CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
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.

It is not my desire, in writing about Society, to describe in detail its practices, to dwell upon its rules and regulations, to dilate upon its normal condition or its duties. Rather, I intend to dwell upon a phase of its existence that does not traditionally belong to it, and that is not normally a part of it. This phase or condition I choose to describe in the phrase “The Idle Rich.”