All the Money in the World Did Not Make Him Worse (Fiction)

He said it one evening, half in jest, while the others were talking about lotteries and sudden fortunes. "Give me all the money in the world," he said, "and I will not become worse. I will only become more useful."

Something in the room, or outside it, heard him, and decided to test him.

Within three years he was the richest man who had ever lived. The fortune arrived not as a single spectacular event but as a sequence of ordinary advantages that compounded without limit: a patent, a market, a calculation that others had overlooked, then another. He kept no staff of advisers for personal luxury and issued no public statements. The money simply accumulated until the figures ceased to describe anything a single person could spend.

He began with the city he knew. Empty buildings were bought, repaired, and turned into permanent housing. Rents were set at the cost of upkeep. People who had slept in doorways moved in and stayed. No one was required to change their politics or their habits beyond keeping the place clean. Within a decade the shelters closed for lack of clients. The newspapers called it a miracle of private initiative and then stopped writing about it, because there was nothing left to photograph.

Abroad he financed the drilling of wells and the piping of clean water to villages that had never had either. The contracts were written so that the villages owned the systems once they were finished. Local people were paid to build and maintain them. No flags were planted, no speeches delivered. The projects were finished when the water ran and the accounts balanced.

Not everything succeeded. In one district the pipes were stolen before the system was completed. Elsewhere a local official diverted funds and disappeared. A third project failed because the underground water proved unsuitable for drinking. His advisers urged him to abandon such places and concentrate upon communities where success could be guaranteed. He refused. The losses were investigated, the contracts revised, and the work attempted again where there was a reasonable prospect of success. He did not pretend that money could abolish dishonesty or overcome every natural obstacle. Nor did he regard the failures as evidence that the people concerned were undeserving of help.

As his fortune grew, governments began to approach him. One offered him an honorary position with authority over a national reconstruction programme. Another proposed that he finance a political movement whose leaders promised to implement his methods throughout the country. He understood the attraction. With sufficient influence he might remove bureaucratic obstacles, compel cooperation and accomplish in a few years what otherwise required decades. For several days he considered the possibilities. Then he declined. He had wanted the means to help people, not the authority to direct their lives. The distinction seemed worth preserving, even at the cost of doing less.

There were other temptations, less grand but more persistent. Those who praised him suggested that his name should appear on buildings and public squares. Others argued that recipients of his generosity ought to demonstrate gratitude, perhaps through public acknowledgments or adherence to certain standards of conduct. He occasionally felt the attraction of these proposals. It would have been pleasant to know that his efforts were appreciated, and irritating to discover that some beneficiaries criticised him while continuing to use what he had provided. But gratitude had never been part of the bargain. The buildings remained unnamed, and the critics remained housed.

He lived in the same house he had occupied before the money arrived. He ate the same meals. When people asked what he intended to do with the rest of the fortune, he answered that he was still deciding, which was true; new problems kept appearing that could be addressed by the same general method, clear ownership, local labour, and no continuing claims upon those who received assistance. He declined invitations to sit on boards that made policy and requests to endorse political parties. The work remained, as far as possible, a series of discrete exchanges in which both sides finished better off than they had started.

Years passed. The fortune continued to grow faster than he could deploy it. He sometimes wondered whether the original declaration had been foolish, not because he regretted the wealth, but because no person could know with certainty that he had remained unchanged. He had become more accustomed to having his instructions obeyed. He had grown impatient with delays that once would have seemed ordinary. He recognised these changes without knowing whether they amounted to moral deterioration. When he noticed impatience affecting his decisions, he tried to correct it. He did not suppose that having good intentions made him incapable of doing harm.

He gave instructions that after his death the same rules should be followed by whoever administered what remained. The arrangements were designed to survive without personal loyalty to him, and to permit correction where his judgments had been mistaken. He understood that no instructions could guarantee the conduct of future generations. That uncertainty did not seem a sufficient reason to leave nothing behind.

Then, one afternoon, while walking back from a site where a new pump had just begun to work, he felt a pain in his chest, sat down on a low wall, and died.

He was soon forgotten as a person, having no children. But the water kept running. The apartments stayed occupied. People who had never heard his name continued to use what he had arranged. Whether some earlier listener regarded this outcome as a defeat was never recorded, and would not have altered the result.

He had said he would not become worse. On the evidence available to anyone still living, he had not. A man can do no more in this fragile life.