It is made up of financial people, the owners of the businesses
that are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources of
wealth, such as ourselves; it includes nearly all America as one sees
it on the European stage. It is a various multitude having only this
in common: they are all moving, and particularly their womankind are
moving, from conditions in which means were insistently finite, things
were few, and customs simple, towards a limitless expenditure and the
sphere of attraction of Bond Street, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. Their
general effect is one of progressive revolution, of limitless rope.
They discover suddenly indulgences their moral code never foresaw and
has no provision for, elaborations, ornaments, possessions beyond their
wildest dreams. With an immense astonished zest they begin shopping
begin a systematic adaptation to a new life crowded and brilliant
with things shopped, with jewels, maids, butlers, coachmen, electric
broughams, hired town and country houses. They plunge into it as
one plunges into a career; as a class, they talk, think, and dream
possessions.
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