Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1914 — Americans and the Rich. [ARTICLE]

Americans and the Rich.

The United States is perhaps the only country in the world in which money, in itself, carries no public honor with it, and in which even the most lavish heaving of coins to the rabble goes unrewarded. An English Carnegie would have had a seat in the house of lords twenty years ago; a French Rockefeller would have sported the grand cordon of the Legion of Honor before he ever sported a toupee; • German Morgan could never have escaped the Red Eagle and privy council. But in the United States a great fortune is the most effective of all bars to public dignity and'preferment, and even to private respect. Our Ryans and Harrimans are not idols, but targets; the one sure way to make a stir in politics is to attack them succeso-fully.-—H. L. Mencken in Smart Set. "Does your son’s new occupation as an aviator suit him?" "Well, nol down to the ground.”