CHAPTER XX STOCK EXCHANGE

There is nothing in England more astounding or more tigerish than the city man. Englishmen have a fixed idea that they are the soul of generosity, indifferent to money, and not in the least sordid. When they are put to it for a type of sheer greediness it pleases them to point a finger at the Scot. Yet there can be no doubt that of late years the desire for riches has become the absorbing English passion. The ostentation and vulgar displays of the aristocracy and the newly rich have stirred the middle-class English heart to envy. How comes it that such and such a man sleeps on lilies and eats roses? He has "means," my friend. And what are "means"? Just money. If[Pg 193] you are going to be happy in this life, if you insist upon a full paunch of the choicest—upon the ease and softness which are so grateful to decadent persons, if you would be in a position to possess all that the soul of the decadent person covets, you really must have money. And as you are a middle class Englishman whose people have omitted to leave you a million or so, it is very awkward for you. Life is short; the cup goes round but once.

You have ￡500. How is it to be made into ￡50,000, and that while the flush of youth still incarnadines your ambitious cheek? There is only one way: you must speculate—judiciously, if you can; but you must speculate. You are an Englishman and a sportsman, and sometimes you get your ￡50,000. Then all the world marvels and would fain do likewise, so that the ball is kept rolling. It is a ball full of money, and it rolls cityward. The generous, open-handed Englishmen who are the City take as much as they want and toss you the balance.[Pg 194] The game is as fashionable as ping-pong: everybody plays it, and, win or lose, everybody calls it the Stock Exchange. I am told that the Stock Exchange proper is a reputable institution and essential to the well-being of the country. I do not doubt this for a moment; but round it there has grown up a specious and parasitical finance which is rapidly transforming the English into a nation of punters. "Fortunes made while you wait," is the lure to which the latter-day Englishman has been found infallibly to respond. The remnant of the common sense possessed by his excellent grandparents arouses in him a sneaking suspicion that the golden promises of the outside broker and the bucket-shop keeper are not to be depended upon. Yet he reads in his morning paper that no end of stocks and shares have risen a point or dropped a point, as the case may be, and he knows that if he had been in on the right side he would have made more money in a few hours than his excellent grandparents could have made in the course[Pg 195] of a whole grubby lifetime. Hence, sooner or later, his patrimony, or few hundred of surplus capital, is planked into the ball that rolls citywards, on the off-chance that it may come back arm in arm, as it were, with thousands.

Even the more cautious sort of Englishman, who looks upon speculation with a deprecating eye and pins his faith on legitimate investment, is rapidly descending into the gambling habit. Schemes which promise fat dividends inflame his imagination and drag him out of the even tenor of his way. He is perfectly well aware that fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five per cent. in return for one's money is quite wrong somehow. But, on the other hand, the prospect ravishes, and there are concerns in the world which pay such dividends year by year without turning a hair. Only sometimes there is a colossal smash, and half the shopkeepers of England put on sackcloth and ashes and get up funds for one another's relief. To the looker-on the whole system is highly[Pg 196] diverting; to the players in the game the fun will never be obvious.

The real truth about the matter is simply this—the standard of living in England is an inflated and artificial standard. Practically every Englishman lives, or longs to live, beyond his means. The workman and the workman's wife must put on the style of the foreman and the foreman's wife, and the foreman and the foreman's wife must appear to be nearly as comfortably off as the manager, the manager as his employer, all employers, shopkeepers, factory owners, iron-masters, engineers, printers, and even publishers as prosperous as each other, and so on till you come to dukes, than whom, of course, nobody can be more prosperous. It would be possible to bring together six Englishmen whose incomes ranged from ￡1 10s. a week to ￡50,000 a year, and whose dress and tastes would be pretty well identical. Fifty years ago the sons of the middle classes had really no inclination toward the superfluities. The dandy was rather laughed at[Pg 197] among them, the gourmet was a monster they never by any chance encountered, and the libertine was a sad warning and a person to be eschewed. Nowadays it is all the other way: the gilt and tinsel and glamour and rapidity of the gay world have captured the English understanding and brought it exceeding low. There is little moral backbone left in the country. Money, money, money, to be ill gotten and ill spent, is the English ideal. The man who can go without is considered a crank or a fool or worse, or he is set down for an indolent fellow who should be given a month or two on the treadmill for luck. The whole duty of man—of Englishmen, that is to say—is to have money in ponderable quantities; the man without it is of no account at all. Nobody believes in him, nobody wants him, nobody tolerates him. He may be wise and witty and chaste and blessed with all the virtues, and still be received with great coldness by bank managers; and it is well known that the attitude of a bank manager towards a man is the[Pg 198] attitude of society at large. If the bank manager beams and rubs his hands, "God's in His heaven: all's right with the world." If the bank manager frowns and sends you impertinent letters, you may last a week or a fortnight or a few months, but you are on thin ice, and you must please take care not to forget it. I should not be at all surprised if the omnipotent official whose business it is to discover what persons are or are not qualified to approach our British fountain of honour were one day found to be a bank manager in disguise.

So that, on the whole, the Englishman has every inducement to get rich and to be very quick about it. His dealings with the "Stock Exchange"—that is to say, with the City—are but the natural expression of his anxiety to oblige all parties concerned. It is a pity that getting and spending should become the main concerns of his life; but, as he pathetically puts it, "One must do as Rome does, and some women are never content." The Stock Exchange is the only way.