The State was firmly based on two great public virtues: respect for the rich and contempt for the poor.

Feeble spirits who were still moved by human suffering had no other resource than to take refuge in a hypocrisy which it was impossible to blame, since it contributed to the maintenance of order and the solidity of institutions.
Thus, among the rich, all were devoted to their social order, or seemed to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them.

Some felt the gravity of their position cruelly; but they endured it either from pride or from duty.

Some attempted, in secret and by subterfuge, to escape from it for a moment.

One of these, Edward Martin, the President, of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as a poor man, went: forth to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be jostled by the passers-by.
One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he engaged in a quarrel with a real beggar, and filled with a fury of envy, he strangled him.
As they devoted their whole intelligence to business, they sought no intellectual pleasures.