Mark Twain, who was another of Carnegie’s ‘dear friends’, wrote this of him: ‘He is himself his one darling subject, the only subject . . . he seems stupendously interested in.’ It was not his capitalist achievements that he bragged about, but the famous people who had paid him compliments. ‘He talks forever and ever and ever and untiringly of the attentions which have been shown him.’ He needed to tell people how important other people believed him to be. He would escort his visitors from room to room, pointing out mementoes, autographed books and photographs, ‘buzzing over each like a happy hummingbird, for each represented a compliment to Mr Carnegie’. His letters, which he wrote to vast numbers of famous people (from whom he received obsequious replies), were sprinkled with news that this or that great man had ‘sent for him’. ‘If you let Carnegie tell it, he never seeks the great – the great always seek him.’ Mark Twain’s conclusion was that Carnegie was incapable of self-knowledge: ‘He thinks he is a rude, bluff, independent spirit, who writes his mind and thinks his mind with an almost extravagant Fourth of July independence, whereas he is really the counterpart of the rest of the human race in that he does not boldly speak his mind except when there isn’t any danger in it. He thinks he is a scorner of kings and emperors and dukes, whereas he is like the rest of the human race, a slight attention from one of these can make him drunk for a week and keep his happy tongue wagging for seven years.’
He was once briefly visited at his grand Scottish estate by King Edward VII: ‘Mr Carnegie cannot leave the King’s visit alone; he has told me about it at least four times, in detail; he certainly knew that it was the second, third or fourth time, for he has an excellent memory . . . He has likable qualities, and I like him, but I don’t believe I can stand the King Edward visit again.’
There is nothing unusual about this. The powerful have very often been as hungry as the poor, starved of appreciation, recognition, applause or admiration of a convincing kind, causing as much distress as the shortage of money. The hunger for love, in many varieties, has not been satisfied by the modern synthetic substitute – ‘Love yourself’ – on which some rely to generate self-confidence, though it can also produce hallucinations of grandeur and sad self-deception, and become a sort of mental masturbation. The stories of Haimabati Sen and Andrew Carnegie end up agreeing that, even though they may have enjoyed very different degrees of material comfort, what hurt them most, and what they missed above all else, was the lack of emotional sustenance. All the calculations about who is rich and who is poor are incomplete; they do not go far enough; they do not weigh the quality of the personal relationships that determine the effect of wealth and poverty. The Industrial Revolution made that more difficult to see, by changing the meaning of the word ‘comfort’, which used to signify personal support, on the moral level, until it was simplified into a physical sensation that could be acquired by the purchase of material goods. The change can be dated almost precisely: the French imported the English word, in its new meaning, in 1815.
The stultifying effects of physical deprivation, of the lack of the basic needs for survival, food and shelter, are all too real, and are not diminished by such consolations. But one of the reasons why poverty has been regarded as a problem that can be palliated by alms or economic growth is that hunger for food has been isolated from these other kinds of hunger. If it were not so, this wider notion of poverty would be recognised as a suffering that afflicts the vast majority. The skills that people on low incomes use to cope with shortage by finding value in every scrap of natural resource and by exchanging generosity have never had a price put on them, or been included in any national accounts. Can one imagine a new kind of accountancy that distinguishes between wealth that is superficial and wealth that is profound, that goes beyond self-satisfaction?
Carnegie did not find a satisfying way of responding to the resentment of those who have never been rich. In a work entitled Occupational Pursuits of Certain Wealthy Persons, Han Shu wrote in A.D. 25 complaining that wealth was seldom won by wholly admirable means, saying of one magnate: ‘What others gave away, he grasped. What they undertook, he abandoned. As he earned, he saved . . . disregarding the law . . . monopolising mineral resources.’ Of a leading businesswoman, Ching, widow of Pa (246–210 B.C.), who inherited the monopoly of China’s mercury ore, he wrote, ‘She used much of her wealth to protect herself, so that people did not dare turn against her’, and so that the emperor treated her ‘with ceremonies equal to those of the ruler’. Han Shu concludes: ‘Was this not because of their wealth?’ Carnegie’s privileges and methods aroused as much scorn as admiration.
To be financially rich has always been just a beginning, a challenge to find ways of spending money. Carnegie had great difficulty in deciding whom to give his money to; the only one of his benefactions he thought of himself, he confessed, was his Hero prize. His donations were distributed by managers in a business-like, impersonal way; he hardly ever responded to the avalanche of begging letters he received, so his wealth did not draw him any closer to the rest of humanity. Poor Haimabati Sen, with her much more modest resources, was more generous than he.
So instead of banging my head against the same brick wall, as so many experts have done and are still doing, trying to make the poor richer, with alas very limited success, instead of waiting I do not know how many centuries for wealth to be distributed more widely or more fairly, or loaned out in little doses, without wanting to discourage those who persist in their generous quest, I prefer to explore in a different direction. How to relieve the hunger that one is not properly appreciated, and how to appreciate others, uncongenial though they may seem? How to escape the misconceptions that both the possession and the lack of money create? Every time Haimabati Sen was on the brink of despair, she reassured herself that God was looking after her, however grim her suffering – as innumerable rich and poor alike have done – but she still yearned for more human understanding and more human kindness. The dream of becoming very rich appeals to those who have never witnessed the traumas of very rich people. The dream of becoming middle class makes sense for those desperate to escape from the suffering that penury brings, but being middle class is a long way from paradise. So what else is there to aim for?
A different attitude to wealth was shown by the Indian industrialist G. D. Birla (1884–1983), who established the largest private foundation in India, on the basis of his huge interests in jute, sugar, paper, cars, banking, cement, chemicals and textiles. Birla’s enemies accused him of being interested only in personal enrichment, whose benefactions to religion and education were made to avoid taxes. But in his autobiography, In the Shadow of the Mahatma, Birla explained why despite believing in large-scale industrialisation – whereas Gandhi was the apostle of the small-scale village artisan – he became the principal financial backer of Gandhi’s campaign for national independence. It was not just because he had been humiliated by the British and their ‘racial arrogance’, which meant that ‘I was not allowed to use the lift to go up their offices, nor their benches when waiting to see them . . . I smarted under these insults.’ He was fascinated by Gandhi’s life of simplicity: ‘a saintly person who had renounced all comforts. Though I did not agree with him on many problems, I never refused to obey his wishes. He not only tolerated my independence but loved me all the more for it, as a father would his child. Our attachment became one in the nature of a family attachment, of a father for a son.’ Though Birla did not scorn luxury himself, he preached Gandhi’s doctrines to his children. ‘All pleasures should be shunned. Spend the bare minimum on yourself. Those who eat food only for the taste die prematurely. Take food as you would medicine.’
The basic difference between the Indian and the American tycoon was Birla’s open acknowledgement of the role that friendship and family played in business life. He highlighted ‘the importance of knowing people, the value of personal contact’. Whereas Carnegie was desperate to win either the approval or the obedience of others, Birla was concerned with
the emotional bond with his fellow humans. ‘In India, we are emotional,’ he wrote. ‘We respond to friendship; we are moved by love and sympathy, we feel pity. We are also capable of strong hatreds but these are generally against aggregates and systems, and if they are against individuals, they are as often as not against those whom we have not met or seen . . . Contact reveals truths. The good we discover in others far outweighs the evil.’ So what appealed to him in Gandhi was his ‘sincerity in the search for truth’. That search was what mattered most. Gandhi summed up his own life as a series of ‘Experiments with Truth’. Birla wrote: ‘Often I could not follow his reasoning . . . but always there was the belief that he must somehow be right in a sense that I could not grasp. There was nothing I could refuse him. But he was never a dictator and was essentially humble. He took criticism without the slightest anger.’
Birla is no more an ideal model for MBA students than Carnegie. He was no less ruthless in business, and no more successful in his private life, which was darkened by a discordant family. But the financial wizardry of both men makes it clear that there is an alternative to the profit and loss accounts that hold the business world together. The criteria of business success are too narrow so long as they ignore the sacrifices in the quality of life that it often entails. Accountants were invented (not all that long ago, in the middle of the nineteenth century) to guard the public against dishonesty and corruption in business, but they have become so intertwined with business, and often placed at the helm of business to make decisions on essentially financial grounds, that the hope that they might evolve to have a status comparable to an independent judiciary has not been fulfilled. To ignore what cannot be measured in precise numbers is like counting the stems in a bouquet of flowers while ignoring the indescribable perfume and beauty of each bud.
A currency that would be adequate to assess the quality of a life would resemble honey rather than money. Honey has long symbolised what makes life sweet, which is what humans value most of all, more than money. In virtually every mythology, honey is the food of the gods, the emblem of love, the source of energy, the bactericide magic in which pharaohs were embalmed so that they would triumph over death. Only very recently has it divulged the immemorial secret of its healing power, which is the protein that each bee places in it from its own immune system. Honey is impossible to sum up in a formula, to fabricate or forge; it is neither animal nor vegetable, it contains over 200 different ingredients and comes in innumerable varieties.
What people do with their money, and what they do without money, is what accountancy has yet to weigh up and reflect on. What rich and poor people absorb not just in knowledge but also in wisdom and compassion and taste from their contact with others, and what others absorb from them, what insights are generated from each encounter and not just how many pennies have been exchanged, what price is paid in lies and crimes, in sacrifices and betrayals in the course of amassing more possessions than others, these are all items that need to figure in a statement of profit and loss. Making lots of money remains a fascinating mirage because so very few people have tasted the pleasures and pains it offers. The seventy-five million individuals who own half the world’s wealth are the most secretive and least understood of all human beings, as distant and elusive as those half-divine half-animal gods of ancient civilisations: a study of their zoology would doubtless reveal many unknown species and unsuspected variations of habit. Only if the reality of their lives were to be revealed would it be possible to judge more impartially the merits of an economy dedicated to prosperity and the accumulation and expenditure of wealth. So far, only rarely have the very rich spoken about what wealth has done to them, though their children need to know the truth about their parents, for nothing is more dangerous than to be the offspring of a millionaire. Though they may not wish even to think about the menace of a redistribution of wealth, every class in society would benefit from a redistribution of envy and pity.
[7]
How many ways of committing suicide are there?
SUICIDE IS TODAY A MUCH MORE frequent answer to life’s torments than it was in the past. Every forty seconds somebody in the world chooses to escape. There are many more who contemplate doing so, or make unsuccessful attempts. But an even larger number, without actually killing themselves, amputate parts of their spirit in a way that leaves them only partially alive. A suicide occurs every time an individual’s world becomes smaller by cutting off concern for other people, places or ideas. A slow, long-drawn-out suicide occurs in all who earn their living in work which leaves them feeling less than alive. Some people give the impression of engaging voluntarily in self-mutilation but it is very often the institutions they belong to that drive them to it.
The artist Benjamin Haydon (1789–1846) was so determined to die that when he shot himself in the head and the bullet failed to penetrate more than a few inches into his skull, he persevered and slashed his throat with his razor again and again until he collapsed. What kind of suicide was this? He had filled twenty-six folio volumes recording his many difficulties in participating fully in life. He was always seriously short of money. His friends Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth made fun of his confidence in the promise of the Book of Isaiah that ‘the Lord God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee.’ Haydon was adamant that without his faith, ‘I should have gone mad.’ Why then did he kill himself, begging for God’s forgiveness with an allusion to King Lear: ‘Stretch me no longer in this tough world’?
Never having enough money, and constantly having to borrow it to achieve unattainable ambitions was a dilemma that Haydon struggled with all his life. And three-quarters of the population of the U.S.A. now define success as the ability to pay off their credit card debts. Between the art of being poor and the science of becoming rich there lies the skill of borrowing and lending, the ability to distinguish between a debt that is a surrender of part of one’s life to another, and a debt that draws people together.
Benjamin Haydon’s life shows the co-existence of two contrasting civilisations. Loans could be testimonies of friendship, compassion or encouragement. Or else they could be purely commercial. When the arrears of Haydon’s rent reached £100, roughly the equivalent of £10,000 today, his landlord did not throw him out: ‘I should not like ye to go,’ he said. ‘You always paid me when you could, and why should you not again when you are able?’ Haydon said he needed two more years to finish the huge painting on which he was working, and the landlord agreed to wait two years. At the John o’ Groats chop house nearby, when he confessed after a meal that he had no money and asked if he could pay the next day, the proprietor called him into the back room and volunteered long-term credit: ‘For two years did Mr Seabrook, Rupert Street, receive me with a smiling face and an open hand, without one complaint, one surly air, and one shade of disrespect, as if I had paid like a nobleman.’ Another landlord, a carpenter by trade, became an admirer and amassed a collection of Haydon’s paintings in lieu of rent. A journalist meeting Haydon in the street, hearing that he was ‘dreadfully anxious’, because ‘I have got fifty-eight pounds to pay today and have only got fifty,’ replied, ‘My dear Haydon, stop a moment’, disappeared round the corner, pawned his watch and returned to give him the eight pounds he needed. Even the banker Coutts lent him money knowing he would never get it back. Even the sheriff’s officer who came to take him to jail for debt was so awed by the huge painting of Christ on which Haydon was working that he said he would come back later when it was more convenient. These people were treating Haydon as they would their own family, recognising him as a man with a vision that others could not quite understand, but whose strong convictions so impressed them that they felt pleasure in assisting him in realising what could possibly turn out to be amazing.
In his day, most ordinary shopping was done on credit, on the basis of the seller’s personal knowledge of each customer’s character, idiosyncrasies and opinions on politics and religion. It meant entering into a personal re
lationship of trust, mixing business with mutual hospitality, at a pace structured around the demands of neighbourly conviviality. Customers might be invited to dinner after a purchase, and they often came to shops to chat rather than to buy. London shopkeepers living above or beside their shop outnumbered those who worked away from home. Itinerant pedlars were constant visitors. The links between buyer and seller were emotional and not just commercial, and Haydon once refused to pay off his tailor completely because that would end their relationship and he would henceforth be ‘treated as a stranger’. As late as 1895 a trade magazine could write: ‘No well-thought-of firm ever demanded or expected more than a yearly payment of their debts’, and there are cases of debts not being repaid for as long as sixteen years. Tradesmen allowed the rich to postpone settling their bills because the connection with them could be valuable outside commerce. There are instances of individuals dying with debts to more than a hundred different people, almost a sign of popularity in one’s community, even if at the same time others were reduced to pawning a child’s boot for a loaf of bread and a small piece of butter. Forgiveness of debts was common, and more was spent on writing them off than on donations to charity. Society was held together by multiple webs of debt; ‘Every man is to his neighbour a debtor’, with most debts being oral and informal. Sometimes even commercial debts could represent mutual esteem between two individuals more than a business transaction for profit. The best example is the financing of the early years of English settlement in America, much of which was done by merchants who made only the vaguest references to when they expected to be repaid.
The Hidden Pleasures of Life Page 8
