would have a cash
balance of forty-five thousand dollars.

REVISED BUDGET

Rent--City and country $7,000
Servants 3,000
Supplies 5,000
Light and heat 1,200
Motor 2,500
Allowance to family 5,000
Charity 1,500
Medical attendance 1,000
Self 1,500
Travel, pleasure, music and sundries 2,300
______
Total $30,000

In a smaller city I could do the same thing for half the money--fifteen
thousand dollars; in Rome, Florence or Munich I could live like a prince
on half the sum. I am paying apparently forty-five thousand dollars each
year for the veriest frills of existence--for geranium powder in my
bath, for fifteen extra feet in the width of my drawing room, for a seat
in the parterre instead of the parquet at the opera, for the privilege
of having a second motor roll up to the door when it is needed, and that
my wife may have seven new evening dresses each winter instead of two.
And in reality these luxuries mean nothing to me. I do not want them. I
am not a whit more comfortable with than without them.

If an income tax should suddenly cut my bank account in half it would
not seriously inconvenience me. No financial cataclasm, however dire,
could deprive me of the genuine luxuries of my existence. Yet in my
revised schedule of expenditure I would still be paying nearly a hundred
dollars a day for the privilege of living. What would I be getting for
my money--even then? What would I receive as a _quid pro quo_ for my
thirty thousand dollars?

I am not enough of a materialist to argue that my advantage over my less
successful fellow man lies in having a bigger house, men servants
instead of maid servants, and smoking cigars alleged to be from Havana
instead of from Tampa; but I believe I am right in asserting that my
social opportunities--in the broader sense--are vastly greater than his.
I am meeting bigger men and have my fingers in bigger things. I give
orders and he takes them.

My opinion has considerable weight in important matters, some of which