Wealth & Money Quote by William Allen White

Money, in William Allen White's hands, becomes less a ledger entry than a psychological instrument. His "three kicks" turns capitalism into a sequence of sensations: the adrenaline of earning, the warm narcotic of possessing, then the shock of release. It's a shrewd rhetorical move from an editor who spent decades watching how fortunes got made, defended, and morally laundered in small-town America. By calling each stage a "kick", White refuses the sanctimony that often wraps philanthropy. He doesn't pretend people give out of pure selflessness; he insists the pleasure is real, even physical.

The subtext is a subtle reordering of virtue. The first two kicks are socially approved but morally ambiguous: we praise hard work and quietly envy the security of "having it". The third kick reframes giving not as loss but as mastery - the moment you prove the dollar doesn't own you. In the Progressive Era world White inhabited, when robber-baron wealth and civic reform were in constant argument, this is also a public-relations lesson: generosity isn't just kindness, it's a way to convert private accumulation into public legitimacy.

White's intent feels editorial in the best sense: to coach an audience of strivers and local power brokers toward a civic ethic without scolding them. He makes altruism competitive. If you want the biggest thrill, he implies, stop clenching. Start circulating.