How Rich People Lived in 1955
The successful American executive, for example, gets up early–about 7:00 A.M.–eats a large breakfast, and rushes to his office by train or auto. It is not unusual for him, after spending from 9:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M. in his office, to hurry home, eat dinner, and crawl into bed with a briefcase full of homework. He is constantly pressed for time, and a great deal of the time he spends in his office is extraneous to his business. He gets himself involved in all kinds of community work, either because he wants to or because he figures he has to for the sake of public relations.If he is a top executive he lives on an economic scale not too different from that of the man on the next-lower income rung. He surrenders around 40 per cent of his salary to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (he may cough up as much as 75 per cent) but still manages to put a little of his income in stocks, bonds, life insurance. He owns two cars, and gets along with one or two servants. What time he has left from his work–on weekends and brief vacations–he spends exercising, preferably outdoors, and usually at golf. Next to golf, fishing is the most popular executive diversion.
Here’s a fascinating Forbes article from the archives showing that in 1955, top executives in the U.S. earned $50,000 or more (about $500,000 or more in today’s figures), and apparently lived relatively modest lives (besides the one or two servants, of course—I’m talking relatively modest compared to today’s top executives). They’re living very comfortably, yes, but hey, look! They’re paying 40 percent of their salaries to the IRS, and as much as 75 percent! And they’re not living flamboyantly! The one example of flamboyant living provided is D. Harold Byrd, an oil company president, who hosts parties with 1,000 guests, flies to UT-Austin to watch football games, and gives money to students to attend college. Also, there’s a lot of yacht-talk, because there’s was only so much you could buy or do in 1955.
Oh, the good old days. When extremely rich people paid a tax amount proportional to their ridiculous wealth, instead of say, 11%.
Sigh.
@jacqueline Right?? This is downright socialist compared to the chokehold rich people have on the rest of us today.
@aetataureate “The fact that Young paid only $38,000 for his Newport place, Fairholme, which cost Philadelphia banker John R. Drexel nearly a quarter of a million dollars to build in 1905, demonstrates the decline in the market for such outsize mansions.”
I wonder if these things are realted!?!
ETA: “The large yacht has also foundered in the sea of progressive taxation.”
@stuffisthings That yacht line is favorite pullquote in the history of ever. Well done.
@aetataureate I love the tone of the article. “The modern executive works hard and lives modestly, just like you, BECAUSE COMMUNISTS TOOK ALL HIS MONEY. Ahem. he also likes golfing. We’re all Americans here!”
“Also, his wife is a lazy drunk.”
@stuffisthings You know, I see how you got that, but I didn’t get that feeling at all from it, maybe because the article was written for fellow businessmen. The message is like, “He doesn’t even make that much more than the next guy down, and look at how much overtime and stress and grief there is.” Either way, I don’t envy dude, . . . but I’d cut off an arm to make his 1955 salary. Haaa ugh.
@aetataureate Yup, I would give anything for what that guy made in 1955. This makes me sad.
@aetataureate AND they have to get along with only one or two servants! (Plus a stay at home wife, but nevermind…)
It would be interesting to study what happened to the servant economy over the past 100 years and why. My guess that a much smaller portion of today’s rich have live-in servants, though I imagine that a somewhat broader pool of upper- and upper-middle class people use servant labor on a more casual basis. (I.e. there are fewer live-in maids, but I and others of my upper-midrange socioeconomic status can pay a cleaning lady to come to the house every few weeks,)
There are plenty of late large 19th century and early 20th century homes here in Baltimore that are so big that they don’t make sense to me without servants. In some big 19th century rowhouses, the original kitchens were in the basement, because that was a room for servants and homeowners didn’t want their social equals to see it.
@jfruh I think in general there were more servants in the past — upper middle income people in the 50s were probably more likely to have at least one live-in servant than people in a similar spot today, even though the relative incomes of the upper middle class are now far higher compared to everyone else. Also, in many middle-income countries today the middle classes employ servants extensively.
I’m pretty sure a lot of the decline is cultural, and that the cultural disapproval of having servants is a fairly recent development stemming from the political left. For instance, in the Soviet Union you would ride in the passenger seat of a taxi, rather than in the back, because the driver was not your servant or chauffeur but rather your fellow worker. (Nevermind that the Russian word for “taxi driver” is “shofyer.”)
In America, this manifests as rich people who pay more for private school than it would cost to hire a full-time, live-in tutor…
@stuffisthings culture is a part of it, but do you think that the cultural disapproval would still be there if we didn’t have the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher, and the laundry washer/dryer? None of these things come into their own until the post-WWII era, and are all huge factors in the different way we experience domesticity now.
@stuffisthings Honestly, it’s just that we don’t call them servants anymore. I grew up relatively well-off but not extremely so (well under the $500k equivalent cited here) and we had live-in nannies (who did child-related cooking and laundry) from when I was 3 until I was old enough to drive myself and my brother around, and a housekeeper who came once a week. Depending on how you look at it, for the majority of my life we either had 1 and a half “servants,” or we had two people dividing the cooking/cleaning/childcare work that at one point in history would have been performed by one live-in “servant.” I don’t know many people who would say they have servants, but I grew up with and also have since met plenty of people who have nannies, cooks, drivers, gardeners, and housekeepers.
“Extramarital relations in the top American business world are not important enough to discuss.”