Читать книгу The Reign of Gilt онлайн

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Why has an income of ten thousand a year become a mere competence in New York City to-day? Why do the families with ten times ten thousand regard themselves as far from rich? Why do enough New Yorkers to make a populous city regard it as privation if they cannot keep at least three servants, one of them a man-servant, and ride in cabs and have a country place in summer?

The explanation is—the multi-millionaire.

There are in New York City to-day upward of a thousand fortunes of two or more millions. About one-fourth of these are of more than ten millions. There are no less than forty-eight fortunes of more than forty millions, about twenty of these being more than seventy-five millions, and half a dozen of them between seventy-five millions and the mountainous aggregations of the Oil King—three-quarters of a billion, with an income beyond forty-five millions a year.

There is no way of estimating the number of fortunes of from three-quarters of a million to two millions. The income of a million dollars, safely invested, is about forty thousand a year. Many New York men—several thousands—have from their profession or their business annual incomes, available for living expenses, of forty thousand or thereabouts, yet their holdings of property are small. But they belong in the millionaire class because they spend money like the millionaires and are of the most strenuous part of the plutocracy.