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Updated: May 22, 2025
A fine example of French Renaissance architecture, with spire roofs, round turrets and mullioned windows dominating the neighbouring houses, this magnificent home of the plutocrat, with its furnishings and art treasures, had cost John Burkett Ryder nearly ten millions of dollars.
But what of the man whose life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or dictionaries if he be a mere student.
With few exceptions, the nineteenth century plutocrat has been ousted from that section of Fifth Avenue; a giant democracy has reared its own palaces in the shape of hotels and office buildings which pierce the skies, stores which rival the proudest mansions of Venice in its heyday and Florence under Lorenzo Medici.
And sooner or later, in exact proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could have been strong enough to make him rich.
I have heard soap-box orators in Canada rant about the plutocrats gobbling the resources of the country; and I have gone to their offices and shown them on the map that any man could become a plutocrat by going out and gobbling some more, provided he had brains and brawn and gobbled hard enough instead of gabbled; and I have been answered these very words: "But we don't want that.
Our real difference is only about a little more or a little less owning. I do not see how Belloc and Chesterton can stand for anything but a strong State as against those wild monsters of property, the strong, big private owners. The State must be complex and powerful enough to prevent them. State or plutocrat there is really no other practical alternative before the world at the present time.
What William H. Vanderbilt now did is well worth noting. As the owner of four hundred thousand shares of New York Central stock he had been rabidly denounced by the middle class as a plutocrat dangerous to the interests of the people.
"All right," said the young spouse, absurdly proud of her position. "I'll let you off with your life this time, and you can drop your arms again. But if anybody had told me that you would come here and make a noise like a plutocrat I wouldn't have believed it.
Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand eight hours and fair wages of YOU? You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal of grumbling because she does not do better.
All ranks and classes were gathered in, representing at least fifty-six different nationalities; artisans, millionaires, and hoboes bunked side by side; the youthful plutocrat saw life from a new angle, the wild mountaineer learned to read, the alien immigrant to speak English.
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