GREAT RICHES

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 22

GREAT RICHES

WHAT ARE THEY WORTH ? It sounds a foolish question, doesn’t it? Ninety-nine out of every hundred people would reply: “ Just give me the chance,” writes S. T. Felstead in * Tit Bits,’ Sir John Ellerman, whose will, recently proved, showed that he left the huge sum of £36,684,000, with a likely addition of £4,000,000 from interests in Canada and the U.S.A., was probably the richest man we have ever known in Britain. For a short period 1 following the 1914-18 war, when ships ' were fetching fantastic prices, he was computed to be worth £130,000,000. A reniarkable character Ellerman. Occasionally I had to seek a newspaper interview, with him at his Moorgate offices, I saw a sallow-faced, blackbearded man, with expressionless eyes typical of his enigmatical nature. He was never discourteous—one of the factors of. his success in life—but ■ on the other hand, you couldn’t waste his time. It was: “Yes, what can Ido for you?” a patient hearing, a brief reply, a curt good morning, and not a ghost of a smile. One might describe him as a robot money-getter; outside his office he had but few interests in life. He gave you the feeling that he was a man of another world. The immense fortune he left was founded largely out of the Leyland Steamship Line; one by one he ousted his competitors, bought out other lines, and, despite strong at- . tacks in the London financial Press, went on his way flourishing until Pierpont Morgan bought him out at a profit of a million pounds. TRAIL OF TRAGEDY. Morgan’s demanded that Ellerman should thereafter leave the Atlantic shipping trade alone. He did, but he used his million to exploit the Mediteranean and Eastern trade, the result of which is seen to-day in the City and Bucknall Lines, which still run under his flag. A contented man? I suppose so, if one reckons that his entire life was devoted to getting rich. • But, a lonely existence, and hardly one that could be envied. I have known a good many millionaires; some of them had laboriously accumulated their wealth, stinting, saving, practising petty meannesses that would make a comparative pauper blush for sheer shame. Others were what might be termed the “ Get-rich-quick Wallingford ” type, eager and willing to take a chance. Failure to many of them meant death or prison. They had glamour; in the majority they were good sportsmen, and spent their gains as fast as they matured I think of the South African millionaires and their gold mines, all they strove for, and the wars we fought on their behalf. Outstanding of all the Rand millionaires was th« little Whitechapel Jew, Barney Barnato. Born and bred in an atmosphere calculated to sharpen the wits of anyone with an urge to get money, he first found an outlet in the great diamond rush to Kimberley in the ’seventies. What happiness did all this wealth bring him? One of his old-time friends, happening to meet him in the city 10 years afterwards, asked, more out of curiosity than real interest: “ Barney, how much are you worth?” “ About 20 millions.” said the little man with the sharp, bird-liko eyes. “ And what’s the idea of going on like this?” Barnato was obviously in n poor state of health, nervy, suspicious, dyspeptic.,

“ I’ll tell you,” he replied. “ You see that photograph there ” —they were in his private office. “ When I’m dead and gone I want my boys to say: ‘ That was a clever little fellow.’.” Two or three years later he was dead, leaving behind a business that was worth over £25,000,000) What goipd did it do him, except gratify an ambition? Overwhelmed by ceaselessly _ watching the machinations of enemies in London and Johannesburg, he threw himself from the deck of a steamer. His cousin, Woolf Joel, was shot dead in the Johannesburg office the year afterwards, killed by a blackmailer on the strength of a flimsy story _ that Barney Barnato had authorised him to assassinate President. Kruger for the sum of £50,000. He wanted hushmoney, otherwise he was going to tell everything. And what of Solly Joel, another cousin, who died only a few years ago? An unhappy man towards the end of his days. I saw a good deal of him during that hectic period when the late James White was coining millions for other people; he thought he had found in the former Rochdale_ bricklayer a money-spinner' without rival. A case of mutual deception. White made money for his new-found friend, then lost it, to,the tune of £3,000,000. Solly Joel, about 1921, must have been worth at least £15,000,000 —on paper, which isn’t quite the same thing as gold. Then he dropped a huge slice in the fall of the diamond market until finally, when he died, there were not enough liquid assets to pay legacies under his will. But his luck had not forgotten him. Gold doubled its price; diamonds, thanks to the precautions he and his associates had adopted, gradually came back. His descendants have no cause to worry; old Father Time, as well as Dame fortune, is on their side. But all the thanks are due to Barney Barnato. A DIFFERENT RACE. Millionaires are naturally a race apart. The very qualities that make vast sums of money keep them segregated from their beings. Acquisitiveness breeds solitude; people don’t like you if all your thoughts and actions are devoted to getting the better of mankind. Poor old John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Trust, a man once execrated from one end of America to the other, made so much money that he was afraid to talk to anyone; they might want something. He and his family have amassed' £500,000,000, and given the bulk of it back to the people from whom it came. There was nothing else to do with it. The Methuselah-like John D. is still alive, 97 years of age, with a retinue of doctors to keep burning the faint spark of life that burns within his attenuated frame. They let him play with money, the only toy that has ever appealed to him. Sir David Yule, Scottish-born AngloIndian, died with £15,000,000 as his monument. He slaved the best years of his life in India’s torrid zone. He controlled the world’s jute markets and much of the .shipping that operated in the Far East. Our Viceroys feared him; since the palmy days of John Company and Warren Hastings there was never a man so powerful. ' Yule was cleverer than Hastings: he religiously avoided politics, and only once ventured into realms beyond his knowledge. That was when the late Marquess of Reading, then Viceroy of India, succeeded in interesting him in a group of London _ newspapers. A year or so was sufficient to convince him that there was no money in the business; political power he disdained. So he dropped out. It used to bo said that in. Calcutta he would walk about with only a few annas in his pocket, clad in a suit of clothes calculated to make any beggar

give him up as hopeless. He spent nothing on himself, just went on accumulating until such time as he had worn out the machine. Many huge fortunes have come out of Africa. That dour old man Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson was called to his fatherk with £10,000,000 to tell the world he was no fool. But not a happy man either. _ South African people didn’t like him at all; he couldn’t emulate Rhodes and Beit, who were content to return much of the wealth they had made in the country. The “ Old Buccaneer,” as they called him, got com feet during the Great War and sold out all his possessions; if he had hung on, his family, two daughters and a son, would have been worth untold millions to-day. He was 80, of course, and one wonders, when he knew the Reaper was nigh, whether he accounted his life well spent. _ Most of his money came to him by cultivating the Boors ; he and Cecil Rhodes cordially disliked. each other, and Rhodes vainly _ pleaded with him time and time again for his support. Little did he imagine that the day would arrive, years afterwards, when this Afrikander-attitude of his would react upon him as it did when it became known that he was about to be created a peer. The storm of indignation that arose must have convinced him then, if not before, that he who is proud of riches is a fool.