privilege or power which gives them social dignity and influence. ”

“ He was a pattern of the master-manufacturer on whose heart the weal of his workmen lay as on a father's and who found in their contentment his happiness and pride.
And—what is in our day of special significance—he was a pattern as a rich man. I wish I could call the millionaires of the land to this bier and say to them, “Those among you who lament that at times poverty looks with mutterings on riches, learn from this dead man.” His millions were never begrudged him. ”

“ It isn't American. I didn't think such distinctions existed in this country. Is it all a question of money, then? Do intelligence and—er—purpose count for nothing?"
"My dear girl, it simply means that the people who are on top—the people who, by force of success, or ability, or money, are most prominent in the community, associate together, and the world gives a certain prominence to their doings. Here, where fortunes have been made so rapidly, and we have no formal aristocracy, money undoubtedly plays a conspicuous part in giving access to what is known as society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say that we of the rich and well-to-do classes are daily doing it likewise: unconsciously, or half consciously it may be, we gather wealth by trading on the hard necessity of our fellows, and then we give driblets of it away to those of them who in one way or other cry out loudest to us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our lexicographers define riches to be opulence, the possession of landed estates, of gold and silver, etc., and the man that possesses the most of this kind of wealth is rich in comparison with his neighbor. The riches of a kingdom or nation does not consist so much in the fulness of its treasury as in the fertility of its soil and the industry of its people. The common definition may be termed the riches of this world, but are they the true riches? ”

“ Here wealth is new, and mainly in the hands of men who have scrambled for it adroitly and with vigor. They have energy, vigor, forecast, and a certain generosity, but as a class, are narrow, vulgar, and conceited. Nine tenths of the property of the people is owned by one [Pg 373] tenth of the persons, and these capitalists are men of little culture, little moral elevation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One result of this is, that property and possessions of all kinds are continually changing hands, and thus placed within the reach of nearly all who have the ability, as well as the desire, to struggle for their attainment. To superior judgment, skill, and industry, when applied to the various pursuits in life, comes the reward of wealth; while the supine and self-indulgent, or those who lack a sound judgment and business acumen, remain in moderate circumstances, or lose the property that came into their hands at majority. ”

“ The spectacle of that man, with his social position and his enormous wealth, driving under such conditions, struck me first as ludicrous and then as a living example of the great leveling power that in the end makes all men equal regardless of wealth or position. ”

“ The children of the poor, says one, thrive better than those of the rich. If it be so, it ought not to be so in common reason. But the same person will tell you, I have made my son a merchant; he will be a rich man. ”