ial
district.

Young men who have inherited wealth are as chary of losing one hour as
their clerks. The busy millionaire sits at his desk all day--his ear to
the telephone. We assume that these men are useful because they are
busy; but in what does their usefulness consist? What are they busy
about? They are setting an example of mere industry, perhaps--but to
what end? Simply, in seven cases out of ten, in order to get a few
dollars or a few millions more than they have already. Their exertions
have no result except to enable their families to live in even greater
luxury.

I know at least fifty men, fathers of families, whose homes might
radiate kindliness and sympathy and set an example of wise, generous and
broad-minded living, who, already rich beyond their needs, rush
downtown before their children have gone to school, pass hectic,
nerve-racking days in the amassing of more money, and return after their
little ones have gone to bed, too utterly exhausted to take the
slightest interest in what their wives have been doing or in the
pleasure and welfare of their friends.

These men doubtless give liberally to charity, but they give
impersonally, not generously; they are in reality utterly selfish,
engrossed in the enthralling game of becoming successful or more
successful men, sacrificing their homes, their families and their
health--for what? To get on; to better their position; to push in among
those others who, simply because they have outstripped the rest in the
matter of filling their own pockets, are hailed with acclamation.

It is pathetic to see intelligent, capable men bending their energies
not to leading wholesome, well-rounded, serviceable lives but to gaining
a slender foothold among those who are far less worthy of emulation than
themselves and with whom they have nothing whatsoever in common except a
despicable ambition to display their wealth and to demonstrate that they
have "social position."

In what we call the Old World a man's social position is a matter of
fixed classification--that is to say, his presumptive ability and
qualifications to amuse and be amused; to hunt, fish and shoot; to ride,
dance, and make himself generally agreeable--are known from the start.
And, based on the premise that what is known as society exists simply
for the purpose of enabling people to have a good time, there is far
more reason to suppose that one who comes of a family which has made a
specialty of this pu