9. They Had Legendary Appetites (and Waistlines to Prove It)
It wasn’t enough to have extra-scandalous prostitutes at their beck and call, solid-gold toilets, or private railway cars complete with a stateroom and servants’ quarters. No, in an age of unrelenting poverty and hunger for the vast majority of Americans, the robber barons of the Gilded Age had corpulent figures that served as a status symbol. After all, being fat, or rather, rotund and portly, meant that you could afford to, well, eat. Something that most people should to just about every day.
One robber baron in particular, “Diamond” Jim Brady, exemplified the greed of the age with a voracious appetite for seafood and steak. Restauranteur George Rector described him as “the best 25 customers I ever had,” and author Paul Jeffers described his typical dinner as consisting of
“a couple dozen oysters, six crabs, and bowls of green turtle soup. The main course was likely to be two whole ducks, six or seven lobsters, a sirloin steak, two servings of terrapin, and a variety of vegetables… He finished with several whole pies.”
But since everything was a competition in the Gilded Age – a never-ending quest to have the best of everything – eating such a delectable menu wasn’t enough. No, these people had to have food-eating contests. Just an extra measure to make sure that their workers, who were starving, knew their place.