THE WAGES OF ABILITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 609, 14 December 1909, Page 3

THE WAGES OF ABILITY.

(By Alex. M. Thompson)

John Davidson, the poet, has committed suicide because he could not maintain his family and fight his own illness on his pension of two pounds a week. Mr J. Patten, the Wheat King' of the Chicago Stock Exchange, is reported to have made a personal profit of from one to two million sterling in a few days by “cornering” the toiling million’s means of life. Our individualist economic system is the best that can be devised to secure due rewards to individuals for services to the community.

The service done by Mr Patten has taken bread out of the mouths of hungry children. An American cartoon represents him as a fox in frock coat and silk hat, with a child on her knees in the background praying for “our daily bread.” John Davidson applied rare and remarkable talents to the enlightenment of his fellows by writing “The Triumph of Mammon” and “Mammon and His Message.” The Poet commits suicide. The Gambler who takes toll on the People’s Food builds palaces. That is how the Reward of Ability works out under our social system. John Davidson apparently made no money by his poetry. Swinburne could not have written “Songs Before Sunrise” had he riot possessed private means of subsistence. Wordsworth told Matthew Arnold that his poems never brought him the price of his shoestrings.” The Reward of Ability ? Rockefeller takes a hundred millions from the world’s workers in eight' years, and John Miltqn receives five pounds as' the price of five years’ work on “Paradise Lost.”

Mr Henry, of Philadelphia, paid ten thousand pounds last Saturday for Millet’s “Depart pour le travail” (“Going to Work”), and the artist in his lifetime painted portraits at a franc each and was nearly driven to suicide. Mr J. B. Robinson, ot South Africa, is said to be “worth” eighty

millions, and the poet Chatterton took poison to avoid starvation, Robert Greene must have perished for want of bare necessities but for the charity of a poor shoemaker at whose house he died. The life of Thomas Nash is a tale of suffering and distress. Thomas Heywood struggled constantly with poverty, Massinger’s life was a series of humiliations and sorrows. Farquhar wrote “ The Beau’s Stategem ” in misery, and got twenty pounds for it. Dr. Johnson was forced to live on four and a half pence a day and passed many nights in the streets destitute. Richard Savage died in the debtors prison. Sir Richard Steele’s struggles with poverty are familiar as the “Spectator.” John Lily was forced to apply to Queen Elizabeth for “ some little grant to support him in his old age.” Chaucer lived and died in embarrassed circumstances. Plautu turned a mill. Terence was a slave. Both Boethius and Socrates were executed. Pado Borghese starved at fourteen trades. Tasso was often distressed for a shilling. Bentivoglic was refused admission to a hospital he had himself erected. The great Cervantes lived in constant poverty and died of hunger. Luis de Camoens the greatest of Portuguese poets, ended his days in an almshouse. Vaugelas sold his body to the surgeons to support his life. And the successful modern Captain of Industry can make from one to two millions of pounds at one stroke by levying tribute on the people’s bread. These are the Reward of Ability. —From The Clarion.