Sir Leo George Chiozza Money (born Leone Giorgio Chiozza, ; 13 June 1870 – 25 September 1944) was an Italian-born economic theorist who moved to Britain in the 1890s,Richard Toye (2007), Lloyd George and Churchill where he made his name as a politician, journalist and author. In the early years of the 20th century his views attracted the interest of two future Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. After a spell as Lloyd George's parliamentary private secretary, he was a Government minister in the latter stages of the First World War. In later life the police's handling of a case in which he and factory worker Irene Savidge were acquitted of indecent behaviour aroused much political and public interest. A few years later he was convicted of an offence involving another woman.
Background and early career MoneyHe is referred to as such throughout this article, although some historians (e.g. Toye, 2007, and Grigg, 2001) give his surname as "Chiozza Money". was born in Genoa, Italy. His father was Anglo-Italian and his mother English.Grigg, 2001 He was educated privatelyGrigg, 2001 and, in 1903, largely anglicised his name, appending "Money" for what Lloyd George's biographer John Grigg has described as "eponymous reasons".Grigg, 2001 He and his English wife Gwendoline had a daughter, Gwendoline Doris, born in 1896.
Economic publications In London, Money established himself as a journalist, becoming especially noted for his use of statistical analysis. He has sometimes been referred to as a "New Liberal" economist.Harris, 1993 From 1898 to 1902 he was managing editor of Henry Sell's Commercial Intelligence, a journal devoted to the cause of free trade, which Money further championed in his books British Trade and the Zollverein Issue (July 1902)The Zollverein was a customs union created in Germany under Prussian auspices in the first half of the 19th century: see Alan Palmer (1962) A Dictionary of Modern History 1789–1945 and Elements of the Fiscal Problem (1903). These were timely given the increasingly fervent political and public debate about Imperial Preference, a cause that led Joseph Chamberlain to resign from Arthur Balfour's Conservative government in 1903.See J. Enoch Powell (1977), Joseph Chamberlain Money argued that, although nobody was proposing a true "British Zollverein or Imperial Customs Union ... an imperial nation like ours cannot afford to benefit the colonies by giving a tariff preference to their products, for ... they cannot supply them in sufficient quantities to support our industries and people".Chiozza (1902), British Trade and the Zollverein Issue His thinking appears to have had some influence on Winston Churchill, then a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), who crossed to the Liberal Party in 1904 ostensibly because of his Free Trade principles;Toye 2007, pp. 27–29 however, in later correspondence with Money, Churchill probably overstated the extent of his influence. Even so, Churchill told Money plainly in a letter in 1914 that he was "a master of efficient statistics and no one states a case with more originality or force".
Riches and Poverty (1905) In 1905 Money published the work for which he became most noted, Riches and Poverty. This analysis of the distribution of wealth in the United Kingdom, which he revised in 1912, proved influential and was widely quoted by socialists, Labour politicians and trade unionists. The future Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, whose government (1945–51) established the modern welfare state, recalled that, while he was working at a boys' club at Haileybury, he had spent an evening studying Riches and Poverty.John Bew (2016), Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee Among other things, Money claimed that 87% of private property was owned by 883,000 people (or 4.4 million if families and dependents were included), while the remaining 13% was shared between 38.6 million. These and other calculations were contested at the time as taking insufficient account of age and family structures, but were frequently cited as the best available figures of their kind.Harris, 1993 Money sought also to quantify Britain's middle class and its per capita wealth, calculating that 861,000 people in 1905 and 917,000 in 1912 owned property worth between £500 and £50,000,The latter figure was broadly consistent with the number in the tax year of 1911–12 having annual professional, salaried or self-employed incomes above the lower income tax threshold of £160, although no direct correlation is possible: see Harris, 1993 although, allowing for four dependents per property owner, the per capita figure was less than £1,000. In general his findings pointed to the modest size of most middle-class fortunes in Edwardian times, a picture broadly consistent with calculations made by Robert Giffen and Michael Mulhall in the 1880s (although Money took the view that business wealth was becoming increasingly concentrated in a few hands, whereas, towards the end of the 19th century, Giffen and others, such as Leone Levi, had concluded that such wealth was being spread more widely).Harris, 1993
Around this time, Money sometimes shared Fabian platforms with such like-minded thinkers as Sidney Webb and H. G. Wells.John Bew (2016), Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee. Attlee, who was being drawn to socialism in the early years of the 20th century, found such meetings politically uninspiring, preferring what he regarded as the more political approach of the Labour Party's first Member of Parliament, Keir Hardie. However, he followed Money's progress with interest, noting his subsequent work with Churchill and Lloyd George and being bemused by his apparent sympathy with Mussolini and Hitler in the 1930s: Bew, op.cit.
Political career
At the 1906 general election, in which the Liberal Party won a landslide victory, Money became Liberal MP for Paddington North. A future Conservative Lord Chancellor, F.E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead), who also entered Parliament in 1906, poured sarcasm on the Free Trade aspects of Money's campaign (as he did on those of others), claiming that "with an infinitely just appreciation of his own controversial limitations, [Money] relied chiefly on the intermittent exhibition of horse sausages as a witty, graceful and truthful sally at the expense of the great German nation"Quoted in John Campbell (1983) F. E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead. Horse sausage (Rosswurst) was a speciality in the German state of Bavaria.
Money lost his seat at the January 1910 election, fought principally on the issue of the "People's Budget" delivered by Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1909, but in December 1910 was elected for East Northamptonshire in the second general election of that year. He held that seat until 1918.
Protégé of Lloyd George
Lloyd George, who became Chancellor in 1908, valued Money's ability to develop innovative ideas;Grigg, 2001 in 1911 he thanked him specifically for his "magnificent service" in relation to the new national insurance scheme and the following year contributed an introduction to his study of the Act and its purpose, published as Insurance Versus Poverty.L. G. Chiozza (1912) In 1912 Money was active also in following up the sinking of the , soliciting from the President of the Board of Trade (Sydney Buxton) an early breakdown of the number of passengers saved by class and gender. The figures showed, among other things, that, while 63% of first class passengers had survived, only 25% in third class had done so, including a mere 16 of 767 men in third class.The Times, 25 April 1912; Times Centenary Supplement, 7 April 2012. Despite the difficulties in establishing a definitive breakdown, the figures obtained by Money within ten days of the disaster were very similar to those published later as a result of the British inquiry under Lord Mersey (Greg Ward (2012), The Rough Guide to the Titanic, pp. 142–143).
Despite Money's apparent alignment with Lloyd George, he produced various articles early in 1914 that drew attention to reductions in naval expenditure at a time when Germany was increasing such spending. He appears to have received private assistance in this regard from Churchill, who by then had a vested interest as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill offered Money flattering encouragement,As in the letter of 13 January 1914, cited above, which referred, among other things, to the impact on Churchill of Money's Zollverein book. while his office supplied him with various statistics (making clear, however, that such data were already available in published documentsJames Masterton-Smith (Churchill's private secretary) to Money, 23 January 1914. In other words, the provision of such information did not technically represent a "leak", an important consideration following the passage three years earlier of the Official Secrets Act.). In thanking Money for his articles, Churchill added that he was "keeping the proof to encourage the Chancellor [i.e. Lloyd George]"Churchill to Money, 24 January 1914, quoted in Toye 2007, pp. 106–107
When Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions in 1915, during the First World War, he appointed Money as his parliamentary private secretary (PPS). Money was knighted in the same year.
In December 1916 Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Money was initially Parliamentary Secretary (a junior ministerial post) for both pensions and shipping in the re-organised coalition government, although he held the former portfolio for only two weeks, later claiming, rather improbably, that he had "drafted the new Pensions scheme of 1917".Grigg, 2001. As Grigg notes, Money was prone to talking up or exaggerating his achievements, a trait evident even in his Who's Who entry.
Ministry of Shipping Money's Minister (or Controller) at the new Ministry of Shipping was Sir Joseph Maclay, a Scottish shipowner who, unusually, sat in neither House of Parliament, as a result of which Money was the ministry's spokesman in the CommonsGrigg, 2001 (with his own PPS, Thomas Owen Jacobsen). Maclay, who was himself strong-willed and very self-disciplined,Entry in National Dictionary of Biography (1951–1960 Supplement). Maclay was so much of a sabbatarian that he refused even to read a newspaper on Sunday: see Grigg, 2001, footnote on p. 46 at first resisted Money's appointment, describing him to Lloyd George as "very clever – but impossible, [living] in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust of everyone – satisfied only with himself and his own views".Maclay to Lloyd George, 24 January 1917, quoted in Grigg, 2001 However, Lloyd George stuck by the appointment and, in the event, the two men appear to have worked in reasonable harmony. Among Money's particular achievements was developing the policy of concentrating British merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, allowing it to be better defended against German U-boats and leaving transport of goods around the world to ships of other nationalities.Grigg, 2001, who accords Money "substantial, but not exclusive" credit for the scheme (footnote on page 48). By the time of the Zeebrugge raid in April 1918, the use of convoys had largely contained the threat from U-boats, with every troopship of American reinforcements over the previous two months having arrived safely.Roy Hattersley (2010), David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider. The Zeebrugge raid was a daring, but unsuccessful attempt to neutralise the German-held port of Zeebrugge in Belgium which was used as a base for U-boats.
Labour Party candidate and the Sankey Commission