The Weariness of Wealth

1916

Interviewed for the American Magazine, Charles M. Schwab remarks that there is no enjoyment in great wealth — that a reasonable man with $10,000 to $12,000 a year is getting enough to satisfy all his needs, and that to get more is to invite unhappiness.

"One soon wearies," he says, "of riding about for pleasure in private yachts and private cars."

This is the sort of thing which everybody hears at one time or another and which nobody wholly believes. Mr. Schwab happens to prefer power to other things that money can buy. Dominance in big business takes the place with him which the pursuit of pleasure holds with some other man.

Mr. Morgan went in for world power in finance, but did not despise his yacht or his art collections. He did not prate of a lack of enjoyment in the smaller personal satisfactions possible through his great wealth.

To men of ordinary means, the luxuries born of wealth are most conspicuous, most appealing. Private yachts and private trains and motor cars and palatial homes are visible, tangible things. Men fortunately can be content without them, but the conviction that they are altogether a weariness will be difficult to carry. — The New York World.