Money-making Men

I FEAR City people are very mercenary in their views and habits. It is natural that they should be so; they come into the City to make money, and that is all they are thinking of while they are there. They do not all succeed in their attempt, I know. Some are idle and improvident, and do not deserve to win in the battle of life. They are failures from their birth, and go mooning about like the immortal Micawber, expecting something to turn up, till death comes and puts an end to their expectations. Some men are unlucky, and lose by every adventure; others are born lucky, and, from no merit of their own, everything they touch turns to gold. The other day a poor costermonger was run-over in the street and killed, and it was found that he was worth several hundreds of pounds. It would be interesting to know how a costermonger could have made all that money by the sale of apples, oranges, and greens. A few weeks since I heard a distinguished judge tell an audience, consisting of school-boys, that in his own person he was an illustration of the fact that, in this happy England, any one, however destitute of rank and wealth and connections he might be, would rise to the position to which his worth entitled him; and he ended with the recommendation of the wise man of old, “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths.” Only a month since I heard of the death of a Jew, who had commenced with selling pencils in the street, and had died worth a million of money. How was it done? Ah! that’s the question. It is not done, as a rule, by the speculators; nor is it done by the rogues who forget that honesty is the best policy. Many of the men who have succeeded, it has been remarked, have generally achieved success by the application of some very simple principle which they have established as the general rule of their proceedings.

Ricardo said that he had made his money by observing that, in general, people greatly exaggerated the importance of events. If, therefore, dealing, as he dealt, in stocks, there was reason for a small advance, he bought, because he was certain that an unreasonable advance would enable him to realise; and when stocks were falling he sold, in the conviction that alarm and panic would produce a decline not warranted by circumstances.

Let us take another case—that of Rothschild, the third son of the Frankfort banker, who came to England with £2,000, which he soon turned into £60.000. “My success,” he said to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, “all turned on one maxim: I said, I can do what another man can. Another advantage I had, I was an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When I was settled in London, the East India Company had £800,000 worth of gold to sell. I went to the sale and bought it all. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a discount. The government sent for me, and said they must have it. When they had got it, they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I undertook all that, and I sent it through France; and that was the best business I ever did.” Another rule of his was never to have anything to do with unlucky men. “I have seen,” said he, “many clever men—very clever men—who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but fate is against them; they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?” His advice to Sir Thomas’s son was sound: “Stick to your business, young man; stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer and a banker, and a merchant and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette.” How true this is, any one who has the slightest acquaintance with City life can at once understand. The advice should be printed in gold in every counting-house in London. If it were, and were acted on as well, we should hear of fewer commercial failures.