THE MONEY KINGS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14111, 3 May 1920, Page 3

THE MONEY KINGS.

SECRETS OF THE SUPER-RICH, NEW STANDARD OF WEALTH. A generation ago to be a. millionaire was to Lave reached the goal (writes Mr F. A. McKenzie in a recent article). To-day the man; who is only a millionaire must rank in the race for wealth among those who “also ran.’' Even an income of a million pounds a year does not place one among the supremely rich men of the world. There are about a dozen men whose annual incomes are from live to ten millions. A new standard has been reached since the war, a standard which would have seemed impossible to our fathers.

In the control of the world’s finance the man -with SO million'pounds behind him stands to-day in much the same place that the man with a million stood 20 years ago. What kind of men are these supermillionaires? How have they made their wealth? How do they use it? An American publicist recently analysed the conditions of the 50 great ost industrial kings in the United States. He found that 24 were born poor; 17 were born in moderate circumstances; and only 9 w'ere born rich. Only 4 of them were under 50 years of age. Henry Ford started life as a mechanic. Charlie Schwab, the steel king was a grocery boy. Leverhulme was the son of a small grocer. ..fames B. Duke, the tobacco king, began by peddling tobacco. Frank A. Vanderlip, until recently president of the greatest bank in America, was first a mechanic and then a shorthand writer. .Tohn D. Rockfeller was a clerk.

Not so long ago it was the fashion to hold up the now millionaire to scorn. The name of Rockfeller was the cockshy for every Hyde Park orator. These emperors of commerce are as much a necessity of our present- system as are their thousand-a-ycar submanagers of departments or their £l- - mechanics. Wealth, when it reaches their stupendous figure, has long since ceased to add to personal enjoyment-. The only thing it does supply is a sense of greater power.

A few clays ago I was in a town in Yorkshire. It was years since T had last- visited it. I found the old hotel transformed and made splendid in what we used to dub the “IfamburgAmevican Line’'’ style of interior decoration. On Sunday evening the hotel lounge was full of little groups. .Not one of the men was smoking less than a. half - crown cigar, and nearly all had m front of them bottles of champagne. These were the people who had newly made small riches because of the war. Their annual income of £IOO or £2OO had jumped to £IOOO or £2OOO, or to several thousands, and they were having their fling. But you will not find vour super-millionaire drinking champagne. The luxuries associated with wealth have little charm for him. -The fact that he can have them if he wants them as often as he pleases robs them of their glamour. If he were not a man who had sufficient self-discipliiu and control to avoid more squandering, he would never have reached the -place where lie is. The last time I had lunch with, a man in the lnulti-millioii-pouiid class the meal consisted -of Irish stew, with cheese to follow, and, if I remember aright, the drink was a light beer. This particular man of affairs had work to do in the a'fternodn, and lie gave me the credit to assume that I had work to do also. _ He would no more have thought of clogging ah is brain and mine with fancy *foods. and fancy drinks than .he would of prgposigg an adjournment to an opium den. .Another of the super-rich confessed to .me on one occasion a few years ago that the most a man could spend easily on himself and his family, apart from costly investments such as buying a home or buying jewels, was £IO,OOO a year. Ho would probably double or treble that figure to-day. “Beyond £10,000,” he said, “you have, if you want to get value for your money, to study your expenditure more carefully than you do your making money until it ceases to bo worth while*. With £IO,OOO a year a rich man can buy anything he wants.” How did they make tlicir money? Usually in one of a few ways. They either acquired the control of new natural resources, discovered methods of economy on production, or became foie most in producing some article In universal demand.