We speak of people being independently rich.  That is a mistake; they are dependency rich.  The richer a man is the more dependent he is—­the more people he depends upon to help him collect his income, and the more people he depends upon to help him spend his income.  Sometimes a couple will start out doing their own work—­the wife doing the work inside the house and the man outside.  But they prosper, and after a while they are able to afford help; they get a girl to help the wife inside and a man to help the husband outside; then they prosper more—­and they get two girls to help inside and two men to help outside, then three girls inside and three men outside.  Finally they have so many girls helping inside and so many men helping outside that they cannot leave the house—­they have to stay at home and look after the establishment.

This is not a new condition.  One of the Latin poets complained of “the cares that hover about the fretted ceilings of the rich!” It was this condition that inspired Charles Wagner to write his little book entitled “The Simple Life,” in which he entered an eloquent protest against the materialism which makes man the slave of his possessions; he presented an earnest plea for the raising of the spiritual above the purely physical.  I repeat, that there is a limit to the amount a man can wisely spend upon a home.

I need not remind you that the rich are tempted to spend money on the vices that destroy—­money honestly earned may thus become a curse rather than a blessing.

But a man can give his money away.  Yes, and no one who has ever tried it will deny that more pleasure is to be derived from the giving of money to a cause in which one’s heart is interested, than can be obtained from the expenditure of the same amount in selfish indulgence.  But if one is going to give largely he must spend a great deal of time in investigating and in comparing the merits of the different enterprises.  I am persuaded that there is a better life than the life led by those who spend nearly all the time accumulating beyond their needs and then employ the last few days in giving it away.  What the world needs is not a few men of great wealth, doling out their money in anticipation of death—­what the world needs is that these men link themselves in sympathetic interest with struggling humanity and help to solve problems of to-day, instead of creating problems for the next generation to solve.

But you say, a man can leave his money to his children?  He can, if he dares.  A large fortune, in anticipation, has ruined more sons than it has ever helped.  If a young man has so much money coming to him that he knows he will never have to work, the chances are that it will sap his energy, even if it does not undermine his character, and leave him a curse rather than a blessing to those who brought him into the world.