FEWER MILLIONAIRES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5

FEWER MILLIONAIRES

DECLINE IN AMERICA. SHRINKING INCOMES. 75 LEFT OUT OF 513. America is no longer the land of millionaires. According to official statistics issued by the Treasury Department, 513 taxpayers had incomes of £200,000 and more in 1929; to-day there are j t 75, And of those 75 only four return incomes of £1,000,000. It may be taken for granted, says a correspondent of the News of the World, that Mr. Henry Ford and the two Rockfellers are in the distinguished quartette. By a tragic coincidence, at the very hours these figures were made public Mr. Donald E. Maclntyre jumped to ; death from the 21st. storey of a New York hotel. Once he was a dollar millionaire in Chicago, but he became involved in the Insull smash. His Chicago interests were interlocked to a great extent with those of Insull. Among the 438 millionaires whose riches have gone like chaff before the wind within the last two years are erstwhile pillars of American commerce, industry, and finance. Economy is the slogan in Newport, Rhode Island, which is the favoured residential area of American millionaires, and household staffs are being cut almost to skeleton proportions. It was speculation that made the “temporary millionaires,” and it was speculation that destroyed them. In 1931 speculative profits on stocks, bonds, and real estate were £60,000,000. Compare this with £448,000,000 in 1929, when everybody went speculation mad, and the tide of disaster was already beginning to flow. Yet America still has men of exceeding riches, men like Andrew Richard and James Mellon, whose joint fortunes probably approximate Leaving out Mr. Henry Ford, exact wealth has ever been a jealously guarded secret, the following may be [accepted as the ten richest individuals in New York:—

Companies have suffered like individuals. Their incomes have been the lowest since the years before the war, and more than half of the hitherto liable for income tax made no profits at all in 1931.

Millions of £ Mr. John Rockefeller, jnr. 17t> Mr. George Baker .. .. .. .. 40 Mr. Charles Schwab .. .. 25 Mr. Sidney Mitchell .. .. 05 Mr. Edward Harkness .. . . 20 .. 17 Mrs. Edward Harriman .. .. 16 Mr. J. P. Morgan .. 1.5 Mr. Arthur Curtis James . 14 Mr. Payne Whitney .. .. 14 Total .. 350