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06737_Field_TCUM T302.txt
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compelling aura of it disappeared. Samuel Butler in Erewhon
(1872) gave clear indications in his treatment of the
mysterious prestige conferred by precious metals. His ridicule of
the money medium took the form of presenting the old reverent
attitude to money in a new social context. This new kind of
abstract, printed money of the high industrial age, however,
simply would not sustain the old attitude:
This is the true philanthropy. He who makes a
colossal fortune in the hosiery trade, and by his energy
has succeeded in reducing the price of woollen goods by
the thousandth part of a penny in the pound—this man is
worth ten professional philanthropists. So strongly are
the Erewhonians impressed with this, that if a man has
made a fortune of over £20,000 a year they exempt him
from all taxation, considering him a work of art, and too