THE PASSING OF THE IDLE RICH THE PASSING OF THE IDLE RICH BY FREDERICK TOWNSEND MARTIN [Illustration] 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 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE KINGDOM OF SOCIETY 3 II. THE MADNESS OF EXTRAVAGANCE 23 III. THE SUBJUGATION OF AMERICA 61 IV. WHO ARE THE SLAVES? 89 V. THE AWAKENING OF SOCIETY 109 VI. FOR THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER 133 VII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE 153 VIII. FIGHTING FOR LIFE 169 IX. THE SOCIAL NEMESIS 197 X. THE DEATH-KNELL OF IDLENESS 219 XI. THE END OF THE STORY 243 “_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 rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, so far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence...._” --ABRAHAM LINCOLN. _Chapter One_ THE KINGDOM OF SOCIETY 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 upon it, stands to-day a cleaner, saner and more normal Society than that of any other highly civilized nation in the world. In this nation, the very soul of which is the spirit of democracy, we have evolved a very elaborate and extremely complex society. Like all such organizations, in all the lands under the sun, it is an oligarchy; one might almost say a tyranny. Its rulers for the most part inherit their power and rule by hereditary right. The foundations of this society and the foundations of the power of its rulers were laid in generations now dead and gone. Time has crystallized its rules into laws and formulated its conventions into tenets.