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Unit 5: Are the Rich Happy? by Stephen Leacock

As far as I remember, I have never met Mr. Carnegie. But I know that if I did he would tell me Notes
that he found it quite impossible to keep up with Mr. Rockefeller. No doubt Mr. Rockefeller has
the same feeling. On the other hand there are, and there must be, rich people somewhere. I run
across traces of them all the time. The janitor in the building where I work has told me that he
has a rich cousin in England who is in the South Western Railway and gets ten pounds a week.
He says the railway wouldn’t know what to do without him. In the same way the lady who
washes at my house has a rich uncle. He lives in Winnipeg and owns his own house, clear, and
has two girls at the high school.

But these are only reported cases of richness. I cannot vouch for them myself.
When I speak therefore of rich people and discuss whether they are happy, it is understood that
I am merely drawing my conclusions from the people that I see and know.
My judgment is that the rich undergo cruel trials and bitter tragedies of which the poor know
nothing.

In the first place I find that the rich suffer perpetually from money troubles. The poor sit snugly
at home while sterling exchange falls ten points in a day. Do they care? Not a bit. An adverse
balance of trade washes over the nation like a flood. Who have to mop it up? The rich. Call
money rushes up to a hundred per cent, and the poor can still sit and laugh at a ten cent moving
picture show and forget it.
But the rich are troubled by money all the time.

I know a man, for example—his name is Spugg—whose private bank account was overdrawn
last month twenty thousand dollars. He told me so at dinner at his club, with apologies for
feeling out of sorts. He said it was bothering him. He said he thought it rather unfair of his bank
to have called his attention to it. I could sympathise, in a sort of way, with his feelings. My own
account was overdrawn twenty cents at the time. I knew that if the bank began calling in
overdrafts it might be my turn next. Spugg said he supposed he’d have to telephone his secretary
in the morning to sell some bonds and cover it. It seemed an awful thing to have to do. Poor
people are never driven to this sort of thing. I have known cases of their having to sell a little
furniture, perhaps, but imagine having to sell the very bonds out of one’s desk. There’s a
bitterness about it that the poor can never know.
With this same man, Mr. Spugg, I have often talked of the problem of wealth. He is a self-made
man and he has told me again and again that the wealth he has accumulated is a mere burden to
him. He says that he was much happier when he had only the plain, simple things of life. Often
as I sit at dinner with him over a meal of nine courses, he tells me how much he would prefer a
plain bit of boiled pork, with a little mashed turnip. He says that if he had his way he would
make his dinner out of a couple of sausages, fried with a bit of bread. I forget what it is that
stands in his way. I have seen Spugg put aside his glass of champagne—or his glass after he had
drunk his champagne— with an expression of something like contempt. He says that he
remembers a running creek at the back of his father’s farm where he used to lie at full length
upon the grass and drink his fill. Champagne, he says, never tasted like that. I have suggested
that he should lie on his stomach on the floor of the club and drink a saucerful of soda water. But
he won’t.
I know well that my friend Spugg would be glad to be rid of his wealth altogether, if such a thing
were possible. Till I understood about these things, I always imagined that wealth could be
given away. It appears that it can not. It is a burden that one must carry. Wealth, if one has
enough of it, becomes a form of social service. One regards it as a means of doing good to the
world, of helping to brighten the lives of others, in a word, a solemn trust. Spugg has often

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