Poor and Rich in America

Southland Times, Issue 12772, 4 December 1893, Page 2

Poor and Rich in America

Mr W. D. Howells, the American novelist, interviewed on behalf of the Daily Chronicle, has expressed his opinion freely on the social condition of America and the heaping up of wealth. He says:—“ Our old parties represent nothing but the scramble for office, and meanwhile a new economic condition of things is growing up, full of danger to our democratic institutions. We are becoming more and more like Europe—rich people at one end of the scale, and poor at the other. Our own revolution was only political, not social or economic, and the result is that we are drifting into the European economic conditions. The masses are somewhat better off than in Europe, but not much, while the rich are aping all the extravagances and luxuries of wealthy people over the Atlantic. They are trying to be feudal barons without the traditions or conditions of a genuine’ old aristocracy. As instances of this I may mention the huge palace with 120 rooms which Mr Rockefeller, the brother of the great Standard Oil magnate, is building for himself on the Hudson River, and the palatial residence, costing millions, erected by Mr Vanderbilt in the mountain region of North Carolina. This ostentatious and irrational splendour is certainly beginning to irritate to a dangerous degree the toiling masses, millions of whom have been not even permitted to toil this year, who are told by the Declarationof Independence and the speeches of campaign orators that they are the equals of the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. Our new rich have become rich so suddenly that everyone knows all about them and their origin, and there is no glamour cast about them. Their wealth is displayed nakedly before the people, and the people are beginning to ask themselves why these are so rich and those so poor. • So long as the people i can live without undue anxiety they don’t j trouble about social inequality ; but here the is becoming more and more intense, 1 and the means of livelihood more and more difficult of acquisition, while the gambling of wealthy speculators may at any moment ; throw thousands out of employment and prei vent them from getting daily bread.”