THE PASSING OF THE IDLE RICH BY FREDERICK TOWNSEND MARTIN Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1911 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY “ The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these, the first only is meritorious, and to it all the products of labour

I know Society. I was born in it, and have lived in it all my life, both here and in the capitals of Europe. I believe that I understand as well as any man what are the true traditions and the true conditions of American Society; and for comparison, I also know and understand the conditions and traditions of Society in other lands. My honest opinion is that American Society, for all its faults, and it has many, and for all the hideous abnormalities that in these later years have been grafted upo

I remember very well indeed that bitter period of transition when first the ideal, or lack of ideals, of the newer America began to corrode the old society. I remember with what intense bitterness and chagrin the early excesses of the earliest of the idle rich were condoned by the leaders of society in that day. At first the social world fought hard for its traditions, and the leaders of American Society of my father’s day were never reconciled to the changes that came about in the body social.

In the golden days of American Society, as I have said, great fortunes were very rare indeed. The few that there were came mostly from merchandising and trade. The accumulations of John Jacob Astor, John Hancock, and Stephen Girard, in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, respectively, had not been dwarfed by the accumulations of a later era. They remained, up to about 1850, as the typical marvels of the American world of business. The middle of last century was the harvest time of Opportunity in

For thirty years, since 1880, we have been piling up wealth in the hands of men who do not work. In almost every year there has been pouring from our mills a steady grist of idlers. It has gone so far that to-day, in every city of the Union, the class of the idle rich has reached proportions that to the thoughtful student of events are alarming. The millionaire habit has spread until to-day men of millions are far more numerous in our great cities than were men of one tenth the wealth twenty yea

Many are the causes that have led to this great change in the attitude of the wealthy classes toward the world at large. First and foremost, in my judgment, is the change in the attitude of the working classes themselves toward the rich. For, more assiduously than anything else in this world, we, the wealthy, seek the praise and admiration of the crowd. It may seem a strange confession from a member of the wealthy class, but it is true. And the attitude of the people at large toward the rich has

I have, in previous chapters, touched very briefly upon some of the vile excrescences that have found a resting place within the gates of our once so fair city of Society. Again, I have sketched in the briefest outline the process by which the idle class was created. I have shown how the seed was planted in the too fertile soil of American industry. I have dwelt, but briefly, upon the simple fact that we of the older orders have come to find out something about that planting and the manner of th

Sometimes an honest man of my class, reading the news of the day, awakes to a sudden realization of the grim political truth. During the time of the public discussion over the late tariff readjustment I remember such an incident. We were three men, sitting together in the smoking-room of an up-town club. One of us had brought in a copy of a sane and honest afternoon paper, containing a quiet, dignified, careful but powerful analysis of the results brought about under the tariff reform measure. H

The very first direct result of the growing consciousness of conditions throughout the country is a sudden growth in the volume of money devoted to charity, and a sudden and quite extraordinary increase in the personal interest shown by the wealthy in the matter of reform. It is perfectly natural that this should be so. In every nation, in all periods of history, it has been true. Sometimes this impulse toward charity and reform, which grows out of real personal study of the problems of poverty,

I have shown, in the previous chapter, how futile and empty are most of the struggles toward charity and reform carried on by the wealthy class. This brings me, in my train of thought, to one of the most melancholy reflections that can be conceived. It has come to me very often, under all sorts of circumstances. The fact of the matter is that wealthy Society in America, as everywhere else, is pursued by a demon of futility. It does not matter what we do, whether we work like any other man or wom

As I write, I am, myself oppressed by this nemesis of futility. Half a dozen times while I was writing this book I stopped to reason with myself to the effect that it wouldn’t do any good, that the rich will not read it, and that, even if they do, it cannot pierce through the armour of self-conceit, vanity, and arrogance. Yet I have persevered, in the hope that perhaps some few will read and understand, and, instead of setting me down as an alarmist and an agitator, will at least consider me hon

We have come to the end of the story. The days of the idle rich in America are as a tale that is told. To-morrow in this land there will be one of two things: either an evolution or a revolution. Either by one of those characteristically swift and marvellous changes for which the history of our race is noted, the class which I represent will again be merged into and assimilated by the body of the nation, as it was half a century ago, or we shall stand face to face with the forces of anarchy, Soc