One faction, vehemently pro-claimant, loathed the Vanderbilts on principle for their arrogant refusal to believe that a man who actually worked for a living could be one of them: a man who worked as a butcher – a butcher! – a man not only engaged in physical labour but physical labour of the lowest and most degraded sort, the kind that splashed the worker with blood ang guts.
Source: wiktionary