Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby

“ Not the problem of how to become rich and how to invest money and make more money, that is the very obsession which ought to be dispelled, but the important question of how the rich spend their money, how they live, to what objects they devote their riches, and whether the vast accumulations are being disposed of to the greatest advantage. The connection between riches and poverty is capable of proof, that is to say, the maladministration of wealth by individuals can be shown to be closely linked to the disorganisation of labour which creates such evils as sweating and unemployment. ”

“ If assistance to those who need it is the object of domestic service, it is striking to note that on the money basis, generally speaking, the wrong people are served. Who in the community most require and should specially have the help of servants? The old and infirm, the weak and ill, the very young and the hard-worked. Service under such conditions raises itself to the level of one of the highest occupations that can be imagined. But this is not our system. A man or woman may be ill, old or over-worked, without being able to get the assistance of a single soul. ”

“ Sitting there in your seven hundred carriages you are blind—in heart and soul and voice and walk—the blindest creatures in the world ... and you are charming to us who, like your footman, cannot see the label ‘Blind.’ The cut of your gown is perfect, the dressing of your hair the latest, the trimming of your hat later still; your tricks of speech the very thing; you droop your eyelids to the life, you have not too much powder; it is a lesson in grace to see you hold your parasol. ”

“ The deceptive process of the growth of riches—The relaxation of effort—The love of ease—The power of convention—The disadvantages of abundance—Surfeit—Difficulties in a rich man’s life—Waste of talent and capacity—England as a nation deeply infected with the belief in money.
There is no more misleading and deceptive process than the gradual growth of riches. As a man’s income increases, fresh obligations arise which have all the appearance of necessities, and in satisfying these a still further crop springs up, demands his attention, and occupies more of his time. ”

“ Another example about which some doubt might be expressed is that of a man struggling with his family on an income well below the limit, unable to develop his capacities and lead a decently useful life because of the constant pinch of want. Will not a gift of money which secures him a competence without affluence, frees his energies for higher work, and liberates him from the sordid and painful trials of poverty, will not such a gift be an unqualified advantage to him, and will not, therefore, the giver of that money be an exception to the axiom that superfluous wealth cannot be well spent? ”

“ It is not unjust to condemn the appreciation of power such as this as a low form of pleasure not only for its pure selfishness, but because triumph in this connection implies control of other individuals and power to gain advantage at their cost. It is a form of self-glorification and exultation which simply means that to have wealth is to have the whip hand.
No one hopes for or expects complete repression of self, but in any corporate action for a common object, where there is a certain necessary self-repression, the satisfaction to the individual is unquestionably higher and purer. ”

“ We must take the world as it is, is the common cry, not as it ought to be, and unless we are prepared to be submerged and trodden under, we must follow in the throng and push forward and struggle with the rest. Some of us are able to feel resentment at A’s riches, but, alas! it is not because he is rich, but because he is rich. It is said that the craving to satisfy material wants is as inseparable a part of human nature as any other appetite. ”

“ In the meanwhile we cannot accept our rich man’s plea that as a landlord, even as a good landlord, his expenditure is profitable. It is not that he makes nothing but mistakes; it is that he cannot give sufficient time and attention to it; it is that he is by nature incapable—an incapacity which he shares with every other mortal—of deriving from his estate of some thousands of acres all that it could produce. ”

“ For where is the justice that noblemen, goldsmiths, and usurers and those classes who either do nothing at all or in what they do are of no great service to the commonwealth, should live a genteel and splendid life in idleness or unproductive labour; whilst in the meantime the servant, the waggoner, the mechanic, and the peasant toiling almost longer and harder than the horse, in labour so necessary that no commonwealth could endure a year without it, lead a life so wretched that the condition of the horse seems more to be envied?... ”

“ The money, being in individual hands, will sooner or later fall into the less worthy grasp of a man whose interest in the business is insignificant compared with his desire to cut a figure of importance by means of his riches. Our ideal manufacturer is not treating the money or spending it as if it were his own. But nevertheless it is his own to dispose of, and he will leave his large profits to a successor on whose whim and fancy the responsibility of their administration again rests. ”

“ Our landlord is consciously proud of having people directly dependent on him whom he can order according to his will (even at election time) , whom he can enrich or impoverish as he judges right, and can remove from his cottages when they do not please him. If the result is spick and span to the eye and he is greeted by smiles of apparent gratitude he feels, and it is difficult to disillusion him, that his methods are successful, and he is induced to believe that his actions are justified and his presence in the community indispensable. ”

“ I suggest that our religious revival may lead us to a new appreciation of the spirit of brotherhood—one of the great ideals of the democratic movement. Secondly, I suggest that our religious revival may take the form of a mission to the wealthy and prosperous. It is the curse of riches that they blur and even conceal altogether the heavenly vision. They tend to make pleasure the business of life. A man’s wealth is measured by the time and money that he can spend on amusement. ”

“ This bond that unites all civilised humanity is not a great uplifting ideal nor a divine inspiration. It has more the nature of a malignant and infectious disease by which we are all contaminated. It can be expressed in one single and familiar word—MONEY—that is to say the unqualified belief in money as a means, money as an end, aim, object, ideal; money as representing the method of securing a greater degree of physical wellbeing, money as power, money as pleasure, money, therefore, as happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An occasional saint, an occasional genius, or an occasional giant stretches the limit beyond its normal point, but the limit still remains. And yet we are foolish enough to believe that in regard to the possession, expenditure, and administering of riches there is no sum of money, however large, which we are not competent to deal with, and we are convinced that it is quite easy and unquestionably within the capacity of almost anyone to spend with benefit to himself and to others sums of money greatly in excess of what can cover in the widest sense his personal requirements. ”

“ A just appreciation of the essential fact that money can only be made out of people’s labour and the wear and tear of their lives would in itself do much to prevent the growth of the spirit which leads to these alarming contrasts in riches and poverty. But men’s ideals and their moral outlook can only be altered in the long run by repeatedly exposing the actual fallacies in the views they now hold and constantly emphasising the disastrous results of the actions for which this waste of money is responsible. ”

“ As for those whose incomes fall below the limit, the money ideal affects them just as strongly as it does the rich themselves. There is more excuse because there is a greater want of education; there is more excuse also because, knowing from their own experience that money can keep off starvation and prevent the physical suffering produced by want, and knowing also that more money means more comforts and a wider scope for activity, they fall naturally into the error of believing that every progressive increase in money brings a proportionate increase in happiness. ”

“ The education, if it can be called by that name, which they receive from the cheap press presents them with inviting pictures of wealth, ease, and luxury. They read of men who have amassed great fortunes, of incidents in the careers of millionaires, of charitable gifts bestowed by the munificent rich, of the positions, success, titles, and fame achieved by men through money. Their eye falls on alluring advertisements for expensive goods. ”

“ The large body of ordinary investors and speculators are completely at their mercy, for only a very few can pretend to master or follow the intricacies of this highly elaborated system which the large financiers have set up like a huge web to catch all contributions coming from the investments and savings of the general public. But the general business of private finance is the immediate concern of every man, and it is certainly the subject about which most people think they know something and many people know a good deal. ”

“ The religion we profess has for one of its most significant and salient features the denunciation of wealth as a trust or a pursuit: Christianity condemns riches as a snare, a danger, and almost a sin, and even Pagan-nurtured sages and statesmen are never weary of pointing out how this disastrous passion vitiates all our estimates of life and its enjoyments, and fosters and exasperates all our social sores. ”

“ The man who “rises,” who “makes his pile,” who “succeeds,” goes up the ladder of wealth, the rungs of which are vanity and applause, mistaking it for the ladder of life, the rungs of which are service, sacrifice, and resolution. There are bags of gold at the top within sight; it matters not that some of the rungs are dangerously weak. Others have reached the top or near it, why should not he? ”

“ Millionaires themselves are the first to admit that their money brings them no happiness. The confession has been made by one of them that the very fact of being able without the least difficulty to satisfy his smallest or his largest fancies was in itself the very antithesis of pleasure. He had learnt that the continuous craving to satisfy human wants, far from being a misfortune, constituted an intrinsic element in the production of happiness. The hope perhaps long deferred, that some particular want might eventually be satisfied was a treasure he had for ever lost the power to appreciate. ”

“ For if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up, honesty, justice, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge that goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity.”
It is certainly true that the amazingly extensive nature of the subject might lead one away into perfectly relevant discussions of almost every field of human activity; and nothing renders argument so unsatisfactory and inconclusive as to have unlimited scope. ”

“ If he drops out from incompetence, from weakness, or from viciousness, if destitution becomes his lot, his nature becomes crippled, his character warped, his mind embittered, and he finds himself dragged down lower still and trodden under by his fellow-men in their thoughtless and brutal stampede for lucre. Truly, “the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” ”

“ National wealth, which in the highest sense of the word means the enrichment of the lives of the people, depends not on how large a number of incomes there are of over ten thousand a year, but on how small a number there are of under two hundred a year. The real riches of a nation are not to be measured by vast calculations of commercial statistics, but by the absence of destitution and the high level of healthy life which the people enjoy. ”

“ In order to appreciate fully the responsibility which the possession of riches entails, let us translate an income into terms of actual sustenance for human beings. By this means it is possible to arrive at a more or less positive measure. There is so much that is relative in most human requirements that they cannot serve as a standard or as a reliable quantity to be used in calculating any equation. But the requirements of a human being can be measured in terms of actual sustenance, because they can be estimated with something approaching precision. ”

“ One would have imagined that the so-called sporting instinct which we are so proud of nurturing in our public schools and the spirit of fair play would have made men ashamed to continue to lead lives solely and systematically devoted to extravagance and selfish enjoyment while so many of their fellow-men are condemned to the dismal existence of toil and squalor, even if they refused to admit that the one influenced the other. ”

“ Acknowledged worldly success for which full credit is given publicly is not necessarily achieved by the exercise of superior intellectual or business ability, but can be obtained, just as titles and honours, by the judicious expenditure of money. It naturally appeals strongly to people who like appreciation and applause, and after all, who does not? But the worth of a man can no more be estimated by his money value than the worth of an article. ”

“ Their lives, more especially those of their women, are entirely aimless and certainly devoid of any determined motive. As long as they are allowed to pursue their course undisturbed, making or spending the money which they look on as their own in any way that suits their fancy, they make no complaint. They ask the State to guard them securely in the enjoyment of their great possessions, and they employ the energy they derive from them in poisoning the springs of national prosperity. ”

“ As the power of money augments and vast riches are piled higher and higher, it is becoming the more apparent that an opposing force of bitter antagonism is being created which may one day gain strength enough to sweep away the vampire of capitalism.
“Wealth is in the hands of the few rich and the suffrage in the hands of the many poor. In the concentration of wealth and the diffusion of political power lies the great danger of Modern Society. ”

“ Resented while you gathered being; brought into the world with the most distinguished skill; remembered by your mother when the whim came to her; taught to believe that life consists in caring for your clean, well-nourished body and your manner that nothing usual can disturb; taught to regard Society as the little ring of men and women that you see, and to feel your business is to know the next thing that you want and get it given you ”