The Growth of Great Wealth
By Editor
The New York World of September 30, 1916, says editorially: "When a really serious effort was made in 1855 to list the rich men of New York City, just twenty-seven millionaires were revealed. And William B. Astor led the line with $6,000,000. P. T. Barnum was credited with $800,000. August Belmont, with $250,000, was far below the million-dollar class. Cornelius Vanderbilt had $1,500,000; Alexander T. Stewart, $2,000,000. Of the 12,000 millionaires listed in the United States in 1914, just less than sixty years later, 2,000 were credited to New York. And to-day we have news of the beginning, in this city, of the billionaire class, John D. Rockefeller being the first of the order. Mr. Rockefeller, an amazing example of how wealth accumulates, represents in his single person more than twenty times the combined riches of the millionaires of 1855."