The Passing of the Idle Rich

by Frederick Townsend Martin

I was astounded, and I showed it in my answer:

“Why, my dear lady, surely you have gold enough. If I am not mistaken, you rank amongst the wealthiest women of the nation. Why should you want gold? Moreover, you have social standing and are famous throughout England. Of what possible use could more gold be to you?”

I can still see the haggard face, the quivering lips, the blazing eyes of this great Society woman as she answered me.

“Oh, Mr. Martin, you do not know me—I am almost ashamed to confess the truth. I dream night and day of gold. I want to have a room at the top of my house filled with it—filled with gold sovereigns. I would like to go into that room night after night, when every one else is asleep, and bury myself in yellow sovereigns up to my neck, and play with them, toss them about, to hear the jingling music of the thing I love the best!”

Think of it! Picture a woman, wife of a man, mother of splendid children, born with the beautiful instincts innate in her sex, sinking to such a depth as that! Think of the awful shallow emptiness of a life and a training that bore such fruit as this!

Yet, it is all so very natural. Most men and women in this world are kept clean, sane, and normal in the pursuit of little things. The trivial household joys that fill so full the happy life of the normal woman, the little business triumphs that keep alive in the heart of the normal man the spirit of personal ambition, the human lust for a fight, the ever-changing, ever-interesting, ever-luring struggle for advantage—these are at once the burden and the safety of mankind. In them is true happiness; in them is true humanity.

The class of which I write has lost them in its very birth. The mother of a boy in the middle class looks forward with delight to the day when that boy will go forth into the world to battle against circumstances. From his earliest childhood onward he learns the necessity of labour, he comes to regard it as his birthright. With eagerness he prepares for it. The little triumphs of boyhood, the trivial victories of college days, are joy unbounded to his mind, because they are but steps in that long climb toward greatness, renown and wealth, that are his birthright; and when at last he goes forth from college halls, from labour on the farm, from some little clerical position that he has held in his adolescence, to strike out for himself into the great open world, to blaze out paths of his own choosing, his life is filled in its every moment with new thrills of excitement, of happiness, of accomplishment—of life, real life, not imitation.

Look at the other side. Think of the boy born, as they say, with a golden spoon in his mouth. Perhaps, in his infancy, he does not know that he can have everything in the world for which he asks. Perhaps his parents are humanly wise—for many of the wealthy are; yet, even in his very tender boyhood, the truth will come home to him. He will learn before he is ten years old that there is a difference between him and other boys whom he sees at play in the park. He will discover that the difference is money. He will discover that his parents can get whatever they like, spend as much as they please, waste fortunes on their pleasures, throw gold away as though it were dross. He will learn, on the other hand, that the children of the poor can have no expensive toys like his, that they cannot be dressed as he is dressed, that their parents must win every dollar that they spend by some hard work, while his own parents, apparently, receive as much as they want and more without any labour whatever.

That boy will be more than human if, by the time he is a young man, he has not passed the entrance to the paths where the true happiness of life is to be found. Either money will mean nothing to him, and he will have settled down to be one of the idle rich, simply taking what the gods send him and doing his best to enjoy it, or else a most unholy lust for gold will have taken possession of his soul. Eliminate the necessity for struggle, and you remove from money all its true value. It becomes either dross, to be thrown away for other things better worth while, or it becomes an idol, a god, the very sum and substance of the world’s desire.

I know, of course, that there are marked exceptions. I have in my mind as I write a young man of a Western city, born to an enormous fortune, married to another, and trained and nurtured in the lap of luxury. Almost everything conspired to make him either an idler or a money worshipper. He is neither. It is an accident. In his early youth he became an invalid, and was sent out by his father to live on a ranch. The ranchman’s wife was a real woman, and instinct taught her how to handle that boy. He was put to work. At first, when his father learned through his letters that he was spending his time mending fences, feeding pigs, watering horses, and milking cows, he objected strongly. He wrote to the ranchman to this effect. The ranchman rebuked his wife, and set the boy to work at other gentler things.