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Updated: June 26, 2025
"The world is waiting," he continued, "for its real master not a multi-millionaire, but the coming billionaire. The rulers of the old world fawn on our financiers and envy their power. But the king of kings is yet to come. If I had been ready in this panic with the capital I have to-day I could have made a billion.
Why, it would kill every efficiency rule I've ever made. Here I had trimmed that enormous plant down to fighting weight. There wasn't a useless inch or ounce about the whole enormous billionaire bulk of it. And then to have Haynes come along, with his burdensome notions, and his socialistic slop. They'd cripple any business, no matter how great a start it had. I told him all that.
After this incident Uncle Jap ranched with feverish energy, and Mrs. Fullalove said that the old man had gotten over a real bad dose of swelled head. Five years later came the oil boom! Everybody knows now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum.
There are other social sets which pass as representative society, into which all the ill-mannered nouveau riche can climb by the golden stairs; but this is not real society. The richest man in America, Rockefeller, quoted at over a billion, is a religious worker, and his indulgences consist in gifts to universities. Another billionaire, Mr. Carnegie, gives his millions to found libraries. Mr.
"Play the combination always, Jenkins," he replied. "If I did the Raffles act alone, I should become the billionaire in this land of silk and money, your rich are so careless of their wealth but where would my conscience be? On the other hand, if I stuck to the Holmes act exclusively, I'd starve to death; but the combination ah there is moderate fortune, my boy, with peace of mind thrown in."
"How not to do it," is the lesson of all the books and treatises. Geber and Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Raymond Lully, and the whole crew of "pauperes alcumistae," all give the most elaborate directions showing their student how to fail in transmuting Saturn into Luna and Sol and making a billionaire of himself.
I hate it!" he cried, "I hate to think that a billionaire, with a pull at Washington, can turn our Jackies into Janissaries. Protect American interests!" he exclaimed, indignantly, "protect American sharpers! The Isthmian Line has no more right to the protection of our Navy than have the debtors in Ludlow Street Jail."
"You might as well try to dip up the ocean with a spoon," said Waldron, "as try to vitiate the atmosphere of the whole world, by any means whatsoever! But even if you could, what then?" "Look here!" exclaimed the Billionaire. "It only needs a reduction of 10 per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobody can breathe it without discomfort and pain.
Had he collected the royalties his inventions merited, he would have been a billionaire twice or thrice over. Instead he had made contracts on the basis that the laboratories he owned be kept in condition, and that he be paid a salary that should be whatever he happened to need.
Now I can understand better than he why that part would be of no especial interest to you; but can't we deal with a Syndicate, or a Board of Underwriters, a Holding Company, or some of those wonderful business combinations that you Americans devise in order to do business without going to jail? Is the poor starving inventor some billionaire like yourself, who works only for honour and glory?
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