Is Making Millions Really Worth While?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 508, 10 November 1928, Page 16

Is Making Millions Really Worth While?

Sir Joynton Smith Gives His Views

Sir James Joynton Smith , the Australian 'millionaire and newspaper owner, who has been revisiting the humble shop in the East End from iehich he ran away to find fortune in the Antipodes. S the making of a big fortune really worth rPM while? Is the millionIkkzl aire fundamentally hapmKjV pier than the young man With hardly a pound to bless himself with? Can wealth, and the gaining of wealth, become a burden? I am often asked these questions (writes Sir Joynton Smith, Australian newspaper magnate, in the “Daily Chronicle”). They are a problem which excites the curiosity of most people, whether they be rich or poor. Here is a man, once a poor lad, who has made a fortune; is he really happy with it? Was the fight worth while? In the fundamental things, I doubt if one is happier, for the fundamental happinesses are not those which re-

quire great wealth for their enjoyment. The enjoyment of health, education and nature, and the country and kindred simple things, for example—one does not need to be rich to enter into these. I know one thing. I would willingly forgo this wonderful wealth to be just 25 again. At 25 I was only beginning, although at 28 I had made £IO,OOO, and foolishly .wasted it on a racing system of my own in England. You Cannot Stand Still Wealth can be a burden, once it becomes an obsession, as invariably it does. You must always go on and on, making more, once you have started. It is not sufficient to make, say, £50,000 out of a business and then say: “That will do.” You cannot stand still. When you have made a good thing out of one business you are impatient to start with the next. Continually, you must fight, for once you are rich your position is being continually assailed. You become obsessed in the fight for its own sake. You want to take up ventures in which others have failed, just to show what you can make of them, adopting dif-

ferent tactics. The others In the fight are your opponents, but if you are a fighter you exult in opponents. One thought has always been in the forefront of my mind: What is the use of living if all your opponents are dead?

And in following this obsession, remember, you inevitably forgo many of the simpler happinesses which might be yours; there is no other way of winning through, and keeping there. A man w T ith a pound in his pocket can sleep sound; a man with £IOO in his belt might sleep sound; but a man with thousands or millions finds it more difficult. He must for ever be up and doing, lest in the end he fail. Once he is on the road to success he does not want to fail; he wants to go on to greater triumphs. He simply must go on. Some fail, of course. Disraeli was consumed always with an overbearing ambition —and he succeeded. On the other hand, one knows of politicians who might have been brilliant men of the very first rank, but they became absorbed by the fleshpots; maybe they took a seat in the Lords and just settled comfortably down. Stopping to Enjoy Life Some people may think they were the wiser, after all, in stopping to enjoy life while they were still young enough to do so. Some people may think the millionaire, who makes work and wealth such an obsession that it dominates him to the exclusion of most other things, the real failure, since for him the means have obscured the end. Ido not know. It is for each man to say. It depends so much on individual temperament. There is no hard-and-fast principle which can be applied. All I know is, once the urge to be successful takes hold of you it becomes an irresistible game which you feel you must go on playing. Here I am, at the end of it all, back in my native London, enjoying life in my way. But I know very well I could never settle here. Even now I am all agog to get back to Australia and in harness again, to be at grips with work once more, to resume the old fight, to go on achieving success where others have encountered failure. Whether it makes one happier in the end or not does not really matter. As I have said, I doubt if it does. But the fight is worth while for its own sake —especially if you can spice it with a sense of humour, and get fun out of it, and at the samj time feel you are creating employment, and by that way benefiting others. In conclusion, my greatest pleasure is to blaze a new trail and create employment where previously it didn’t exist.