It has been said thousands of times—therefore, we have no hesitation in repeating—that one-half the world doesn't know how the other half lives. Not that millionaires constitute half the world—God forbid! They are not even the emerged tenth, if we may say so. But it is none the less true that the rest of us don't know how they live.
You may see the magnificent, yea, verily, the palatial residences they have built after the model of famous prisons and royal stables abroad. You may hear the accents and see the spats of their sons who have been to Oxford—in fact, you can almost see the accents and hear the spats. You may gaze upon their daughters at theatre-parties, clad in feathers and the rail of the box, with nothing between them and lumbago but the backs of their chairs. You may be dazzled by the flash of the twenty-carat headlight in fawther's dress-shirt, or by the soft refulgence of mother's stomacher of pearls. You may witness all this—you may even envy it. But little you know the breaking heart that may lurk in the limousine.
To look at the average millionaire you would never suspect what worm may prey upon his damask cheek—or should we say, damaged cheek? The gilded sausages of his double watch-chain may be as ponderous and resplendent as ever. The crease in his trousers and the shine on his shoes may still show the skill and energy of an expensive valet. He may curse at the waiters in his old lordly manner, even though he no longer is able to order his cocktails in a tumbler. But he is not at peace within.
If you are a shrewd observer you will notice that his sixty-cent cigar is not quite at the old aggressive, betcha-million-dollars angle. And the familiar wad of mazuma in the right-hand front pocket of the pants is not so swollen as of yore. We should say it is thinner by several one-hundred-dollar bills. In fact, it may be padded up with fives and tens and other bills of small denomination just to make it look good.
In a word, the average millionaire is not the man he was only two or three years ago, when the war was on, and orders were flowing in, and he was picking what crumbs of comfort he could—and also quite a few nice, bright little nuggets—out of the general chaos. It may seem to you that he is going as strong as ever. You may suppose that once a week he still has a lorry back around to the side entrance to take his profits down to the bank to be weighed and shoveled into the vaults. You may imagine that he still spends his leisure hours clipping the nimble coupon. But such is far from being the case, as you would realize if you could only get him to open his heart to you.
Try asking him to increase your salary—this is a really good way to find out. Then you will discover that most of his business day is devoted to running around with his hat in his hand begging hard-hearted bankers to let him have just a few more hundred thousands—surely a man has a right to this pittance—so that he may pay his bills and be able to look the world in the face once more. You will be horrified to learn of such hideous octopuses—(thank you, Professor, we should have said "octopi")—as Labor Unrest, Overhead Charges, Depreciation, and Stagnant Markets. Secure in your weekly envelope with its usual twenty dollars—unless like ourself, dear reader, you draw an occasional I.O.U.—you may care little for the vagaries of any other market than the one at which your wife or landlady buys the family meat and vegetables. But this great and good man has to bear the brunt of the fight. Is he complaining? No, friend, he is not.
"It is not for myself," he tells you in a voice quivering with emotion and considerable brandy-and-soda—they can still get it, of course. "It's not for myself, my boy. I must keep the old plant going for the sake of the men and their families."
Just about then you burst into tears and beg his pardon for ever having even thought of such a thing as more pay.
"You have no idea how delicate and complicated these financial problems are," he assures you in a burst of confidence, "You don't realize, for instance, that if I were to raise the wages of everyone in the institution a dollar a month, I'd simply have to shut the old place up. And I couldn't bear to do that—the associations, you know."
You have a vision of him in his poverty-stricken old age, out of work, condemned to spend all his time at Palm Beach or the Riviera. If you are a man of real feeling, you will tell him you think you could get along on ten dollars a month less, and would he please take it to help tide him over his difficulties?