Where Does The Money Go?

 

Since you can't take it with you, for entrepreneurs on whom newly created net worth weighs heavily, the problem is what to do with it while you are here. choices in the old days were disenchantingly few: buiid a yacht, buy a motorcar, construct a baronial mansion in Newport, R.I. Today, there is obviously a much greater range, and INC. staffers combed the country to find what we hoped would be some fascinating applications of personal wealth. We weren't disappointed. The quest was surprisingly bountiful, indicating that America's successful entrepreneurs are as imaginative out of the office as they are in it. What follows are but a few of the absorbing uses INC. discovered

To be sure, the outlets happen to include a yacht, a motorcar, and a baronial mansion. Oh, well. Once again, the more things change, the more they remain the same. But the 15 parvenus gathered here have stamped their extra-business undertakings with an individuality that, in many ways -- except for pure capital commitment, perhaps exceeds the visions of the old school. Did Commodore Vanderbilt ever win a major sailboat race? could Jay Gould whistle "Danny Boy," never mind conduct the Resurrection Symphony?

Was John D. Rockefeller able to bend all those dimes?

Just as a century back, the current business scene would be a mighty drab place were it not for the flamboyantly visible (and sometimes quietly not-so-visible) eccentricities of its leaders. When a trucking company owner can undertake to build a whole new city virtually in the shadows of Frick's famous Fifth Avenue mansion -- do it, not just talk about it -- we have to be in fine shape as a nation, indeed.