Money as a supreme concern—Intensity of belief in money—Definition of Contention—The impulses which act as the motive power of money-making—The limitation of human capacities—Money and happiness—Money as responsibility—The national wealth and welfare.

Religion is said to be one of the supreme concerns of the human race, and there can be no doubt that it forces itself into the calculations of every one of us. It is a matter about which we fight and differ, about which we interest ourselves in various degrees in proportion to the development of our spiritual and emotional nature, and which only a minority conscientiously consider to be of vital consequence. But there is another concern which enters equally surely into all our calculations, for which we fight without differing, about which we interest ourselves in various degrees in proportion to the development of our material nature, and which only a small minority consider not to be of vital consequence. After the satisfaction of our animal appetites it is our first preoccupation. To some it presents itself as the very first consideration on which even the satisfaction of their appetites must depend. All great human efforts at progress, whether they issue from religious, political, scientific, social, or economic sources, get checked and thwarted sooner or later, because of the universal acceptance of a dominant principle, so powerful and so insinuating that it permeates the views and convictions of men, whether they be of high or low degree, and irrespective of their creed and nationality. 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. It is a deep-rooted and at present ineradicable conviction which we hold without doubt and without question. A little money, we argue, is obviously indispensable, a little more money we are all of us continually declaring that we want, a good deal of money we are convinced brings a decided increase in happiness, and a vast amount of money must therefore mean a great power for good.

This belief, which amounts almost to an instinct, may vary in intensity, it may cloak itself under many insidious disguises, but it is very rarely if ever completely absent. It takes all conceivable forms, from undisguised greed to simulated contempt. There are those who devote their lives to amassing more money; there are those who, having sufficient, assume outwardly an indifference as to its power, while they retain inwardly a profound and unwavering faith in it; and there are those who struggle for it so as to avoid social and sometimes even actual death from need of it. It insinuates itself into the minds of men who have no confidence in material advancement because they find that our whole social system is based on this belief, and if they do not want to be left behind in the struggle they must accept the creed.

Not only by individuals separately, but by the people collectively it is accepted as a concern of supreme importance. Our lives, our marriages, and therefore our very birth are regulated by it, our occupations, our industries and our arts, everything but death depends on it, and even death itself can be hastened or postponed by it. So national is the reverence for it that our holidays are not fixed on saints’ days, or to commemorate episodes from the rich part of our history, but they are Bank holidays. The closing of our banks is the one signal that for twenty-four hours we are free.

The multifarious aspects of the theme are most bewildering. As Sir Henry Taylor said, “So manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and character of mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. 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. But in these pages the issue must be narrowed down and the question confined so far as possible to a very brief examination of one particular aspect of the subject, which will be created by formulating a deliberate contention and pursuing it by argument into some of the main channels of this perplexing problem. Even so it is likely that deep water will be reached, but, after all, a suggestion need not be driven to its utmost limits in all directions in order to establish its significance.

In choosing a direct point of attack against this generally accepted belief we shall treat the matter more or less from a practical point of view. Without getting involved in abstract philosophic propositions, without entering too far into the sphere of economics and politics, without preaching high morality, though the words and teachings of preachers must be quoted, an endeavour will be made, by working out a definite line of reasoning, to submit as a whole some of the simpler and perhaps more personal considerations which have no doubt already occurred to many who have given the subject thought and reflection. No maxims will be laid down as to how money should be made, spent, saved, lent, borrowed, invested, given or bequeathed, for the object is to strike at the root principle and shatter the ideal which underlies all those transactions, which colours men’s characters, influences their desires and aspirations, creates artificial class contrasts, and contributes largely to the general social confusion and chaos. Briefly, then, our contention is: That no individual is capable of possessing, spending, or administering more than a certain definite amount of money, which can be roughly described as a full competence, without producing positively harmful effects on himself as well as on those affected by his actions. In other words, the “rich man” is an impossibility in any decently organised economic State, and the accumulation of capital in individual hands is detrimental to the public good. That is what is meant by the saying from which the title of this volume is taken.

It may appear at first sight to be an extreme view, because we have got so much accustomed to believing that a great deal of good can be done with money, and a great deal of happiness derived from it, that to be confronted with an uncompromising negation on such a time-honoured tradition may seem almost absurd. The argument is purposely intended to be completely comprehensive, and a case will be presented without exaggeration which will cover as much of the ground as possible, dealing with typical rather than exceptional instances by way of illustration.

We find in human nature three characteristic impulses which serve as the mainspring and motive power in the gaining and spending of money: the passion for acquisition, the instinct for absolute property, and the desire to excel. No one would suggest that the passion for acquisition can be destroyed: it is neither possible nor desirable, but it can be prevented from running wild, and it can be controlled, though it does not seem to have occurred to many people that such control is expedient. The instinct for absolute property is very much overestimated, and this arises from the fact that we are accustomed to a system which hardly allows any satisfactory intermediate stage between property and positive need. The craving for complete possession on any considerable scale only enters into the minds of those who covet their neighbours’ possessions. What a man wants and has every right to expect is security in the enjoyment of his necessaries and comforts, but this is precisely what in the vast majority of cases he does not get; and his want remaining unsatisfied is converted into a craving for absolute property. The desire to excel, which can undoubtedly be one of the finest human qualities, is in itself vitiated by the measure of money, which sets up an utterly false standard of excellence and converts pure ambition into a desire for material pre-eminence.

However far we may travel, the problem will be continually resolving itself into some variation of the question as to how these impulses had best be regulated, and to what extent they have broken out beyond their legitimate bounds. But although the causes of the faith in money may be reduced to moral and psychological terms, there are economic as well as moral results, and it is not the metaphysical origins, but the practical results which must be looked into.

At the outset we must acknowledge that our capacities of all kinds are strictly limited, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. 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. Whereas not only is it not easy, but as inquiry will show, it is purely and positively impossible, as impossible as it is to acquire vast knowledge with a limited brain capacity, or to endure more than a certain amount of physical strain with a limited muscular capacity. We are inclined also to think that men who have money and men who make money are ipso facto easily capable of spending the money properly, though we generally make the mental reservation that if we had it ourselves we should spend it a great deal better. But the inheritance or accumulation of money does not imply by any means a special ability for spending it wisely. To put it plainly, such men have not, nor have we, nor has anyone this ability except in a very limited degree, far more limited than is generally supposed or ever admitted.

The case against riches has been argued again and again on religious and moral grounds for over two thousand years, from Confucius to Tolstoy. But we are less impressed by the truth of it now than ever we were; and we still hear it stated by high authorities that it is a benefit to the community to contain men of great wealth. The whole delusion arises from the indestructible confidence in what money can do. And yet all of us see clearly enough by the roughest and most general observation that happiness does not increase with riches, that money indeed has very little to do with happiness, though it has a good deal to do with misery. But many of us are inclined to believe that our own individual case is rather different, and that more money added to our ample competence, and a consequent further enjoyment of material possessions, must undoubtedly make us happier. And when we have got the more and the desired result is not attained, we never pause in hesitation to consider whether perhaps the more has interfered with rather than augmented our happiness, but we are persuaded that the reason we find ourselves still discontented is simply that the more is not enough. Enough never comes to those who have encouraged the longing for more. Nothing short of actual experience can help to eradicate this belief, but there are few who would care to embark on an experiment in the direction of less. And yet it could quite well be demonstrated that a reduction of income, provided always that the loss does not reduce the income below a competence can lead to an increase in happiness—happiness being, of course, distinguished from pleasure.

It may require a very rare philosophic resignation and an equally rare breadth of view to refuse to be deluded into regarding the possession of money as an absolute essential. Moreover, there are a great many qualifications to be taken into account arising from natural characteristics, habit, temperament, and tastes. But broadly speaking, if a man has the courage to regard a reduction of income not as a loss but a gain, if he can use the opportunity to kill the instinctive but disturbing craving for more which unfortunately seems engrained in us all, in fact, if he can eradicate the germ of the disease, the limitation of his desire to satisfy transient and what are really artificial needs will certainly increase his power of enjoyment and his happiness. On the other hand, if he treats the lowering of his means as a calamity, which is the usual case, lamenting his fate, railing against fortune and encouraging the longing for gain—an attitude of mind which is only the outcome of his unlimited faith in the power of money—the result, naturally enough, will be despair.

But it might be shown as well that a type of man does exist, exceptional no doubt, who, being capable of spending without hurt to himself or to others more money than he has actually got, can enrich his life in the broadest sense by an increase of fortune, and may therefore become the happier for it. He is a man who is indifferent to the enjoyment of material possessions and probably would be regarded in the eyes of the world as the last man who was competent to use money properly. But even he would be entirely overwhelmed by anything like a large increase of fortune, and would be as incapable as any one else of disposing of it without inflicting injury.

“Could not riches be used well?” asks Jean Marie in Stevenson’s Treasure of Franchard.

“In theory, yes,” replied the doctor. “But it is found in experience that no one does so. All the world imagine they will be exceptional when they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring up, and the silly taste for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure.”

Money is, after all, responsibility and nothing else. We are all of us capable of undertaking a certain amount. Some of us are capable of undertaking a good deal. No one is capable of undertaking more than a relatively limited amount. But the trouble is that most of us think ourselves capable of undertaking far more than we properly can. Autocrats are ceasing to exist not so much because certain monarchs proved themselves dangerously incapable, but because the world has learned that no conceivable human being has the capacity to rule a country single-handed. We do not yet admit this incapacity with regard to the autocrats over capital, although it is equally true, and when we do so we shall find considerable difficulty in dethroning them.

Another important inference to be deduced from the argument here set forth is that the surplus money which no individual does or can spend beneficially remains in his hands in stagnant unproductivity, is deflected from other remunerative channels, and is therefore the chief cause of the existence of some of the gravest economic ills which we have to face in our social life. Money cannot rest, it is an active instrument for producing good or for producing evil. Its presence in one quarter may not produce visible evil, but its consequent absence in another quarter will produce very visible and very positive evil. The word consequent must be emphasised because wealth is like water—to pump it up artificially on one side is to lower it automatically on the other.

Money in its character of potential wealth seems also to have this peculiar characteristic. It has no positive value in itself. The greater part of its value is given to it by its possessor, and in proportion as it accumulates in the hands of an individual its value is rapidly depreciated. An electric current of a certain power will perform certain specified functions. Decrease the power and it ceases to produce the required effect. Increase the power tenfold or a hundredfold and you will be no nearer achieving the desired result. That is to say, in addition to the change in value effected by the change in individual ownership, there is actual deterioration, produced by accumulation, whoever the individual may be who is responsible for that accumulation.

As with individuals, so with the State. 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.

But we must accept the situation as it is. The rich have got their riches, and the problem to be considered here is not how to deprive them of their riches, but how to prevent all men, rich and poor alike, from confiding blindly in money, as they do at present, and from striving towards a false ideal which spoils their highest endeavours, blunts their moral susceptibilities, poisons their happiness, and produces a state of social disorder which is highly prejudicial to the common good. 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.