that they are out
of the power of the moderately rich as well as of the moderately
poor. They are out of the power of everybody except a few
millionaires—that is, misers. In the old normal friction of normal
wealth and poverty I am myself on the Radical side. I think that a
Berkshire squire has too much power over his tenants; that a Brompton
builder has too much power over his workmen; that a West London doctor
has too much power over the poor patients in the West London Hospital.

But a Berkshire squire has no power over cosmopolitan finance, for
instance. A Brompton builder has not money enough to run a Newspaper
Trust. A West End doctor could not make a corner in quinine and freeze
everybody out. The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern
market. The things that change modern history, the big national and
international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations,
the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages,
the big expenses often incurred in elections—these are getting too
big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly
fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims.

There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about
them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the
chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser
aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even
good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are
sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their
patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to
sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous
man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will
never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old
bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough
to want it.

Lastly, the most serious point about them is this: that the new miser
is flattered for his meanness and the old one never was. It was never
called self-denial in the old miser that he lived on bones. It is called
self-denial in the new millionaire if he lives on beans. A man like
Dancer was never praised as a Christian saint for going in rags. A
man like Rockefeller is praised as a sort of pagan stoic for his
early rising or his unassuming dress. His "simple" meals, his "simple"
clothes, his "s