We know that money is the key to the door of society.  Without it our sons will not get into the polo-playing set or our daughters figure in the Sunday supplements.  We want money to buy ourselves a position and to maintain it after we have bought it.

We want house on the sunny side of the street, with facades of graven marble; we want servants in livery and in buttons—­or in powder and breeches if possible; we want French chefs and the best wine and tobacco, twenty people to dinner on an hour’s notice, supper parties and a little dance afterward at Sherry’s or Delmonico’s, a box at the opera and for first nights at the theaters, two men in livery for our motors, yachts and thirty-footers, shooting boxes in South Carolina, salmon water in New Brunswick, and regular vacations, besides, at Hot Springs, Aiken and Palm Beach; we want money to throw away freely and like gentlemen at Canfield’s, Bradley’s and Monte Carlo; we want clubs, country houses, saddle-horses, fine clothes and gorgeously dressed women; we want leisure and laughter, and a trip or so to Europe every year, our names at the top of the society column, a smile from the grand dame in the tiara and a seat at her dinner table—­these are the things we want, and since we cannot have them without money we go after the money first, as the sine qua non.

We want these things for ourselves and we want them for our children.  We hope our grandchildren will have them also, though about that we do not care so much.  We want ease and security and the relief of not thinking whether we can afford to do things.  We want to be lords of creation and to pass creation on to our descendants, exactly as did the nobility of the Ancien Regime.

At the present time money will buy anything, from a place in the vestry of a swell church to a seat in the United States Senate—­an election to Congress, a judgeship or a post in the diplomatic service.  It will buy the favor of the old families or a decision in the courts.  Money is the controlling factor in municipal politics in New York.  The moneyed group of Wall Street wants an amenable mayor—­a Tammany mayor preferred—­so that it can put through its contracts.  You always know where to find a regular politician.  One always knew where to find Dick Croker.  So the Traction people pour the contents of their coffers into the campaign bags.

Until very recently the Supreme Court judges of New York bought their positions by making substantial contributions to the Tammany treasury.  The inferior judgeships went considerably cheaper.  A man who stood in with the Big Boss might get a bargain.  I have done business with politicians all my life and I have never found it necessary to mince my words.  If I wanted a favor I always asked exactly what it was going to cost—­and I always got the favor.