The Buck Never Stops Here
THE SUNDAY AGE
Saturday July 22, 1995
Bill Gates, the co-founder of the computer giant Microsoft, was recently declared America's richest man. With an estimated fortune of $12 billion, he intends to donate 95 per cent of his fortune to charity when he reaches his fifties.
Good for him. But how have some of history's other richest people amassed and spent their fortunes?
? Crassus, who formed the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey, acquired enormous wealth through buying captured enemy property at bargain prices during a civil war. He had earlier exploited Rome's lack of a fire brigade by rushing his 500 men to the scene of a fire and negotiating a satisfactory price, standing idly by until agreement was reached.
? Hetty Green, the daughter of a devout Quaker couple who was left $10 million as start-up funds, lived as though penniless, wearing worn clothing and travelling by ferry to work. When her son's knee became badly infected, Hetty's refusal to seek further medical aid until several years later meant the leg had to be amputated.
? The first of the great moguls, Cornelius Vanderbilt, trusted no-one and kept all his accounts in his head. He had his wife sent to a sanitarium for a few months of `reflection' when she refused to move from Staten Island to New York and had his eldest confined until he was middle-aged.
? Uncle Dan'l Drew was worth millions. He would feed his cattle as much salt as could be forced down their throats before letting them drink their fill prior to sale by weight at market.
? Baron James Rothschild built one lavish palace in Paris and another to the east, of which William I of Russia said: ``Kings could not afford this." When guests were asked if they preferred milk in their tea, they were also asked: `Jersey, Hereford, or Shorthorn, sir?' ? Jay Gould, the railway magnate, possessed the world's largest collection of orchids, a Viennese pastry cook to indulge his dietary lapse of ladyfingers and a cow in his own railway car whose butterfat content was suited to his ulcerated stomach.
? The Maharaja of Gwalior in India had an electric train set with silver rails, allowing him to control the serving of the entire dinners from the royal kitchens. The seventh Maharaja of Patiala had a harem of 350 ladies, a score of whom might be stationed, bare-breasted around a pool that contained chunks of ice, while a team of British, French and Indian plastic surgeons waited on standby to alter any of the retinue at the Maharaja's request.
© 1995 THE SUNDAY AGE