Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1901 — RICH YOUNG MEN. [ARTICLE]

RICH YOUNG MEN.

Why They Are Objects of Especial Public Attention. One of the signs of the times—that grows more and more noticeable aa the years increase—is the amount of attention paid in the public prints to very rich young men. There was nothing thirty years ago like the attention paid nowadays to young Vanderbilts. There are several of them, all under 25, whosje movements and iptentions and various enterprises are as closely followed as though they were statesmen active in public life. They are all, so far as appears, exemplary young men and modest, yet whatever any one of them does that is in the least important to himself is considered to be important to the public also. When William comes from Newport to New York on his racing automobile his progress is reported from town to town, and diligent narrators tell us not ouly what time lie made, but what he had to eat and how his servant looked; when Cornelius goes to a convention at Saratoga his appearance as a delegate is estimated to have more “news" in it and is more impressed on the public mind than any other incident of the convention. So when lie hires a big house for the winter it is recorded in all the papers and announced in some of them in big letters 011 the front page. When Alfred comes to town and goes to work at a salary of SIOO a month, due note is taken of that also. What is more, the people who read about these young men are interested in what they read. These young men start in life as public characters, not by dint of precocious achievement, but because of inherited position and inherited or expected wealth. So it is with the heirs of a few other American families that have been very widely known for two or three generations. What it all means is that .the great fortunes of our time are recognized as power that can be and is transmitted from father to son, and that it makes a difference which concerns the public what sort* of hands tills power lodges in. The old idea that it w r as only three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves is passing away. The great fortunes of our day seem exceedingly stable, and the families that control them sCem stable enough nowadays to ‘he compared with the more powerful families in Europe.—Harper’s Weekly. Birth Rappers. In some of the towns of Holland, especially those which in past time 3 suffered much from the Spanish invaders under King Philip 11. of Spain, there is prevailing the strange custom of announcing the birth of a child by banging to the front door a rav-per or knocker, called “klopper,” enveloped in linen, lace, or cloth. This usage, still observed, particularly by the patrician families, is said to derive its origin from a Spanish ordinance, according to which goldiers seeking quarters were forbidden to be billetted at houses wher* new-born children had arrived. A halfwrapped up “klopper” announces the birth of a girl; one wholly enveloped that of a boy. Modern fashion demands costly lace, which In some cases is Inherited from generation to generation, and, again, the lace employed to be wound round the mother’s wedding bouquet is often used for this purpose. A rapper’s red shield denotes the birth of a son; one half red and half white, that of a daughter.—Baltimore Sun.