NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES AND PRIVILEGES.
“Society” at Newport and doings among the “smart set” which reign there has held quite a prominent place in the papers for a few weeks, the discussion being precipitated by the caustic criticism of Mr. Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Many agree with Mr. Watterson, others condemn his action, while still others defend the “smart set” by saying they are no worse than others. The latter doubtless is true, but it is poor defense. There are two great evils which they foster, unparalleled extravagance and a do-nothing life, so far as anything useful is concerned, tho it must be confessed that he who meets the exacting rules of Newport’s high society has no easy task. What makes it worse, much of the money so extravagantly expended comes from the labors of the poor. Thus class strife and hatred are fomented. Among worse things, Mr. Watterson forcefully, and who will not say truthfully, says:— The poor are always with us, so are the vulgarians, who, given money enough, set up a voluptuous principality, call it the Four Hundred, and, having made sure of its boundaries and their isolation, proceed to make their own moral code, hardly deigning even to ask the rest of the community, “What are you going to do about it?” The sea-going palace, the modern auto, the struggle for equivocal notoriety, the strife for titles, the eating from the tree of forbidden knowledge, the aping of the manners of the foreign swell and the fancied great, the marriage as an experiment and the marriage of convenience, the hot pursuit of pleasure at home and abroad—in short, the constant striving after the ostentatious display of wealth inevitable to the sun-worship of money—these are among the features that distinguish the Four Hundred from other rich people, who do not need to affect anything, who heartily despise such proceedings, who, with fortune secure and social position fixed, live without scandal and travel without adventure, but whom the wantons of the Smart Set describe as “the bourgeoisie.” . . . At the same time it is a fact that even in the better realms of luxury and wealth there is a growing toleration of the unclean. Good people are not so shocked as they once were by moral infractions. There is not a conscientious man nor a thoughtful woman in the society of any of our great centers of population who does not mark with serious apprehension the lowering tendencies of the time; the multiplication of frivolous marriages, the desecration of the marriage tie, the increasing number of scandalous divorces, directly traceable to the spirit of lawlessness in excessive wealth and the bad example of the infamous, but prosperous, rich. We do not need to institute any historic parallels; to take to ourselves any lesson from ancient Greece and Rome, or modern France, suggestive as these may be. He is but a poor observer of contemporary life, and no prophet at all, who does not see that the whole trend of public affairs is set toward an ultimate conflict between the forces of prerogative, on the one hand, and the forces of what the exclusive few delight to call the Great Unwashed, on the other hand; between capital, too often avaricious and grasping, and labor, grimy and passionate, and, left riderless, a monster without a head. Enlightened men would moderate that conflict. The scandalous behaviour of the conspicuous rich plays directly to the lead of the extremist and the agitator, with unclean hands preparing the pickaxe of the leveller and the brand of the incendiary. The indifference of the guild of wealth and luxury is replete with evil auguries. If such offenses as we have set forth are endured and condoned, how long before that which embraces but a set becomes the distinguishing mark of a section? If the press is so easily seduced, or misled, what must it become when it is bought outright? Look at the lobby at Washington. Does it not exist? Yet are there those who will swear that it is only a figment of partisan malignity. It already costs a million of dollars to set a Presidential candidate in the field; already a hundred thousand dollars to sustain contests for a seat in the Senate of the United States. How long shall it be—the press already defending the Four Hundred—before our public men shall become but a race of Medici princes without the learning or the arts of Florence, and the President’s chair itself a simple commodity, to be knocked down to the highest bidder? Below is what one of the leading ladies of the South, the wife of ex-Congressman W. H. Felton, and former Federal Judge of Georgia, has to say of Mr. Watterson’s criticism:— But it is well to understand that the article applies to a great many more people than four hundred of our fashionable in New York City. Perhaps that is a sample lot or a specimen case, so to speak, but there is more or less of the same sort of goods in every prominent city or town in the United States. They are doing their best as imitators, copyists, and, according to their opportunities, they are treading in the steps of great leaders in fashion, and frivolity, and aping manners and customs as nearly as possible, and compliment themselves on their ability in so doing. Old Rome went to pieces just in the same way. A woman born to the purple commanded her carriage driver to roll the wheels in the open street over her own father’s dead body, and the crisis was near at hand when Rome’s glory was changed into luxurious licentiousness and official vanity, and these crimes were permitted to pass unrebuked by its rulers. It is the unhappy trend of the times. Grown-up men among the Four Hundred give dinner parties to monkeys, and fancy balls are frequented by giddy, silly people, who personate animals to create a sensation. Mr. Watterson has trumpeted a note of warning, but the evil seeds were sown many seasons ago. “Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
One of the saddest of all things in connection with the lavish, extravagant expenditure of wealth, its ornate and vulgar display, is the reflection that it might have been so different. It is sad to think of now; it will be infinitely sadder when those who foolishly spend entrusted wealth must give an account of their stewardship, must tell to the Receiving Court of Last Resort all their bankrupt enterprises, how they have expended the trust funds of God. Would God that some of these millionaires and multi-millionaires could recognize the God-given opportunities which await in the world’s great needy field; might share some of the blessed privileges of associating not with the princes and nobles of the broken-down kingdoms of earth, but with the King of heaven, before whom the great Four Hundred is as “the small dust of the balance,” “nothing, and less than nothing.” What a blessing it would be if homes for working women and girls could be established in the great cities, light, sunny, pure, healthful homes, at a very moderate rate of rent, commensurate with the pitiful wage so many of them receive; we mean the rent in proportion to the wage, not the home, or room, or lodging. What a blessing it would be to the hearts of these persons who are studying as to how they can expend their millions so as to bring added pleasure to a world-satiate heart, entertainment to a pleasure-nauseated mind, if they would form mighty syndicates for buying up and condemning old slums, and building neat, proper, healthful tenement-houses for the poor of the cities, for the workingmen of the towns. What blessings would come to each and all, if they would learn how their equally worthy brother in want and poverty lived, and out of their abundance supply his want. What blessings would come, if some of the money so lavishly expended on personal adornment or in sensuous pleasure could be used in planning and securing tracts of land in the country on easy, proper terms for the poor of the cities. There are ways many to sow blessings. There are privileges in all the sowings. Would God that the rich might see this before it is forever too late. They are not so much to be envied as pitied. Better the toiler with his home ties, his cottage in which reigns temperance, industry, piety, love, than all the marble palaces of the rich. God will hold each responsible for his use of His entrusted means.