It is probable that in the latter years of his life his annual net income was, at the very least, $5,000,000. This is an extremely conservative estimate. More likely it reached $10,000,000 a year. Computing the sum upon which the average of his workers had to live (to make a very liberal allowance) at $800 a year, this sum of $5,000,000 flowing in to him every year, without in the slightest trenching upon his principal, was equal to the entire amount that 6,250 of his employees earned by the skill of their brains and hands, and upon which they had to support themselves and their families.
Here, then, was one individual who appropriated to his use as much as six thousand; men and more who laboriously performed service to the community. For that $5,000,000 a year Field had nothing to do in return except to worry over the personal or business uses to which his surplus revenues should be put; like a true industrial monarch he relieved himself of superfluous cares by hiring the ability to supervise and manage his properties for him.
Such an avalanche of riches tumbled in upon him that, perforce, like the Astors, the Goelets and other multimillionaires, he was put constantly to the terrible extremity of seeking new fields for investment. Luxuriously live, as he did, it would have required a superior inventive capacity to have dissipated his full income. But, judging his life by that of some other multimillionaires, he lived modestly. Of medium height and spare figure, he was of rather unobtrusive appearance. In his last years his hair and mustache were white. His eyes were gray and cold; his expression one of determination and blandly assertive selfishness. His eulogists, however, have glowingly portrayed him as "generous, philanthropic and public-spirited."