THE NEW ARISTOCRACY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 25, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 17.

"THE NEW ARISTOCRACY."

Drinking among Women.

It is a well-known fact that the elite society of New York City, the "400," is the pole star to which all of the aspirants to social distinction in this country turn their eyes. That charmed circle they long to, or hope to, enter, sometime. The society women of New York are imitated, and their example is followed in morals as well as manners. Of a branch of this class Gertrude Atherton thus speaks in the current issue of the Cosmopolitan:

"The prevalence of gambling among rich women all over the world has been so much commented on that the subject is trite; but it is well to insist on the fact that the historic nervousness of American women of all classes is largely due to the constant use of alcohol in small doses. The wealthier women who have come to believe that they are above all laws, do not hesitate to order it any hour in the public restaurants. I took 'tea' with five of them one afternoon at the Waldorf, and those that did not order whisky revived themselves with absinthe. Then they abused every one whose name came up, composing as they chattered, and no doubt forgetting as quickly. But for a moment not a woman they assaulted had a grandmother above the grade of a washerwoman, or a rag of morals to save her from the divorce court."

In referring to the accredited novelists of New York society, all of whom have written "from the inside" she says that "not one of them seems to have found a single redeeming feature in the world in which they are, or were, a part. The characters lie, steal, blackmail, murder, commit adultery as a matter of course, gamble, drink, oppress, plot to ruin innocent reputations, throw compromising letters into waste-paper baskets, are frivolous, foolish, vain, and brutal; and, according to Mrs. Wharton, are even destitute of the ordinary virtues of loyalty and friendship."

And this is the cynosure toward which the eyes of the ambitious-to-shine-in-society are turned. When the leaders in society, the aristocracy of plutocracy, become so corrupt, when the badge of entrance is the $, when the greater part of those who possess wealth are ambitious of equality with the "highest circles," what can we expect of future generations? Read Isa. 59:1-19.