WEALTHY BACHELORS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 150, 25 June 1929, Page 12

WEALTHY BACHELORS

“THE LAND OF LIBERTY” CUPID KEPT WELL AT BAY A “prince of American bachelors,” Mr Lawrence P. Fisher, has come under London's limelight through the AngloAmerican discussion as to the authenticity of his Romney portrait of the Duchess of {Sutherland. But in America “Larry” Fisher is to his friends and. admirers the centre of another searchlight—Cupid’s, for he is one of those darlings of the United States—a millionaire bachelor. Mr Fisher is about 40, and therefore qualifies as the flapper’s pet. He is good-looking, athletic, artistic, owns town mansions and country estates, yachts, steamboats, de luxe motor cars, a regiment of men servants, and is absorbed in work and making money! Yet he has escaped the bridal bridle! The abode of Mr Fisher is that citadel of bachelors, Detroit, in a country where the bachelor is an institution and an idol. At the last United States census there were 3,350,660 more single than women. There is no talk of taxing the bachelor in the “Land of Liberty.” On the contrary, America offers every inducement to her men-power to stay single, as against the fine technique of her women-power to make them marry! The latest bachelor flat of New York is a complete better-half for the wifeless man. Its button-sewing and sockdarning services affords a measure of domesticity; there is home-cooking in the 'cafetaria, a valet and shoe-shine doctors and nurses at hand. Warrens of free, roving young, single men of lesser wealth than the Larry Fishers are entrenched in the great cities of the east. Fortified “cover” is specially provided, for America has recently introduced tho hotel “for bachelors only.” They are,of course, twenty and thirty stroeys high, guarded fr >m women-kind, with black servants and men’s club regulations.

A quaint, motherly housekeeper presides of the institution, and maintains that sacrosanct air of the monastery. There the bachelor can have all the home comforts he wants, and if he can think of anything he hasn’t got the old-fashioned housekeeper secs that he gets it. Everything—except a wife!