Rosebud
“What Chance in Life Had He?” San Francisco Examiner, March 3, 1907.
Taken from the newspaper of William Randolph Hearst, aka Citizen Kane.—JB
There are on this page three pictures—pictures
of human life, as unearned inherited money PERVERTS HUMAN LIFE. There
are here and there in the world men that can rise up and BE MEN, even with
the handicap of great inherited wealth, acquired in early life.
But the men that succeed IN SPITE OF WEALTH are so few that they can be counted almost on the fingers of the hand. They are not one in a thousand as compared with those that succeed IN SPITE OF POVERTY.
There are men that long foolishly and idly for the fortunes for which America struggles.
There are others, loving but misguided fathers and mothers, that long for great fortunes to leave to their children. All of those whose minds are mixed up on great sums of money, whether for themselves or for their children are invited to study, and to think of their own account of the three pictures on this page.
WHAT DOES TOO MUCH MONEY DO FOR CHILDHOOD?
It kills the child’s imagination. He is overwhelmed with presents, everything he wants and more than he wants he can have, AND MUST HAVE.
Foolish luxury, foolish toys, foolish servile servants, foolish flattery—all these warp his little mind, magnify his childish self-importance.
The father spends his money TO MAKE THE CHILD HAPPY, BUT HIS CHILD GETS INFINITELY LESS FROM ALL THE MONEY THAN ANOTHER CHILD GETS FROM A RAG DOLL, FROM A TURTLE FOUND IN THE FIELD, OR A SHELL PICKED UP ON THE SHORE.
Tired of life before life has really begun, cheated out of mental growth, the spiritual excitement that the child should find in devising its own interest, and seeking its own amusement, the unhappy child of those that are foolish and too rich, goes from a babyhood of boredom into a young manhood of satiety and mental dullness.
Who has not seen the tired, listless, drooping, false-living young men THAT NEVER KNEW WHAT IT WAS TO TRY, OR TO NEED TO TRY.
These young men drag themselves over the earth spending as they go the money that does not make them happy, and that brings happiness to no one else.
They can HAVE everything, and therefore THEY WANT NOTHING. They can not tell real friends from false. Usually they have no friends, but parasites instead of friends. They are not hungry, they are not thirsty, or at least not normally so.
They have worn out and exhausted every attraction and every feeling before it was half developed. They find even vice tiresome, and self-indulgence a bore. They may well envy the daily work of the meanest man that waits upon them, AND THAT NEEDS THE MONEY HE EARNS.
The lives of such young men are made desolate by too much. Their cheated childhood is followed by a disappointed, cheated manhood.
And then comes at last, old age. Disillusion, complaints about the world and about life. The money is there still, perhaps, and the check book works its miracles. But miracles of the check book are very tiresome at the end of long years. Nobody need envy the rich, useless, idle old man, whose age follows upon an idle childhood and an idle youth.
Such a man in his last day may well stretch out his hand to death as almost the first real and sincere friend he has known. This friend will at least take him away for himself, wipe out the slate that has only self-indulgence, satiety, disappointment written upon it, and give the tired soul a chance to begin on a new and clean page.
There is more excitement and happiness in doing one simple piece of work well, than in spending all the useless money that ever was left to a useless child.
The man with a hundred millions may cheat the people, deceive himself, dodge the laws, BUT HE CAN’T CHEAT NATURE OR DODGE HER LAWS.
To every man and woman in the world there is a law that says every day, “YOU MUST BE USEFUL OR YOU MUST BE UNHAPPY.”
Only in real activity of the mind can real enjoyment of life be found. The man digging a ditch, hungry for his simple meal when the hour comes, is a far happier creature than the self-indulgent, idle bore, a perpetual spender of money earned by others.
This fact should sink into the minds of Americans, especially of young people, and it should divert our national attention from the everlasting pursuit of the superfluous dollars that mean nothing.
Every man should want to have as much as well keep him independent, AND PROTECT THE WEAK THAT DEPEND UPON HIM.
Every man should look into the future and decide that his old age shall find him independent, and not a slave. Every man should realize that actual poverty in old age MEANS ABJECT, PITIFUL SLAVERY.
But BETWEEN the slavery of poverty and the dull slavery of great wealth, there lies the land in which men are busy and useful, and temperate, AND HAPPY.
Nobody need envy the young man, the child, or the old man that has too much. But the man with too much may well envy the simplest, most modestly paid, HONEST, CONTENTED WORKER IN THE NATION.
We believe that parents should impress this upon children and try to make them understand it. There is hardly a neighborhood in which you may not point out some child ruined by too much indulgence. There is not a village but has its warning in the case of some young man made useless by the foolish fondness of the father or mother giving too much money to a child or a youth.
It is the duty of older men and women to impress the young constantly that they can only find happiness in real work, and real achievement, and we beg our readers to think of this, in talking to the young, in impressing their ideas upon them.
In the Criminal Court of New York City a young man is on trial for murder. This young man is a sad illustration of the truth that we seek to convey.
He had from childhood millions. These millions turned him away from a useful life. They made real effort seem waste of time. They drove him out of the paths in which he might have found real happiness and they have landed him at last where he stands to-day, at the end of a cheated childhood and a wasted youth.
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