520,000; the wages
$7,223,719.51. During the next year, when wages were cut one-fourth, the
stockholders divided an even greater amount in profits: $2,880,000.
Wages went to 4,471,701.39.[182]

If Field's revenue was so proportionately large from this one
property--the Pullman works--it is evident that his total revenue from
the large array of properties which he owned, or in which he held bonds
or stock, was very great.

It is probable that in the latter years of his life his annual net
income was, at the very least, $5,000,000. This is an extremely
conservative estimate. More likely it reached $10,000,000 a year.
Computing the sum upon which the average of his workers had to live (to
make a very liberal allowance) at $800 a year, this sum of $5,000,000
flowing in to him every year, without in the slightest trenching upon
his principal, was equal to the entire amount that 6,250 of his
employees earned by the skill of their brains and hands, and upon which
they had to support themselves and their families.

Here, then, was one individual who appropriated to his use as much as
six thousand; men and more who laboriously performed service to the
community. For that $5,000,000 a year Field had nothing to do in return
except to worry over the personal or business uses to which his surplus
revenues should be put; like a true industrial monarch he relieved
himself of superfluous cares by hiring the ability to supervise and
manage his properties for him.

Such an avalanche of riches tumbled in upon him that, perforce, like the
Astors, the Goelets and other multimillionaires, he was put constantly
to the terrible extremity of seeking new fields for investment.
Luxuriously live, as he did, it would have required a superior inventive
capacity to have dissipated his full income. But, judging his life by
that of some other multimillionaires, he lived modestly. Of medium
height and spare figure, he was of rather unobtrusive appearance. In his
last years his hair and mustache were white. His eyes were gray and
cold; his expression one of determination and blandly assertive
selfishness. His eulogists, however, have glowingly portrayed him as
"generous, philanthropic and public-spirited."

"A MODEL OF BUSINESS INTEGRITY."

In fact, it was a point descanted upon with extraordinary emphasis
during Field's lifetime and following his demise that, (to use the stock
phrase which with wearying ceaselessness went the rounds of the pres