THE ERA OF EXTRAVAGANCE 263 



assumed the most multifarious combinations, from the genuine land 

 mortgage bank to the speculative share investment trust ; from 

 straight out pawnbroking to the guaranteeing of shaky mercantile 

 credit. The details of these fungoid growths on national credit 

 and the grievous part they played in the impending collapse of 

 that credit belong to the next chapter. They were material factors 

 in the growth of extravagant expenditure by enabling men of the 

 smallest means to buy a few shares and participate in large divi- 

 dends, which were too often the produce of specious book entries 

 and not legitimate earnings. 



The profuse expenditure, anticipatory as it often was of un- 

 realised profits, was beneficial to the artisan class, and the activity 

 of the building trade enabled the working man to accumulate 

 savings, and put them also into the cauldron of speculative activity. 

 The modest villa that gave picturesqueness to the suburbs and 

 had satisfied the aspirations of the prosperous tradesman could not 

 content the men who had suddenly vaulted into wealth. Mansions 

 were erected in the more aristocratic districts, costing from 20,000 

 to 30,000, and ballrooms and picture galleries were added to 

 existing structures to bring them up to the supposed requirements 

 of the day. Several professional artistic decorators, who came out 

 from England in the eighties, found their talents in urgent demand 

 and reaped a rich harvest. An immense sum was spent during 

 that decade on the internal embellishment of splendid mansions, 

 many of which passed in a few years into the hands of mortgagees 

 for less than half their cost, and were unsaleable at that. Liveried 

 indoor servants, hitherto almost unknown beyond the portals of 

 Government House, were soon common enough to be taken for 

 granted. Entertainments were devised on a costly scale, armorial 

 bearings were discovered and displayed, and men whose market 

 value had been but a few years before appraised at a salary of 250 

 per annum considered it necessary to have a retinue and a stable 

 which many a landed aristocrat in England would have found 

 difficulty in supporting. In a country where all men were workers, 

 and where there was practically no wealthy leisured class, this 

 servile copying of an older social system was prejudicial to the 

 manly independence and healthy simplicity associated with the 



