themselves?

It is a matter of pride with us--frequently expressed in disparagement
of our European contemporaries--that we are a nation of workers; that to
hold any position in the community every man must have a job or
otherwise lose caste; that we tolerate no loafing. We do not conceal our
contempt for the chap who fails to go down every day to the office or
business. Often, of course, our ostentatious workers go down, but do
very little work. We feel somehow that every man owes it to the
community to put in from six to ten hours' time below the residential
district.

Young men who have inherited wealth are as chary of losing one hour as
their clerks. The busy millionaire sits at his desk all day--his ear to
the telephone. We assume that these men are useful because they are
busy; but in what does their usefulness consist? What are they busy
about? They are setting an example of mere industry, perhaps--but to
what end? Simply, in seven cases out of ten, in order to get a few
dollars or a few millions more than they have already. Their exertions
have no result except to enable their families to live in even greater
luxury.

I know at least fifty men, fathers of families, whose homes might
radiate kindliness and sympathy and set an example of wise, generous and
broad-minded living, who, already rich beyond their needs, rush
downtown before their children have gone to school, pass hectic,
nerve-racking days in the amassing of more money, and return after their
little ones have gone to bed, too utterly exhausted to take the
slightest interest in what their wives have been doing or in the
pleasure and welfare of their friends.