The Auckland Star WITH WHICH AND INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1927. FRIENDS OF REVOLUTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 274, 19 November 1927, Page 8

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH AND INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1927. FRIENDS OF REVOLUTION.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resist anoff For the future in the distano«, And the good that %oe oa% dsu

| What is described as "one of the most , elaborately appointed weddings in the history of America" has just been celebrated at l Pittsburg. The character of the function is indicated with sufficient clearness by the reference to the chief actors as members of two of the wealthiest families in the United States, and everybody concerned seems to have endeavoured to live up to his or her financial responsibilities. Without elaborating the details in which American journals on such occasions are accustomed to indulge, we mav mention that the gifts were valued at half-a-million dollars, and that the bride's father spent £20,000 on the erection of a pavilion for the wedding supper. Altogether this wedding seems to have maintained the dignity of American millionairedom at an appropriate level, and as a sign of the times, both socially and nationally, it is worth consideration.

One point that may well be made is the disastrous effect of such profuse expenditure upon the economic condition of the community. Mr. Hartley Withers cannot be mistaken for a Bolshevik or a revolutionary agitator, yet in his book, "Poverty and Waste," he tells us that "the extravagance of the rich increases, perhaps causes, the poverty of the poor." And why? The answer is at least as old as John Stuart Mill's famous text-book of political economy, with its well-worn argument that "a demand for commodities" is not always or necessarily "a demand for labour." Money spent on producing luxuries might have been invested in the growth or manufacture of necessaries or the establishment of permanent forms of production, that would have profited rich and poor alike for an indefinite period. But "money that is spent on luxuries is wasted as soon as the fleeting life of the toy that it buys is over." This is the economic argument against all ostentatious extravagance such as the outlay of £20,000 on a wedding supperroom.

But the objection to such expenditure goes further and deeper than the question of mere economic loss. Everywhere throughout the world to-day, and more especially in the United States, the contrast between the fabulous wealth of the few and the hopeless poverty of the many is becoming more and more strongly marked, and is arousing a bitterness of class hatred that grows in intensity year by year. It is a curious and interesting fact that Mr. A. W. Mellon, the Secretary to the United States Treasury, is an uncle of the bride whose wedding we have taken as our text, and he was naturally one of the most distinguished guests at the function. As he stood in the snpper-room—built for the occasion at a cost of £20,000 —or surveyed the piles of wedding gifts—valued at £100,000 —did Mr. Mellon recall the sentence in his well-known work on "Taxation, the People's Business," in which he records in striking language his conviction that those who perpetuate class prejudice and class hatred are inflicting a grievous injury upon their country and its people?

Has it ever occurred to these "prominent and -wealthy families" who loom so large on the Pittsburg stage that such needless and gratuitous displays of wealth and spending power must have the effect of embittering and antagonising the vast multitudes who are doomed to remain strangers for ever to the luxuries, and in many cases even the necessaries of a comfortable, healthy, and happy life? In the United States industrial strife is more virulent and dangerous than elsewhere. Are not the coal strikes and iron strikes and labour wars, the anarchists, and the I.W.W. at least in part the fruits of that senseless extravagance and profusion that Mr. Dooley satirised long ago in his burlesque of the Vanderbilt wedding? But the principle is of universal application. "Who are Mr. Lang's best friends?" asks the Sydney "Bulletin," and the answer is "the idle rich." Wherever men and women spend lavishly and ostentatiously on their own enjoyment they arouse resentment in the hearts of those who are condemned to contrast their own lot in life with tbe destiny of the millionaire.