From the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard
Last month the richest man in England,
Sir John Ellerman, died. He was reputed to be worth about £30 million at the time of his death, and a few years ago he owned properties estimated at £55 million. His income was upwards of £1 million a year, about £20,000 a week, equal to the wages of eight or nine thousand workers.
Those who profess to believe that capitalism distributes rewards, according to ability, diligence, thrift and other so-called virtues, hastened to point out what a splendid example Sir John Ellerman set to all of us. Was he not abstemious, they said, spending only a small part of his income ? That is true. He was in the habit of spending on his own personal needs a mere 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. of the sums coming to him day by day from his investments, but that 5 per cent. meant £50,000 a year—a mere trifle of £1,000 a week.
It was inevitable that the slush-writers of the daily Press would tell us of a romantic rise from poverty to fabulous wealth; of how their hero started with nothing. He did indeed—if we can describe as “nothing” a bagatelle of £20,000 or so, which he inherited from his maternal grandfather.
The frenzied lunacy of modern capitalism can be illustrated in certain of its aspects from the life of Sir John Ellerman. We may believe that a sure £1,000 a week could provide a very pleasant existence, although in this case it included such eccentricities as frequent pleasure cruises on his own liners, Sir John Ellerman being the only occupant, travelling in magnificent solitude on a boat equipped to carry 250 or 350 passengers. Perhaps the journalistic apologists for capitalism will try their hand at discovering some ethical or economic justification for this appalling wastefulness when there are thousands of over-worked and undernourished working men and women, to whom such a cruise, which they cannot afford, might mean restored health and happiness.
Yet, in spite of his wealth, those who knew him said that he had no interest in life outside financial operations and the control of his wealth— “his work was his hobby and his hobby was his work."
We defy the capitalist economists and the capitalist Press to give a reasoned defence of a system which gives to one self-centred individual, obsessed with the single pleasure of exercising his financial skill, complete control over the means of life of tens of thousands of men and women. He controlled nearly 300 ships. He owned £3 million of house property. In Earl’s Court alone he recently sold an estate of 1,150 houses and nearly 200 blocks of flats. Yet he used only one house himself. He was ground landlord of a large part of Oxford Street. At one time he had a large interest in The Times and was proprietor of The Financial Times and several other papers. He took no interest in the journalistic side, but regarded them simply as means of piling up money. He had extensive brewing interests. At one period he had no less a sum than £10 million on deposit with London banks. In the last twelve months he made two separate loans of about £1 million to public companies.
On an occasion like this, the newspaper writers boast about the stupendous wealth of the multi-millionaires as if it belonged to them. Yet this will not prevent them in a few weeks' time from asserting that “we are all capitalists now," that “wealth is becoming more and more equally divided," that companies are owned by small shareholders only, and so on,
ad nauseam. By coincidence the man who is particularly notorious for keeping these false notions in circulation by his speeches and letters to the Press (
Mr. Walter Runciman) is himself interested in shipping and cannot be unaware of the great fortunes made by Sir John Ellerman and others in that industry.
The reality of the contrast between the riches of the few and the poverty of the many was brought out in an advertisement issued last year by the Confederation Life Association as part of a campaign for popularising insurance. The Association claimed that carefully compiled statistics show that out of an average group of 100 men aged 25, 58 will be alive at 65. Of these 58, one will be wealthy, two fairly well off, five able to live on their savings, and 50 without enough to support them.
That is one side of a picture, the other side of which is the £30 million fortune of Sir John Ellerman.
In passing, it is worth while pointing out once more the absurdity of the assertion by
Major Douglas, that all property belongs to the bankers. Sir John Ellerman was not a banker. The richest living man in England is the Methodist,
Mr. Joseph Rank, who is also not a banker but has vast interests in flour milling. Other recent big fortunes disclosed at death have been Sir David Yule, £25 million—Anglo-Indian merchant; the Earl of Iveagh, £11 million—head of Guinness brewery; Sir George Wills, £10 million—tobacco; and Sir Joseph Robinson, £10 million—diamond magnate.
Facts, however, appear to matter little to the blind defenders of capitalism, or to the one-eyed critics of certain features of capitalism who belong to the Douglas school.
Edgar Hardcastle
