STRAIGHT TALK

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3238, 4 December 1930, Page 5

STRAIGHT TALK

TO BRITAIN’S RICH MEN. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, makes the gift of Mr. Harkness the starting-off point for a straight talk to Britain’s rich men. “An official return issue'd last year showed that between 500 and 600 persons in Britain possessed property worth over £1,000,000,” says Mr. Fyfe. “It showed that 147 persons had incomes of over £IOOO a week; that 97 millionaires drew between £75,000 and £IOO,OOO a year; that 299 men or women scraped along on incomes of between £50,000 and £75,000. “Thus 543 people received £SOO a week or more—many of them a great deal more; while a good many hundreds of others got over £250, and some thousands had from £IO,OOO to £20,000 a year, which works out at nearly £3O to £6O a day. “The other day a London hospital was in urgent need of £30,000. It could not find any rich English person willing to give that sum. It got it from Mr. Samuel Insull, of Chicago.

“Now I know from what I have been told in Chicago that Mr. Insull does an enormous amount of giving at home. How can we keep our selfrespect if we go cadging to an American benefactor to support an English charitable institution?

“When the Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon was burned, who found the bulk of the money to build another in its place? The rich people of England? No, the rich people of America.

“Of late many have given enormous amounts for various useful purposes with the idea of returning to the public some of the vast sums they have made out of it. And we have such men among us, too, but there are very few of them. “There was Mr. Bernhard Baron; there was Mr. Thomas Ferens, of Hull; some of the tobacco Wills’ have behaved liberally to Bristol; Lord Rothermore has given much away. “And, as the official return showed, 543 people domiciled in Britain have got over the million mark.

“What is it our rich men lack? Are they miserly? Are they incurably selfish? Are they insensitive to the necessities of any who are beyond their own family circle? No, I do not think so. I think they are suffering from weakness of imagination. But this is not the chief cause of what seems the niggardliness of *the English rich. The chief cause lies in their dullness of apprehension. They do not realise, as American millionaires do, the satisfaction of giving money away.”