But as an excuse for the rich man it ought frankly to be acknowledged that his life is made extremely complex and difficult. If this much alone were apparent to him he might pause in his eager chase. A man with work, with a profession or trade, a woman with a profession or with house and parental duties, not only have their time occupied, but have their thoughts filled and have fewer alternatives of conduct, while at the same time they are not freed from the conflicting obligations which make every life a serious problem. But the rich man has before him unlimited alternatives without any constraint. He has to invent and conceive for himself his sphere of usefulness and select the particular form of occupation he thinks will suit him. He suffers from misgivings in embarking on one form of activity, that he might have done better to choose another. If he is not careful, idle business, the inevitable outcome of his estates, his establishments, his social duties, and other appurtenances of his elaborate entourage will take up the greater part of his time and absorb all his thoughts. However conscientiously he may desire to encourage works of utility and throw himself into profitable pursuits, he must find himself embarrassed not only with his load of wealth, but with the limitless horizon before him, the entire absence of any disciplinary compulsion, and the withdrawal of the restraints which shield the course of a simpler life. Not only is the volume of water larger, but there is no river bed. The shifting action of the stream, therefore, is far more likely to be devastating than fertilising.
Waste and loss will everywhere be found in money’s trail. Talents which under free, unhampered conditions might have grown and blossomed have been withered under this golden blight. Many men and women might have done valuable work and even attained great achievements had they been compelled to work for a living, to toil, to labour, and to strive instead of being choked with the glut of riches. With a very few exceptions, men in the creative arts and in science have not been men who by any standard could be described as rich. The greatest treasures the world possesses in painting, music, literature, poetry, and architecture are gifts from men who were never burdened with great possessions. No genius, no creative spirit, no hungry inquirer, no philosopher can exist in the hot-house atmosphere and cramping conditions which surround riches.
On the other hand, extreme poverty has very much the same effect, killing the too sensitive and fragile spirit in its exertions to be free, wasting what might be a useful and perhaps remarkable life, and forcing men of high powers to stoop to the prostitution of their talents in order to gain enough for their very subsistence. But in the latter case, anyhow, the fight is a great and vigorous combat for existence which a man must take up or perish, and which, if he succeeds, equips him with strengthened faculties and a richer experience for the further stages on his life’s journey. Poverty is merciless and cruel, but it cannot be denied that it is a far better teacher than riches. The contest with money has no stimulating effects, it weakens and paralyses a man’s moral and intellectual fibre, stunts and smothers his finer ambitions, and if he has the unusual strength of character to free himself, it can only be done by casting from him deliberately and finally his self-imposed burden.
Art, literature, and music are all suffering severely from the financial taint known as commercialism, which tends to popularise second-rate work, degrade the public taste, and steepen the already stiff path chosen by those who are aiming at a high standard of workmanship rather than popular recognition. “Will it pay?” is a colloquialism as general in use as remarks about the weather.
When compared with other nations, it would seem that we in England are more deeply infected with this belief in money than they are elsewhere. Our very prosperity, generally described in figures of material expansion, may account for this. The more money there is in circulation, the more chance there is for larger quantities of it to get lodged in a single pocket, the keener becomes the competition to acquire it, the stronger is the power, the influence, and the example of rich men.
America cannot be very far behind, where comment is now being made on cases of insanity and the suicidal mania among the children and descendants of very rich people, brought about by the mental and nervous strain and exhaustion to which multi-millionaires are subjected in their mad race for wealth. It produces in the children what they call over there “the money twist” in the brain. Nevertheless, in his survey of English life the American writer already quoted says, “The struggle to get it (money) is unparalleled anywhere else in the world.”[16] And this was also the verdict of one who wrote a few years ago with an intimate knowledge of Continental life:
“There is no nation in the world that has so acute a sense of the value, almost the necessity of wealth for human intercourse as the English nation.... In England they silently accept the maxim, ‘a large income is a necessary of life,’ and they class each other according to the scale of their establishments, looking up with unfeigned reverence to those who have many servants, many horses, and gigantic houses, where great hospitality is dispensed.”[17]
In the economic structure, just as in an architectural structure, what should be aimed at is a proper relation between weights and supports. One section of our social building is too heavily weighted and there is an unnecessary waste of material in supplying the adequate supports and buttresses to meet the stress, which is all on the one side. It is this want of balance and disproportionate pressure which tends very materially to imperil the whole edifice.
Does it amount to a national danger? and if so, how can it be warded off? are questions that may well be asked. But this would carry us too far and involve a discussion as to the extent to which legislation or taxation or an improved system of education might shield us from any risks. It lies outside the scope of our present argument, which must be confined to demonstrating the existence and universal nature of the passion, its unjustifiable claims and evil consequences.
How to put a stop to the waste caused by an unproductive surplus getting piled up in the hands of the rich is nevertheless admitted by modern economists to be a matter that urgently needs solution. “The principal problem of modern industrial civilisation,” says Mr. J. A. Hobson, “consists in devising measures to secure that the whole of the industrial surplus shall be economically applied to the purposes of industrial and social progress instead of passing in the shape of unearned increment to the owners of the factors of production whose activities are depressed, not stimulated by such payments.”[18]