Wealth and Empire
Apart from the New York Inquirer, Kane publishes similar Inquirer newspapers in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and other major American cities. The "News on the March" newsreel at the beginning of the film also claims that Kane controls two newspaper syndicates and a radio network; it also mentions that Kane has other business interests in real estate, logging, shipping, and food retailing. However, Kane's empire largely collapses at the onset of the Great Depression, and he is forced to sell his remaining holdings to Thatcher. Kane has enough wealth to build Chicago's fictional opera house, as well as his cavernous, unfinished mansion, Xanadu.
The mansion contains Kane's vast collection of classical sculptures and art, and the newsreel claims that portions of Xanadu were taken from other famous palaces overseas.
Read more about this topic: Charles Foster Kane
Famous quotes containing the words wealth and, wealth and/or empire:
“Great Wits are sure to Madness near alli’d
And thin Partitions do their Bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with Wealth and Honour blest,
Refuse his Age the needful hours of Rest?”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“No man, however benevolent, liberal, and wise, can use a large fortune so that it will do half as much good in the world as it would if it were divided into moderate sums and in the hands of workmen who had earned it by industry and frugality. The piling up of estates often does great and conspicuous good.... But no man does with accumulated wealth so much good as the same amount would do in many hands.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)