Some interesting thoughts about the 1%, from a hundred years ago.

Lavish Spender Burns Up Money

Wealthy Woman Has Automobile Reupholstered to Match Her Elegant Costume

In a recent issue of the New York Tribune we read that New York is to receive a visit from an Englishwoman whose income, is $30,000,000 a year, and who is endeavoring to spend that amount annually upon herself¹. This huge fortune, we understand, was made during the war by profiteering of some sort, and if the lady in question was not so selfish and vain she could find many places to invest that money to help increase production, or at least to render assistance to maimed soldiers or the dependents of those who made the supreme sacrifice. In referring to the utter extravagance of this woman, the Youths' Companion adds:

If we may believe the newspaper reports, she managed to get rid of $6,000,000 in Paris in two weeks, and is looking forward to the possibility of similar or even greater achievement in New York; As an illustration of her methods, it is reported that she purchased a number of limousines and then had them all reupholstered to harmonize with her various costumes. "Who does the most good in the world? she is said to have asked, “the miser or the spender? The spender, of course."

No doubt a good many people would accept as true this woman's assertion. And if the alternative to spending in such ways as give her pleasure were merely to accumulate money month after month, year after year, in a some justification for her attitude. But saving, in the sense of investing, is not hoarding, and by comparison with saving in that sense, the wo¬
man’s spending is mere wasting. The money that might be going to the development of railways, or to the building of mills, or to the opening up of mines, is being spread about among purveyors of luxuries, and, though some portion of it will ultimately find its way into the hands of those who will use it productively, an unduly large part of it will have been consumed without any increase in the wealth of the community. Indeed, instead of being employed to augment
and preserve essential resources, it has the effect of diminishing them. Automobile makers and upholsterers are withdrawn from the production of useful work in order to gratify their whims of the moment. In paying $10,000 for a hat made of birds of paradise she does not promote the
preservation of the birds.

This lavish spender’s fortune, has been but recently accumulated. The longer that people have money the wiser they usually become in the use long. That is a fact which the restive Socialists, who meet only to denounce our capitalistic system, seem not to recognize².

Dmitri Gheorgheni

05.10.20 Front Page

Back Issue Page