MILLIONAIRE WITH A. MISSION

Evening Star, Issue 15478, 28 April 1914, Page 8

MILLIONAIRE WITH A. MISSION

SOCIETY LEADER WHO TRIED TO BANISH MISERY. “My future mission is to tiy to abolish crime, solve the problem of poverty, and banish misery.” Such was the utopian ■ enterprise undertaken many years ago by IMr Frederick Townsend Martin, the i American millionaire, who recently died from apoplexy at a London hotel. That ho banished misery from hundreds of houses is unquestioned; but despite his strenuous gospel and his princely generosity, the problems of poverty and crime axe as acute to-day as ever. Mr Townsend Martin, who was an uncle of the Countess of Craven, was a younger brother of the late Mr Bradley Martin, and was in his 661h year. Like his brother, h© was reputed to be a millionaire, and his wealth was drawn from great New York banking business. He was not merely rich, but fashionable, and was a very prominent member of that exclusive New York group known as the “ Four Hundred.” Sociability was his dominant characteristic. Ho loved to meet and gather impressions from his fellow-men, and he made it hia business to knew as many as possible. His enormous circle of friends and acquaintances was by no means confined to the United States. Every summer he visited Europe, and he was equally at home in London, Paris, and Rome. In London he was particularly well known, and enjoyed membership of several clubs of the highest standing. He had all the native American’s frank interest in Royalty, and had been presented to several European sovereigns. He may be said to have collected acquaintances with the enthusiasm and liberality with which some other Americans of immense wealth collect works of art. Some years ago he startled American society by proclaiming his devotion to a gospel of social reform, and fastened upon the phrase “ the idle rich ” as a designation of a class with which he was familiar. At a national business congress in Chicago in 1911 he said ;

I am tired of puzzling my brains to devise means of entertaining the idle rich, and I shall count myself supremely happy to be known as the poor man’s friend. Mr Martin followed up this announcement by publishing his book, ‘ The Passing of the Idle Rich,’ in which he held up the leisured self-indulgent to merciless ridicule. Of the craze for money and ostentatious ways of spending it, freak banquets, and such like follies and excesses he quoted many humiliating instances. Ho told of a rich American who owned a pet monkey which was waited upon by 12 servants. It had its own valet, clothes, dining table, and solid ivory bed; it ate its meals off solid silver plates; and cost its mistress £2,000 to £6,000 a year. Another story was of a London society woman who told him she dreamed of gold. “ I want to have a room at the 'top of my house filled with golden sovereigns," slie said. “ I would like to go into that room night after night, when everyone else is asleep, and bury myself in yellow sovereigns up to the neck, and play with them, toss them about to hear the jingling music of the thing I love the best.” He gave up much of his own time to visiting the slum quarters of New York and, the East End of London, and he had ideas, which he expressed in a play, for bridging the gulf between rich and poor. Adopting the Boy Scouts’ motto, “Do one good turn a day,’’ he carried out this rule of conduct literally and practised romantic generosities among the poor. From Berkeley's Hotel he would make excursions by taxicab into Whitechapel, where humble folk figured in his vast visiting list. His kindnesses were of that immediate and practical kind which the necessitous poor most appreciate, and which occur more often in the pages of fiction than in actual life. The redemption of sorely-needed household goods from tie pawnshop and their restoration to the poverty-stricken owner’s home was typical of Mr Martin’s “good turns.” Elsewhere he carried on ardently his campaign against moneygrubbing and idleness. He wrote books and delivered lectures on his favorite theme. Two years ago he came up from Coo mho Abbey, where he was staying with Lady Craven, and lectured to members of the Independent Labor party at an East End club. Philanthropy, both organised and individualistic, found an exponent in Mr Martin. He was inundated with begging letters, to which he gave personal attention, and in New York he often arranged musical entertainments in the smart world for the financial benefit of charities. In an interview last year Mr Martin summarised his beliefs and I mission thus:

My whole life is devoted to whipping the bandage from the eyes of the rich and pleasure-seeking people with whom I have been associated for so many years, not because I hold these views from the point of view of self-righteousness, but because I know, after years of experience, it does not, matter who the person is, he can only be happy provided he has an occupation for his talents and energy Coming, as I have, from France so recently, I appreciate that the French people are perhaps the happiest in the world, because none are so industrious as they, and they are reaping their reward in a veritable deluge of prosperity. We can always judge a unit by a great mass, so if a great nation finds sources of wealth, so can an individual. Neither wealth nor high birth alone have thevalue of former times. It is the man who acts and creates; he is the leader of modem times.