Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1886 — PEOPLE WHO WERE REALLY RICH. [ARTICLE]

PEOPLE WHO WERE REALLY RICH.

Iliatorlral IVrnouag®* lte«l«le Whom the I.ato Mr. V anderbilt W»« » I'auprr. , Throughout all historical time there have been only isolated niillionairrH.J here and there. It may l»e to.tell of a few of these'. King Holomon w.-rw literally.the first merchant prince, Ljit Sohiiiien <vas hot a' self-made man. His father, David, made him the trustee of n fund for liuildiug the temple estimated I>y Prideaux at M,1ti5,000,00d; and if Solomon was like a good many trustees since his time he ought to have got a good start hl life with such a syiro in his hands. As it is plain that this was hut a single itam in the catalogue of his wealth, it is probable that at the time of his*accession to the thro’fte he was worth, all told, not far from $8,000,000,000. Was he satisfied? Not a bit of it. He at once took steps to monop..'olize every kind of"trade known at that time to the world.' He dealt in horses, chariots, linen; the commerce of the Red Hea was entirely in his hands; he controlled the entire lumber interests of Lebanon; the mines of Ophir and Tarshish yielded their treasures only to his myriads of-slaves. Solomon was ‘essentially a monopolist. If there had been any Knights of Labor in his day he would have -been boycotted. Still, he was of some good to somebody. For several years Solomon’s annual income is estimated to have been “at least $3,O(M),OOO,OQO, in round numliers.” And right here I want to cite a fact that I do not think has been” noted by any previous biographer. In the thousand and one females who, in the light of modern waytj.jjiay have had some claim on Solomon, there was not one who attempted to coiltest his will after his death, or if there was, his family hushed before it got to the ears of the public. Another rich man of antiquity was Croesus—King of Lydia. Croesus was not/so rich as Solomon, but he was rich. He was a great conqueror, and he robbed everybody, right and left. Rennel putshim down at $2,000,000,000, “approximately.” Herodotus tells of some votive offerings that he saw in the Temple -at—Delphi. They .had been sent by Croesus as asortof contributionbox donation. The intrinsic, value of these little presents was $15,000,000. Among them was a “suspended gold statue of the'woman who baked bread” for the millionaire. It is plain that she had not learned cooking at Vassar, under Miss Parloa. In that circumstance Croesus would probably have suspended her in person. Calculated from the relative size of rich men’s gifts to churches at the present day, Croesus’ donation of $15,000,000 would indicate possessions of greater value than the $2,000,000,000 set down to his credit by Rennel. It is possible, though, that Herodotus lied in his • accounts of the gifts in the. temple;.. Herodotus is the Tom Ochiltree of ancient history, any way. Xenophon, in his “Memorabilia,” : says that. Cru .sus was a “gltitton; he actually shed tears Once because a vessel he had dispatched to Crete for a load of kuamoi did_ not return by the time he had hoped for, andtwhat do you suppose these kuamoi ikere ? Truffles, or mushrooms, or reed birds? No; beans! What an inspiration for a Boston artist! Alexander the Great was ■ wealthy. True, he got his wealth byU system of robbery, but h“ does not , atond alone iuiMmg ”ricli men in that respect. He brought back from his expedition to Susa and Persia alone over $800,000,000. and during his whole life he continued to pije up wealth like the owner of a gas-house. When he lied he left a will that looked like the inventory of a bric-a-brac sale.

Ptolemy Philadelphus r who came not so very long after Alexander, is the first literary bloated bondholder of whom we have any record. He weighed 450 pounds, and had a private purse of $1,385,000,000. The historian Appian is authority for this. In order to keep this wealth in the family, Mr. Philadelphus married his grandmother. He was so economical in money matters that lie never paid out a piece of gold until he had caused it to be “sweated.” There was a Persian, with a name suggestive of swollen tonsils and hereditary asthma, who must have been well off, from all accounts. I refer to Dareoios Hystaspes, who was king about 480 B, C. His strong point was not so much his capital as bis income, about $1,500,000,000 per year, according to both Gibbon and Renncl. It is with pleasure that I write the name of a lady, the story ,us whose wealth looks like an arithmetic page in the throes of dLe|jrium tremens —Serniramis of Babylon-’-of course you guess at once. You have heard of the story of Semiramis and the bull, but you must not judge from that that Semiramis had anything'*tO'“c[o with' "stSCk's‘. Besides, Semiramis was homely, and if she was anything in that line she was a bear. It would be indelicate, perhaps, in the case of A lady, to inquire just what her fortune amounted to, but Diodorus tells of some statues that Semiramis erected in the Temple of Belus, the value of which the good Abbe Barthelemy places at $60,000,000. But it is not only in tales tinged with the warmth and color of the Orient that records of colossal fortunes are found. There was a Roman, Licinius Crassus, whose Wealth was such that he frequently gave al fresco suppers to the -whole—Roman population. And they, were real suppers, too—banquets—no mere measly offerings of sandwiches, from which the waiters had previously abstracted a wafer of meat. Rollo gives Crassus’ fortune at £71,614,583 6s. Bd. in real estate alone. He estimates his personalty to have fully four times that amount. Rollo,’by the way, is an artist in his line. A man must have an artistic conception of how to live when iie ventures so get down to shillings and pence in estimating the value of Roman real estate 2,000 years ’ago. Rollo ought to have gone as advance agent to the 40-year-old “star” who tells the reporter That her “ma won’t let her travel alone. F. Hirdlinger, in Hew York World. ; 1 A plant has been discovered in Arizona which carries a lare proportion of annin, and which, when used in the “manufacture 6f Lather, is found to give xtra weight to the article produced. This plant is of annual growth, indigenous to the deserts mid dry uplands,

and is known as gotiagra. It has a root somewhat longer and more scraggy tlian the cultivated beet, though resembling it in apfiearflnce, and practical use has demonstrated' its tannin properties to be alxiut three times its great as the ordinary oak bark, and tliat in all essentials it is superior to in the manufacture of leather, and immensely cheaper.