The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1910. MILLIONAIRES AND THEIR MONEY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 764, 12 March 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1910. MILLIONAIRES AND THEIR MONEY.

Thebb can be little question, wa think, as to the nature of the comparison which the man in the street will institute between, the two millionaires who figured in the cable message published in a recent issue. However he may order his own conduct he ia in the abstract .as sound as the greatest saint in his admiration for virtue, or what seems to bo virtue, and his anger at what ho believes to be vioo. whon, therefore,, he read that Mr. Patten, "the cotton King," who is retiring from business with four millions x sterling, has an nounced that he has "made his pile and intends to enjoy himself," he doubtless reviled this greedy millionaire, cspccialjy as it was simultaneously reported that' Ma. Rockefeller is spending further millions on the endowment of institutions intended to "promote the well-being of the people of the United States and its possessions abroad, the dissemination of knowledge and the relief of suffering." Nine persons out of every ten would affirm that

Patten is an enemy of society and that Mr. Rockefeller, whatever he i may have been in the past, is now a benefactor of the ago. Yet it is open to doubt whether both of these conclusions may not bo wrong. For to the eye of the economist, Mr. Patter has not, as many people imagine, taken four millions into a corner to consume them; nor are Mr. Rockefeller's "foundations," .to the economist, necessarily valuable and nationally useful ways of employing capital. It is worth while briefly considering the effect of these two gentlemen's disbursement of their respective millions. We do not know what Mr. Patten's idea of "enjoyment" may be; but we may conclude, having regard to the type to which he belongs and to.his.character as a courageous financier, that his millions will be required to furnish him with one or two fine homes, a motor-car or two, perhaps a steam yacht, and, for a nobby, either a racing stud or a library. These can easily be. purchased and maintained out of a portion of the income from his capital, which, of course, he will invest; for it is doubtful whether any American millionaire spends £50,000 a year on his needs. To spend any vast amount "unproductively" he must either adopt Mr. Pierpont Morgan's method of building up a library and museum of almost incalculable value, or else purchase groat quantities of gems. In both of these cases, it is quite clear, he inflicts no injury on anyone, he takes not one crumb from the hungry poor: he has merely transferred a certain amount of capital to other spenders, a,nd these, in their turn, unable to consume more than a tiny fraction of their capital, pass his* millions on, until they are diffused, like all capital, through the industries of the nation. The steam yacht, however, is sheer waste: it is not only a "dead" and unproductive result of many men's toil,- but it requires for its manning further men whose absence from the field or factory is an actual loss to productive- society. So, too, there is economic waste in a racing stud, although in this case, as in the case of the motor-cars and the fipe homes, political economy will allow the waste, on the ground that men are not expected to go wholly without pleasures, and are indeed jikely to make the world not worth living in if they are emotionless producing and consuming machines all the time.

Me. Patten, therefore, cannot consumo more than is consumed by any one of millions of men with a hundredth part of his income. He cannot lock up his capital: no man can permanently lock up capital, or ov ?s l arge am °unt of actual gold. He is an enemy of society, obviously, only if he uses his capital power to direct into wasteful courses human energy that under other direction would be fruitful in the production of "consumable" . capital. If'his millions qould be "distributed actually they exist as shops, tramcars, railroads, meatworks, newspapers, factories, and so on would the ■ nation ..be richer, or tho poor less poor ? An excellent an-, swer to this question is given by a British reviewer dealing with a book that seems to argue an affirmative :

Suppose that the Duke of Omnium's fiT u Tl j' les . were placed for disposal in the hands of several other persons beca usei the Duke himself was incapable of i^ n '7?S™ el yaay money over and above lus full competence." Now ' the Duke,. alter all, is human-human in', his pow-' era of endurance as well as in his vices' no cannot smoke more than. a certain number of cigars a day, cannot eat more a night'at tho Ritz after' the theatre, cannot drink more than-a low glasses of old brandy, cannot keep moro than a certain number of gameKeepers, and-so on. The money that lie does not waste is employed usefully' enough m the upkeep of a landed proporty and in respectable investments, I? roprtali give employment. If tue Duke s money -were divided up into _ a competences," there would be the human margin of extravagance in the case of every : holder of a competenceand we venture to say that the money •spent on cigars, old brandy, suppera after tba theatre, and the rest—in other words, unproductive labour—would be considerably, more.' «

And what of Me. Rockefeller ? One trusts that the activity created by his huge endowments will be fully worth while; but it will hardly be disputed that at their worst his foundations can be as purely waste as I|e. Patten's luxurious yacht or the Duke of Omnium's cigars, while at their best they will produce some waste in the. shape of, bootless effort and vain striving after the impossible. Even the. most touchy scientist will allow that a reckless and disordered liberality in establishing schools of scientific research is certain to lead to a deplorable waste of time and men. Most of Me, Rookefellek's money W j , s P ea p on labour totally unproductive in the economic sense, but it will not be socially, unproductive, and it may lead to greater purely economic production in the future. Some of it, however, must be totally unproductive in any sense, and will therefore be completely and finally wasted. In , the long run, therefore, the human wastage caused by ' Mn. _ Patten's determination to enjoy himeelf may be very much' less than that caused by the Rockefeller disbursements; in other words, society as a whole, and, thereiore, the poor as units of society, may in the end suffer more from the Philanthropist than from the simple Philistine who intends to enjoy himit may be argued, is hardly likely, but the ethical test is not the only test that should Ix 3 applied to the methods of the million-1 aire: good intentions and high aims do not in his case necessarily lead to I the best results for society.