A habit of thrift

Wealth and Poverty | John D. Rockefeller’s economy and efficiency led to a better life for millions | Marvin Olasky

Rockefeller in 1884

Historians, like reporters, enjoy unusual stories, so the tale of a lavish late-19th-century party with dogs dressed in tuxedos is familiar to many. Stories also get around of parties where guests drained hundreds of cases of champagne and hundreds of gallons of terrapin soup. Some among the rich were like Mrs. Leland Stanford, wife of a multimillionaire senator, who wore $250,000 in gems when she went out, kept 60 different diamond rings, and served tea from a pot of solid gold.

Journalist Frank Carpenter was rightly irritated: "We are lavishing fortunes on clothes. There is enough silk worn here every winter to carpet a whole state; there are pearls by the bushel, and diamonds by the peck. . . . The older the woman, the more giddy she seems to be. She cuts her dresses an inch lower at the bust for every extra ten years, and I blush for the fair sex when I look at the décolleté corsages and fat bare backs of the powdered old dames."