The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-01-18 00:00:00

HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY.

W. It. 0. has sent the following letter to the Pall Mai
Gazette :

Mr. Goldwin Smith is a writer of large and warm
human sympathies, always generons anti often just,
but urnally expressed with an intemperat ce which
robs them of half their influence and ad their charm.
He has just published tri the last number of the Con.
temporary Reeve a paper on 'The Labour Move-
ment" which, amid narteh that is sound and wise and
timely, though disfigured by a pervading bitterness of
tone, contains one pasta:. seeming so diatinctly to
echo and to sancti n the rnigarest prejudice and the
commonest fallacy entertained by the mamas regard-
ing those placed he a better social position than their
own, as to deserve special comment. " When he
asks) did wealth rear such enchanted palaces of luxury
as it is rearing in England at the present day Well
do I tememtier one of tholes palaces, the most con-
spicuous object fr uti'es round. Its lord was, I dare
say, consunOng the income or some MX Mandrel of ,11.3
poor labouriug families around him. The thought
that you are spending on yourself annually the inc me
of eix hundred labouring bunnies seems to me aternuch
as a man with a heart said a brain can bear."

Now, if this means anything definite, it means that
a imb,enuitu with an expenditure of 230,000 a scar is
eating up, "consuming," an amount of sustenance
which, equitably distributed, would maintain six
hundred Launies of his less throttled fellowmen in
plenty. Of course, Mr. Goldwin Smith does not
really think this, or would not think it il he gave him-
self time for reflection. But he certainly says is,
whether he means it or not; and as certainly this is
precisely what is meant by the reckless agitators who
excite and mislead the ignoiant poor, and precisely
what is believed Ly the ignorant poor whose envy and
indignation are mowed by the misconception. Now,
what is obviously and undeniabl- the true state of tie
case?

The rich man himself, unless be eats and drinks too
much, or cuefully and wilfully de.tro3a his clothing,
consumes, al can consume, little, if at all, more of the
aedial sustenance of life than the poorest labourer he
employe. On the contrary, his entire income is spent,
and must he spent if he is to get any enjoyment out
it, in giving work, wages, and subsistence to those very
six hundred families wnom Mr. Goldwin Smith repre-
sents him as rivalling in the aggregate amount of their
consumption. Let us look at the facts a little in

Hs spends liberally in breml end butcher's meat for
himaelf and his household; this means that he pave to
his butcher and baker enough to enable them to live
out of the profits of their trades, and to employ the
journeymen who bake the bread, and the miller who
grin It the flour, and the drovers who bring the meat
to market, and the farmers and farm labourers who
grow and fatten the live stock. He consumes much
milk and butter and cream ; but as he pan+ full prices
for it all, the money goes tiltiinately into the hands of
the peasant, the dairyman, and the ploughman, who
are engaged in producing what he consumes, and into
the pocket of the farmer who employs them. He
drinks it: the course of the year, he and his family and
Isle gum's, a good deal of wine : very well; hie wine
me chant gets an honest livelihood out id his profit,
and is enabled to employ a score of vine-dressers and
coopers 'at Bordeaux, who otherwise would go 'Athol'.
their dinners. H, is lavish, perhaps in his expendi.
true on dress; where dot" that lavish outlay go, hat
into the pockets of the tailor, the tad liner, and the
seamstress, who all of them employ more hands and
payllgher wages than they could do if the net man
spent only £lO instead of £2CO upon his person? And
40 of..

Again, ths supposed millionaire keeps op a large
e-tablishndent—larger than is wi•e or needful, we may
suppose. He has perhaps thirty servants, all em-
ployed in ministering to his wants and caprices. Very
bad tor hint, probably; but he maintains all these men
and women and their families, ilistessi r I eating up
their substance, an Mr. Goldwin Smith would have 118
fancy. If his brain and heart sank updee the pressure,
as Mr. Goldwin Swith intimates they ought to doe and
if be dismissed these superfluous ministers of luxury, be
would merely tleprose them of their sustenance instead
of disgorging it to them. Than he keeps perhaps
a dozen horses for bin pleasure. These horses reqmre
at least six grooms, to whom he pays wages, and
whom he thus enalies to live in plenty, to say nothing
of the la-oily of the corn-chandler, who pocketss a con-
siderable pr -fit by supplying fodder for the well filled
stable, or the workmen employed by the coachmaker, to
adiom be is a lil oral customer. Ile has a beantiul
garden ard exquisite and extensive hot-houses—thus,
again, spending thousands on his own selfish gratifi a
tiou, you will Pay. Not at all. Those thousands go
te maintain the families of twenty gardeners wet
under gardeners, wish a surplus for the collier and the
coal-dealer. By this time we have got pretty far on
to a hundred families, all living out of funds distri
bitted among theua by the rich man, who is represmted
as spending countless thousands on his own persansl
indulgences. True, he does so; but he can only do so
by distributing these thousands among those around
him. _ .

--
But we are not nearly at the end yet. My lord
huilde himeelf a nplendid mansion, and Mr. Goldwin
Smith and the agitating demagogues are shocked at the
heartlessness that can indulge in such expenditure
while a hundred families who might live in comfort on
the suma thus wante I are famishing around him. But
this heartless expenditure all goes into the pockets of
these very starving familien, in the only mode in which
it can reach them without demoralizing them -namely,
by givi: g them employment. The architect, the
maser, the bricklayer, the carpenter, the slater, the
plunder, all live for months or years out of the sum:
spent upon the Cr,, :lion of thin mansion, awl
hably get more real joy out of it than the proprietor
himself.
I might go on thus through every item of his vast
annual expenditure, which Mr. Goldwin Smith does
not sorrffilis to repreeent as so shocking to all right and
tender feelings. Ilut one more leant once will suffice.
The noliteman is probobly a man of culture, foid of
reading, fond of art. Be buys books: the price he
pave ie.:tickled (very untonally I admit) between the
paliffiker. the printers, the b tikseiler, enel the &nth, r.
:Ind help; them oil to live. His ioliolarly taste tempts
him to revel in spl,uilid biuo ugs : the hooter mak:,
Heim out of Unit pit cent seltislineei snit. nay, lie
lea liberal and judicious t.orcdol,tr el poooing ado
' sculpture: artida would die of If tarvation if there were
iwka Mielloriell• nen to gavel brim (a inix. esliithOwile) the
mewls of ....tog.
rerhate (to I rig citir iiirstra,,,,a to a cl ,se) the
millionaire thus held up to envy and r..probation does
not spend all his income, but inventm a portion—say in
railway shares. Where done that expenditure go, and
who ultimately profits by it? It is vent in national