CHAPTER XV 



INTEREST-BEARING FUNDS INJURIOUS AND UNJUST 



' ' The millionaire is, and as long as he is allowed to exist, 

 always will be, a useful member of society ; because he 

 produces more wealth in comparison to the amount that 

 he exhausts than any other member of society. . . . The 

 richer a man is, the greater is the proportion of his savings 

 to his income. Take a man with a fortune of £20,000,000, 

 and an income of £1,000,000, of which he could not very 

 well spend more than £100,000 a year. Now if this 

 fortune was owned by 10,000 persons instead of one, they 

 would have £100 a year each, of which they would 

 probably spend £90. Therefore, their savings would 

 amount in the aggregate to £100,000, while the multi- 

 millionaire's savings from the same capital would be 

 £900,000. Therefore the community which had the 

 multi-millionaire would grow richer at the rate of £800,000 

 a year, at compound interest over the community that 

 had divided his property up." — (Bradley Martin, jun., in 

 Nineteenth Century, ' ' Is the Lavish Expenditure of 

 Wealth Justifiable?" p. 1029, Dec, 1898.) 



The passage quoted at the head of this chapter shows 

 such an extraordinary misconception as to the real nature 

 of wealth that I propose to devote a few pages to a 

 discussion that will, I think, show the fact to be the very 

 reverse of that maintained by Mr. Bradley Martin, jun. 

 He confounds money with wealth ; the increase of money, 

 or its equivalent — claims on the earnings of other people 

 — as increase of wealth. I maintain on the contrary that 

 the result of numbers of rich men saving a large portion 

 of their incomes every year, instead of making a 

 community or a nation richer makes it poorer — makes it 

 a smaller producer of real wealth — causes the bulk of its 

 people to work harder and fare worse. Those who will 

 read the following pages carefully, will, I think, admit 



