MILLIONAIRE WITH MISSION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 282, 1 May 1914, Page 2

MILLIONAIRE WITH MISSION

DEATH OF SOCIETY LEADER WHO DENOUNCED SOCIETY. London, March 13. i Mr Frederick Townsend Martin, one'' of the most prominent of the four hundred millionaires of New York, died in London on Sunday. He was sixty-five years old. Mr Martin, who was the brother of Mr Bradley Martin, and the undo of tlu; Countess of Craven, wars a millionaire with a mission. A society leader who had met most of the European monarchs, liia ambition was to' abolish crime, solve the problem of poverty, and banish misery. „ THE IDLE RMI. | "I am tired of puzzling my brains to devise means of entertaining the idle rich," he said on one occasion, "and i shall count myself supremely happy to be known as the poor man's friend." The. Whitechapel district of London, the Bowery, New York, and. the slums of Chicago, he chose as his field of work. Every summer he came to London and from his West End Hotel made daily visits to the haunts of London's poor,, his cab on more than one occasion being mobbed while he was redeeming some poor woman's furniture at tho pawn shop. Although a leader of society, lie was responsible for some slashing criticisms of the circle in which lie moved. Ilis book, "IV passing of the Idle Rich," was a mercile3B attack on his own class. In it he told of a rich American who owned a pet monkey which was waited upon by twelve servants. It had its own valet, clothes, dining-fable, and solid ivory bed. It ate its meals off solid -•silver plates, and cost its mistress 10,000 to 15,000 dollars a year.

ROOM FULL OF SOVEREIGNS. Another story was of a London society woman who told him she dreamed of gold. ''l want to have a room at the top of my house filled with golden sovereigns." she said. "I would like to go into that room night after night when everyone else i 3 asleep, and bury myself in yellow sovereigns up to the neck, ana play with them, toss them about, to hear the jingling music of the thing I love tho best." Mr Martin's money was derived from a Wall Street banking business.