But in expressing the strongest disapproval of these excessive luxuries, it is not for a moment suggested that people should rush into the opposite extreme—live in discomfort and adopt the craze for “the simple life,” which is only an inverted form of vanity and ostentation. There are many of the lesser luxuries which give great pleasure and sufficient honest gratification to justify their existence. There may even be some reluctance in condemning extravagance, because the nature of the extravagant man is far preferable to the economical and cautious disposition which sometimes sinks into niggardly meanness. Moreover, any attempt at excessive restrictions and unnecessarily harsh discipline in the upbringing of children invariably leads to a violent reaction in the direction of profligacy and extravagance.
Let human nature be allowed free play in all directions; but it is not taking up the attitude of an ascetic or of a prig to condemn unhesitatingly unnatural excesses, reckless licence, the extremes of self-indulgence and greed, the exercise of which by some few involves the neglect, misery, and ruin of so many others.
Thieves when they steal use violence and are pronounced enemies of society. These few people, by a silent conspiracy in which we all seem to acquiesce, are also stealing and are equally enemies of society.
Chapter IV
The rich man’s charities—His generosity—His hospitality—His land—The Feudal System—His responsibilities—The agricultural problem.
We must now turn from what the rich man spends on himself and consider what good and what harm he does by his subscriptions and donations to philanthropic and charitable objects.
In so far as he himself is concerned these gifts do not involve any element of personal sacrifice; the moral benefit which is by way of falling on a giver is therefore nil. The exertion of writing a cheque or banker’s order and the satisfaction of imposing a tax on himself complete the transaction on his side. Occasionally the sight of his name published at the head of a list with a large figure next it gives him a further agreeable sensation, and he can become famous as a household word of generous philanthropy without the very smallest personal inconvenience. But as an instance of pure charity—that is, loving sacrifice—the poor woman who gives a penny from her meagre store is on an entirely different plane. The picture presents itself to the present writer of a woman at the doorway of a wretched tenement, with her child in her arms, giving to a passing vagrant who was suffering from hunger and fatigue a penny from the few coins she had in her purse. The expression of her face as she handed him the money was the most sublime illumination of pure charity—no subscription list in the newspapers, no public recognition, and the sacrifice, not of luxuries, but of something that she and her baby needed. That something went with her penny, and in return she received something else for which there is no price, no name, and no description. From such an experience as this the rich are for ever cut off. “Probably the most generous people in the world,” says J. D. Rockefeller, perhaps realising that charity is something he can never reach, “are the very poor, who assume each other’s burdens in the crises which come so often to the hard pressed.”
The rich man’s so-called charity therefore must be to a large extent mechanical and conventional. He gives because others with the same means give, and the charity touts know how a list headed by Lord A. with a substantial sum will produce equally or perhaps even more substantial sums from Lord B., Sir. C. D., Alderman E., and Mr. F. The extraction of money from the rich is a business in itself, requiring considerable skill, and the rich are fleeced far more than they realise. In practical America they take the trouble to teach people professionally how to write what they call “letters of appeal.” When we hear of subscriptions to charities being stopped it may serve to remind us that it is most inexpedient that institutions such as hospitals should be at the mercy of the casual caprice of rich men. Nothing could eventually be more desirable than that every one of them should cut off their charitable contributions. It might entail a severe temporary shock to the funds of charitable institutions, as over seven millions a year is being spent in London alone on charities, but at the same time many ill-managed and misdirected endeavours would disappear, and the State would come to realise all the sooner its responsibilities in respect to the maintenance of really necessary institutions for the relief of suffering and the nursing of the sick, in the same way as it is beginning to recognise its duties towards poverty, old age, and unemployment. There are other enterprises which the State should undertake that are often delayed in their institution owing to the plea that the private munificence of rich men can be depended upon. It is certainly better that the funds should be expended thus than in sheer self-indulgence, but it is evident that the money would be far better spent and the object on which it is spent better served if the source were not controlled by the whims and fancies of a single individual.
In regard to the more private and personal aspects of the generosity attributed to riches: “Surely,” a critic will say, “if the rich man is benevolent and kindly disposed he can in a hundred thoughtful ways help his poorer friends by presents, by attention and timely help, by opening the doors of his houses, lending his conveyances, and showing many other attentions which his money allows him to do, thereby becoming justly popular and a source of great good.”