The Camel
and the Needle’s Eye
Spiritual Perfection
A Dialogue
By Thomas Clune
(Arthur Ponsonby)
_Fscap. 8vo. 1s. nett. Post-free 1s. 2d._
“There is sound reasoning and deep thought in this book.”--_Dundee
Advertiser._ “A thoughtful dialogue.”--_The Times._ “No one
can read it without gaining a broader outlook on the truths of
religion.”--_Methodist Times._ “Many of the religious problems
and difficulties always cropping up are skilfully and earnestly
considered.”--_Aberdeen Journal._
LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD
The Camel and the
Needle’s Eye
By
Arthur Ponsonby, M.P.
_Published December, 1909_
_Reprinted January, 1910_
_Reprinted October, 1910_
London
A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford’s Inn, E.C.
1910
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
TO
MY WIFE
Contents
Preface
Chapter I
Extreme poverty a consequence of extreme wealth--Pity or
contempt for the poor--Money ideal strong among the poor--
The different phases in making a fortune--The general
tendency of society--Relations between rich and poor--
Dis-sympathy and class hatred--The social problem 11
Chapter II
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 27
Chapter III
Definition of the limit--Those whose means are above the
limit--Income translated into terms of subsistence--The
case of the rich man--His establishments--His servants--
His luxuries--Extravagance--Vanity--Sport--Racing--
Yachting--Condemnation of excess 43
Chapter IV
The rich man’s charities--His generosity--His hospitality--
His land--The Feudal System--His responsibilities--The
agricultural problem 71
Chapter V
The rich man’s children--His sons’ education at school and
university--His daughters--Love and marriage--Refinement
of the aristocracy--Their alliance with the plutocracy--
Smart society--Its general characteristics 85
Chapter VI
The rich man as a business man--The conduct of a successful
business--Money-making the incentive--Money no measure of
merit or worth in men--Or in works of art--Financiers--
The power of money--Imperialism--Political power--
Experiments of millionaires--Gifts--Money administered by
corporations or the State 101
Chapter VII
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 119
Chapter VIII
The problem of riches--Necessity of a scientific investigation
into the lives of the rich--Interdependence of riches and
poverty--Analysis of expenditure on houses, servants,
clothes, food, amusements--Impressions of a poor crowd and
a rich crowd--Tragedies 139
Chapter IX
Religion and money--Attitude of clergy--Emphatic condemnation
of riches by Christ--Notable texts and sayings--Want of
conviction--Importance attached to dogmatic religion--
Necessity for stronger denunciation 163
Chapter X
Results of influence of money--No motive in lives of the
rich--Money as our master--If money ideal could be
discarded--Possibility of change of ideal for all classes 179
Preface
My original intention was to collect together a number of essays on
some of the most important bearings of the question of the expenditure
of riches. After corresponding with those whom I had invited to join me
in this undertaking, I became aware that in spite of our substantial
agreement on main principles it would be difficult to secure uniformity
in the treatment of the theme, and impossible to carry on any sustained
argument through the varied contributions of different people writing
from different points of view. Accordingly I came to the conclusion
that I must renounce the co-operation of men well qualified to speak,
whose knowledge and experience would have given their opinions special
weight, and work out my own argument unaided.
Had I approached the subject from the standpoint of a scientific
economist, I should have hesitated to enter upon such a formidable
task. The more special knowledge a man has, the more conscious does he
become of the impossibility of dealing adequately with his subject.
But my object has been to write as one knowing no more than others who
take any interest in human affairs and watch the play of social forces,
as one who is no spectator in the combat he describes, and who, being
himself infected with the malady he is studying, is perhaps the better
able to diagnose it. I do not speak as a preacher to his congregation,
as a teacher to his pupils, as a moralist to his disciples, or even as
a politician to his audience, but as one man submitting his opinion for
what it is worth to another.
At the same time, I am compelled by a deep conviction in the truth of
my argument which passing years and the course of events only serve to
strengthen, and if, by the brief suggestions contained in these pages,
I can succeed in inducing anyone to examine more closely this branch
of the Social Problem, which in my opinion is too often dismissed as
negligible, I shall be amply repaid.
My thanks are due to those who have kindly assisted me in collecting
the facts and figures in Chapter VIII and in other parts of the book,
and also to Mr. and Mrs. J. L. Hammond, who read through the MS. and
made valuable criticisms and suggestions.
A. P.
The Camel and the Needle’s Eye
Chapter I
Extreme poverty a consequence of extreme wealth--Pity or
contempt for the poor--Money ideal strong among the poor--The
different phases in making a fortune--The general tendency of
society--Relations between rich and poor--Dis-sympathy and class
hatred--The social problem.
Frederick the Great’s father, on the occasion of great court
festivities used to lead his wife from the brilliant scene of gaiety
to an adjoining chamber, where he made her lie down for a few moments
in her own coffin, so as to give her a sharp reminder of the vanity
and transitory nature of all human pleasure. An even more effective
reminder for those who in London spend their money on a life of
pure self-indulgence would be afforded by a walk at midnight along
the Embankment from Westminster to Waterloo Bridge. No prearranged
stage management is necessary for the sight they are to see. It is a
long run, every night and all night, and has gone on ever since the
Embankment was constructed. As they pass along they can see the seats
packed closely with men and women leaning against one another in an
exhausted or half-drunken slumber. They can see the ragged and filthy
bundles of humanity lying round the parapet at the foot of Cleopatra’s
Needle, or the rows of wretched caricatures of men and women lined
along the wall under the shelter of the bridges. If they go late
enough, there is a strange silence which at first gives the impression
that the place is deserted. But it only means that these waifs and
strays, these wretched outcasts, are enjoying the few hours’ reprieve
given even to them by the blessed oblivion of sleep. The moon shines on
them from over the river, but no melodrama can reproduce that scene;
estimates are drawn up of their number, but no statistics can give
an adequate analysis; books are written on their condition, but no
language can describe it. A man who sees this squalid throng for the
first time must be deeply impressed, but it strikes even more anyone
who sees it constantly, and he must be less than human if he can pass
without a poignant pang of shame. But nine out of ten of those who do
pass along will tell you these wretches only have themselves to blame,
and it would be better if they could be stowed away somewhere out of
sight.
This, which is only one of many similar scenes throughout the country,
is not described by way of presenting a dramatic contrast, but as an
integral part of the problem of riches. These nocturnal spectres of the
Embankment and the knots of bedraggled starvelings at the workhouse
gates are the counterpart of the millionaire, the necessary concomitant
to balance and complete the picture. The shameful waste of money one
end produces a shameful waste of human life the other end. One species
of parasite on the social body breeds another species of parasite.
They are as much a part of the train of a rich man as his butlers and
gamekeepers. They are the natural, though perhaps to him invisible,
consequence of his misapplied and squandered thousands. The rich
must take their full share of the responsibility, because the wealth
represented by growing incomes is being increasingly ill-directed and
wasted, and the inevitable outcome is to aggravate the problem of
unemployment, to extend still further miserable conditions of living,
and to nurture a neglected class devoid of moral and physical stamina,
who fall out as incompetents and wastrels in the great struggle for
existence. There are some who complain of any relief from the State
being given to the unemployed poor as only encouraging their continued
existence; but the maintenance of the unemployed rich by those who
are instrumental in producing the national wealth is a far graver
question. The unemployed pauper is a deplorable, but in each case a
solitary and isolated outgrowth of circumstances too strong for him
to resist. Whereas the unemployed capitalist is, on account of his
riches, the centrifugal point of a whole set of dynamic forces of the
gravest consequence. They radiate from him, vibrate far and wide into
the vital concerns of others, and continue to operate harmfully so long
as he attempts to manipulate his riches single-handed. He constitutes,
therefore, a social danger.
This is no place to give a picture of poverty. It has been done often
enough of late years and with faithful accuracy, so that society has no
excuse for ignoring the real state of affairs, though in their stampede
after money they have little time to give it a passing thought. To
reflect about it and speak of it is to display foolish pessimism; to
describe scenes of poverty is to be guilty of sentimentality and bad
taste.
And what are the prevailing sentiments of the fat parasites towards
their lean colleagues? Either pity or contempt. Their whole faith
and all their actions naturally breed contempt for poverty, although
they make some effort to conceal it. It is quite in consonance with a
belief that money makes people refined, generous, dignified, gracious,
subjects of reverence and models for emulation, and that those who have
no resources cannot aspire to these notable qualities. But their pity,
which is the mainspring to their so-called charity and is reserved more
especially for the destitute, is misplaced, and would be better applied
to themselves if only they could see the true position they fill in the
general design of human society.
“Epargnez aux pauvres votre pitié,” says Anatole France, “ils n’en
ont que faire. Pourquoi la pitié et non pas la justice? Vous êtes
en compte avec eux. Réglez le compte. Ce n’est pas une affaire de
sentiment. C’est une affaire économique. Si ce que vous leur donnez
gracieusement est pour prolonger leur pauvreté et votre richesse,
ce don est inique et les larmes que vous y mêlerez ne le rendront
pas équitable.... Vous faites l’aumône pour ne pas restituer. Vous
donnez un peu pour garder beaucoup et vous vous félicitez. Ainsi le
tyran de Samos jeta son anneau à la mer. Mais la Némésis des dieux
ne reçut point cette offrande. Un pêcheur rapporta au tyran son
anneau dans le ventre d’un poisson. Et Polycrate fut dépouillé de
toutes ses richesses.”
Together with the pity there is a lurking misgiving that they do owe
the poor something, so, in blind ignorance and in fear of the full
amount of their debt being demanded of them, they pay out driblets
either with ostentation and self-congratulation or else trying almost
pathetically, yet in vain, to pump into their gifts some of the
sentiments which they conceive should be associated with pure charity.
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 large mass whose incomes are the wrong side
of the limit are all of them in want in various degrees, and their
desire for more money is therefore legitimate and only to be expected.
The want of it they know by experience means misery, the possession of
it they conclude must mean happiness. But they are seldom, if ever,
taught that they can frustrate their own ends by pinning their whole
faith on purely material acquisition; on the contrary, the general
opinion round them leads them to suppose that money should rightly be
the sole aim and object of their ambitions. 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. They
are encouraged to bet and gamble, and to enter absurd competitions
made attractive by the figures of a large sum of money being printed
in bold type at the head of the newspaper column. Their appetite is
whetted, their wants increase, they resolve to try and make more money
by the swiftest means possible. Any ideal of service and any noble
ambitions for achievement fade away, and are discarded as too laborious
and difficult and as requiring too much effort and toil. If they have
actually suffered in the lowest depths, if they have ever felt the
sharp pinch of starvation, the more readily do they accept the doctrine
preached to them so loudly and so persistently that to become rich is
not only the highest, but the most practical and sensible ambition for
a man to set himself.
Tantalising rewards lead a man on to hurry blindly along a path beset
with traps and snares. On the various stages of his journey he loses
some of the finer qualities with which he may have been originally
endowed, but which he finds impediments and encumbrances in his
progress towards the inviting but illusive goal. Here he drops caution,
there self-respect, here consideration for others must be sacrificed;
there, again, scrupulousness and even honesty must be cast aside. 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?
Every step forward is marked by outward signs and changes. The cottage
with its simple adornments is exchanged for the villa with its walnut
suites and art knickknacks; this is followed by a larger detached
villa which requires several servants; the dogcart and groom-gardener
are soon transformed into a motor-car and chauffeur; the male
servant with livery adds the necessary importance; the butler becomes
indispensable for the town residence, with a country seat as well for
shooting and entertainment; and so on, more and more display until the
ultimate goal is reached, with, strange to say, no real satisfaction
or contentment. New friends are made on the road and old friends are
dropped. Each advance signifies a fresh endeavour to live in the same
style as those on the next higher level, with whom it becomes a duty
to associate. Meanwhile the man’s powers of digestion and those of
his family do not increase, nor does their mental equipment. Even his
capacity for enjoyment he finds has its limits and appears to become
further restricted. But he knows he will be judged, even as he has
judged others, by the quantity and quality of his worldly possessions,
and he follows obediently the model and example the rich have set up.
There are some who see the emptiness of this course; there are some who
have the character not to desire to alter the way of living to which
they have been accustomed; but are there any who would condemn the
accumulation of riches and resist the incessant temptations that are
put in their way of making more?
When the poor man, with a bare living wage, fails to keep a decent
home, drinks, or spends his money foolishly, he is ruthlessly
condemned as thriftless and intemperate. But who is setting him the
example of thrift and abstemiousness? Anyhow, not the rich man, to whom
the very words are meaningless. 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.” The general
pressure of the multitude is downward and destructive, not because
there is any inherent depravity in their nature, either individually
or collectively, but because of the narrow confines of the course into
which they are driven and because of the oppression to which they
are subjected. There is no time to stop, pick up, and shield those
who have started on the journey with the hideous handicap of disease
and incompetence created by degraded and disgraceful homes; these
unfortunates must go to the wall, because the potential energy and
pressure of society is not concentrated on the uplifting of the feeble
and the recovery of the outcasts, but on the rush forward with the rich
in the forefront as leaders--a desperate rush towards some seductive
dream of prosperity, some purely selfish satisfaction of animal
appetites and material pleasures. The slow and often discouraging
expedients of relief, restoration, and help are passed over when
success, conquest, and triumph are in sight.
A plutocracy may not ever actually govern the country; a greater
calamity could hardly be conceived, but the rich are, nevertheless,
our leaders, and every rich man is setting up a pattern which, without
his being aware of it, perhaps hundreds of thousands are anxious to
copy. The poor admire and like the rich, and the rich know it. In their
humility, and sometimes envy, they watch them with awe as beings of
another and more glorious world. They read of them in their novelettes;
an atmosphere of splendour and romance surrounds them. They see them in
their brilliant settings, they hear of their great doings, they know
of the magnificence of their establishments, and as the chasm between
them is still unbridged, they are spellbound by the fascination which
only the mysterious and the unknowable can give. They see no connection
whatsoever between the position of the rich and their own, nor do the
rich themselves acknowledge that there is any. The ignorance of the
rich about the poor is profound, but it is nothing to the ignorance of
the poor about the rich. The chasm between the two is never spanned.
Those who live with the rich approve their methods and are blind to
sights they do not want to see. They are heedless and unconscious of
the world of toil and privation, or only apprehend it occasionally when
a beggar or tramp somehow manages to evade being tucked away out of
sight and thrusts himself before their unwilling gaze. Even then they
become accustomed to the sight of these unfortunates, whose existence
they believe is due to the bad management of public authorities. And
those who study the far side of the chasm are so much preoccupied and
aghast at the tangled confusion that confronts them that they only
have time to cast a glance of contempt at the self-indulgence and
luxurious living which seems too distant to be real, too ridiculous
and wicked to be quite true, and they refuse to regard it seriously as
a component part of the various enigmas they are attempting to solve.
Even economists, who are occupied with dissertations and discussions on
production, consumption, and distribution, seldom turn their attention
seriously to the moral impulses that cause, and the fashions and habits
that control, the great accumulations of capital and the appalling
waste which results.
A writer, describing the state of the country in 1851,[1] declared
that the great social evil of the time was “the separation between the
rich and poor, the dis-sympathy of classes, the mutual disgust which
appears to threaten some sort of violent revolution in society at no
very distant period.” But when he goes on to describe what he considers
to be the desirable relationship, he says, “What one wants to see is a
kind and cordial condescension on the one side, and an equally cordial
but still respectful devotedness on the other.” Luckily there are now
many more people than there were at that date who know this to be as
ridiculous as it is impossible. But there are still, unfortunately,
a good many whose ideas this singularly naïve opinion faithfully
represents.
This “dis-sympathy” will amount to something very much more like class
hatred whenever the poor begin to open their eyes. It is a mistake to
suppose that antagonism between classes is produced by the inflammatory
speeches and writings of agitators. The masses herded into our towns
to become miserably poor, unemployed and unemployable, rapidly lose
all self-respect, and are too much stupefied and even brutalised by
their condition to be alive to the injustice of our social system or
to seek to attack those whom they suspect are responsible. They are
dumb, cowed, and easily driven. “Sweat the poor,” says an anonymous
writer in 1892, infuriated by the injustice of things, “sweat the poor
and grind their faces and accumulate wealth--only let us have no cant
about it.”[2] It is the rich as a class who, by their manner of life,
by their refusal to undertake most of the patent responsibilities of
citizenship, by their squandering of the national capital, and by their
determination to suck up from the labour of others sufficient to allow
them to live in idleness themselves, it is they that help to find the
fuel for the flame of class hatred, a flame which one day may burst out
into a mighty conflagration.
A Canadian journalist, writing on his recent visit to this country, has
declared that it was not “the statesmen or pro-consuls or heroes or
scholars” or our great historic institutions that left the most abiding
memories. “Frankly, the thing that impressed me most, the thing that
stands out as the background of every reminiscence, was the bloodless,
mirthless, hopeless face of the common crowd ... the social problem
everywhere is appalling, almost to the point of despair. Wherever we
went it forced itself upon us. The least dangerous aspect of it was
that hollow-eyed procession of the homeless of London kept moving along
the pavements by the police in the early dawn waiting for the opening
of the soup kitchens.”[3] And he speaks in the same way of Sheffield,
Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.
The last hundred years will be memorable as an era of almost miraculous
advance in all that concerns material progress. And yet we have to
admit, as the Report of the Poor Law Commission shows, that so far
as pauperism and destitution are concerned our attempts at cure and
prevention have completely failed. Here again we find the same _fons
et origo malorum_. Every step forward in methods of production, in
new inventions and improved machinery, is a tangible material gain
for some one. But in the case of the pauper, be he veteran, invalid,
incompetent, or child, there is nothing that can be transformed into
immediate profit. There is no _money_ in it. Therefore it has been
impossible to rouse the public sympathy and interest. Fortunately many
are now beginning to see that the prevention of neglect and waste in
human life means wealth to the nation that cannot be estimated in sums
of money.
The problem of social reorganisation is one of the greatest complexity.
Drink and slum dwellings doubtless aggravate the evil and make bad
worse. The land and our system of industrial organisation are the
regulating forces that drive our population into these hideous social
conditions. But it is time we traced back these forces to their source
and examined their origin.
What is it that induces a great people to arrange their society on
this uneconomic, wasteful, and life-destroying model? What common
impulses inspire the class that is in authority and command to support
and maintain such a system? Put on one side tyranny, rapacity, greed,
and covetousness, which are vices that no one wants to defend. What is
at the back of this thirst for huge profits and high dividends, this
capture of the land, this amassing of great possessions, this passion
for pleasure, this love of power and patronage, this respect for
wealth, this subservience to riches?
Lurking in the spring head, far away from the broad river, we
shall find the poison that is polluting the waters--our devouring,
indestructible, overpowering belief in money.