TRAGEDY OF WEALTH

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 March 1927, Page 11

TRAGEDY OF WEALTH

MILLIONS TO BURN

J?- T is all very well to sigh for the millionaire’s bank balance; but, when some people get it, they may spend the rest

of their life sighing for a good, square meal. “I cannot estimate my fortune,” said John D. Rockefeller. “I am told it is over £50,000,000, but I would cheerfully give it up if only I could enjoy a good meal.” The Oil King, who has lived to the age of eighty-five, has all his life been the victim of acute indigestion, and has had to be satisfied with a meagre diet of biscuits and milk. Rising very early in the morning, Rockefeller has a drink of buttermilk as a beginning of his dreary day.

The temptation of crisp bacon and fried eggs, luxuries that any working man can command, has to be put aside, and, worth over fifty millions, John D. Rockefeller goes hungry from dawn to night, taking his alloted exercise to preserve the health he has, and drinking his buttermilk and eating his biscuits sparely, less fortunate, in spite of his immense fortune, than the servants who wait on his lightest wish. There are times when he longs for one good, square meal of beef and cabbage and potatoes, bttt his appetite has to be restrained, and he goes hungry on his biseuits and milk. The greatest stomach specialists have attempted to mire him, but in vain

The world’s richest man, Henry Ford, has said good-bye to real luxury for many years, and lives probably more simply than any ordinary workman in his factory. Doctors watch him to ensure that he carries out the rigid rules of dietary and exercise on which his health depends, and the lean, spare little man, who represents more wealth than any other living person, gets little or nothing out of it himself—except the satisfaction of amassing yet more money with each new enterprise.

Owner of the world’s finest art collection, J. Pierpont Morgan, the great financier, lives as rigid and simple a life as any city clerk. After a very plain breakfast he leaves home to arrive at his office at ten o’clock punctually, has a lunch at. which the ordinary city man would

BUT CANNOT EAT A SQUARE MEAL

turn up his nose, and sticks to his work till half-past five in the evening. His father, J. Pierpont Morgan, senior, was for years compelled to abstain from all ordinary foods, and live on a specially prescribed diQ,t, on account of intestinal disease. A hard and conscientious worker, ho lived a life of almost unintermittent pain, afraid to eat the simplest food, and knowing that there was no prospect of improvement in his health for the rest of his life.

The appalling tragedy of having everything that money can buy at his command, and being unable to enjoy the simplest pleasures, was this man’s fate. It was the old legend of Tantalus, famishing with thirst though plunged in-water to his neck, over again. His late years were a veritable martyrdom, and death when it came to him must have appeared as a welcome friend.

The “Millionaire Hermit of the Sea,” Edward W. Scripps, built himself a steam yacht at a cost of nearly four million dollars, his object being to isolate himself from all sound. In his “workshop,” a heavily padded room on the yacht, he boasted that not a sound could penetrate. All sound was shut' out from his ears by artificial means.

After he had handed over his great newspaper business to his son, he travelled round the world seeking peace, unable to bear the ordinary noises of daily life. Twice his magnificent yacht circumnavigated the entire globe, and in the end, when he died at sea off the coast of Africa, his body was, in accordance with his wishes, lowered to the great silence of the ocean depths.

“I have discovered during my long life that piles of money do not give happiness,” wrote Gniseppe Boggiani, an eccentric Italian millionaire, who made a large fortune in America, became naturalised there, and finally went to end his days on the shores of the beautiful Lake Como, where he hanged himself on a tree. The cause of the tragedy was never discovered, but it was rumoured that Boggiani, who had never married, came to Como to live near the girl he had loved all his life, and who had married another man.