THE APPEAL OF WALWORTH TO THE MILLIONAIRES.
WE all of us show great judgment in spending a millionaire's money. We know so well what ought to give him pleasure and what he ought to recognise as that which satisfieth not. Smaller properties do not equally lend themselves to these vicarious dispositions. We feel that a man who is only fairly well off may have unknown incumbrances which make him a good deal poorer than he seems. But with a millionaire there are no such reserved possibilities. Reckon up what you like for what incumbrances you like, and there is still—gambling only excepted—an ample margin for purely optional expendi- ture. It is this ample margin that we dispose of so freely. The owner cannot want to spend it on himself, for the amount of enjoyment that can be purchased by money is limited. He will not want to spend it on his relations, for if he is wise he will already have given them all that he means them to have in his lifetime. There is nothing left for him therefore but to spend it on public works or philanthropic enterprises. He can endow a hospital or build a cathedral, or give the contents of some gallery a dwelling worthy of them. It is not often, however, that our forecasts prove accurate. The millionaire commonly declines to walk in the straight path we have marked out for him. Probably the main reason why he does not take our advice in the matter is that we have altogether overlooked one way of spending money which gives the keenest plea- sure and can only be enjoyed in perfection by a millionaire. It is only now and again, in new countries or in new in- dustries, that the pleasure of making money on a great scale can be tasted by any one who is not extremely rich to start with. But a millionaire can taste it every day. The best advice, the most accurate knowledge, the most private information, the most favourable opportunities are all at his command. With such advantages as these the process of doubling your surplus capital becomes ridiculously easy and excessively attractive. There is no need to wait for a windfall before beginning, or to stop short of complete success for want of means to go on. We are apt to think that if we were millionaires we should be thankful to be told of some use to which to put the money that we do not need for use either by ourselves or others. But how can a sovereign be spent to better ad- vantage than by making it two ? and who commands so many ways of making it two as the man who has any number of sovereigns to do what he likes with ?
This, we believe, is the reason why so many millionaires turn a deaf ear to such suggestions as that which the working men of Walworth have lately addressed to them. To spend money in buildings or in creating endowments would be to divert it from a far more absorbing pursuit. All around the millionaire lie com- mercial or industrial undertakings which promise a fair return for money spent in setting them going. He has trained and proved his judgment by a care- ful weeding-out of those concerns which do not stand investigation, and he finds in the residuum ample emplo) went for all the money he has to spare. To become a public benefactor he must deny himself the means of gratifying the natural ambition to be known as a cool, a daring, and a successful operator. In order to gain a reputation for spending money munificently he must forego his reputation for spending it wisely. To ask this of him is really to ask him to let his best energies lie idle, to forego the exercise of his natural and acquired faculties in order to give other people some simple form of enjoyment at his expense. The Wal worth petition asks "the millionaires of England" to use their millions for the elevation of their poor follow-Englishmen. Many of them have made their money in London ; what can be more natural than that they should use their great resources " in transforming and beautifying the poorest districts of London." We fear that the millionaires in question can but too easily find an alternative use which will seem to them far more naturaL Properly employed, those millions may gather to themselves more millions, and the man whose earlier life has been spent in making money sees no occupation for his later life more agreeable than this. He finds in the sense of continuous and increasing power that it brings with it, the precise excitement that he wants.
And yet there is some ground for wonder that more rich men do not make a more conspicuous use of their riches. To ordinary mankind there are so many things that seem to need doing if only the power to do them were forthcoming, But as a rule it is not forthcoming. It is not so much that there is not money which its possessors are willing to use for this or that public purpose as that this money is distributed over so many owners, and has to be got together with so much difficulty and such irksome and distasteful labour. The first steps in the taking in hand of any great undertaking are the formation of a Committee and the opening of a subscrip- tion list, and these things are enough to damp any enthusiasm, however generous. If the sum wanted is a large one, years may pass before it is all raised, and they with whom the idea originated may not live to see the work begun. Even if they live to see it not only begun but completed, their pleasure in what they have done needs to be specially disinterested. It is not specially associated with their names. They have taken on them- selves the labour and borne the burden, but to the world they are so many items in a list of donors, and very possibly not among the largest even of them. The millionaire is exempt from all these annoyances. He has only to consider with himself to what great object his surplus wealth shall go, and he can set to work at once. The money is already in the bank, he has to ask it from no one ; there are no unwilling contributors to be hunted up, no long interval of waiting to be got through. The services of solicitors and architects and experts of all kinds can be enlisted without a, moment's delay, or a moment's uncertainty as to how and by whom they are to be paid for. He has but to speak and buildings begin to rise or beneficiaries to flock in. There does seem an attraction about this which might prove, which some day perhaps will prove, more alluring than it is at present. What, for example, could more worthily hand down the name of a great citizen than to complete at his sole cost the decoration of St. Paul's ? The sum needed would be large, but it would not exceed the resources of some Londoners. The only demand it would make on them would be that they should forego the pleasure of seeing their wealth multiplying itself. Or there are the great endowed hospitals standing greatly in need of help to make good the fall in the value of their lands. In this case the agricultural depression takes the concrete form of empty beds and closed wards. A man has only to come forward with a sum equivalent to the difference between their past and their present rents to restore them literally by a stroke of the pen, to all their former usefulness. Or, if he be a Churchman, there is appro- priate employment for his spare wealth in the re-endow- ment of impoverished benefices. Here indeed the need is too great to be dealt with by any one man. But he might take the particular diocese in which he happens .to live, and show by example what can be done in the way of giving hardworking clergymen who are now in the direst straits of poverty a decent subsistence. Such an example set in one diocese might bear fruit in others, or what was beyond the ability of one man might be within the reach of half a dozen acting together. Or, if a secular object were preferred, there is the provision of public parks in densely inhabited districts, which is what the Walworth petitioners ask for. They are one hundred and fifteen thousand people, they say, crowded together on an area of less than a square mile, " without public space of any kind except a small disused graveyard." Hero is an opportunity of making a name that will live at least in Walworth, and the thought of the pleasure afforded to the many among these one hundred and fifteen thousand who are ailing or weary or overworked might be as grateful as that of a successful operation in foreign securities. One or other of these alternatives is really worth a millionaire's consideration.
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