"RESPECTABILITY."

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 13014, 29 June 1906, Page 3

"RESPECTABILITY."

ITS RISE AND REMEDY. (From a lecture delivered in Wellington by Dr Findlay.) The established grades and orders of\ old civilisations secure recognition without much demonstration. This is why the bearers of a great name can afford to be so unostentatious and unassertive. But distinctions based upon mere wealth, especially new wealth, are not. so: readily recognised. These must be demonstrated and impressed. This is best done by display and ; courageous pretension. "The world is still deceived by ornament."

Distinctions of wealth begin to classify young societies. These distinctions must have their conspicuous manifestations, and these are usually luxurious Jiving and leisure. The old militancy tests of respectability reappear under our modern industrialism."

j A large establishment—a house far bigger j than its- inmates, require—packed with furI niture, costly and of the latest design—- | luxurious entertainment attractively chronicled in society newspaper columns for the envy of the groundlings—a retinue of servants, a stable finer than most workmen's homes, with carriages and high-stepping, horses, which seem to splash • rebuke on poverty: these are the convincing and conspicuous proofs of respectability. But if the inmates do nothing for their living, or at no nothing useful, this proof becomes coercive. Then you satisfy the final test of a maximum of consumption and a minimum of usefulness: Then yon reach the plus ultra of social respectability, this last- condition of doing nothing w. difficult, to fulfil in a young country. Time has not- permitted yet the multiplication of great inherited fortunes, nor are they protected by any system of entail and primogeniture. It is, therefore, found more or less necessary,, to maintain this impressive magnificence .of livingthat' money should be made. The man cannot himself .afford: to be an idler. He mS pursue his lucrative business, but he ful- ; second condition of respectability £• »d[teas, d ms „ d brM balls, novels and gossip may be " well enough as evidence of gentility, but thev do not provide the food upon which the SSLfI ? , The serious : side of Me-the discipline of. a daily task, the .something useful,;in the world, the self-respect begotten of selfsupport, all these add to a woman's •mo ral and intellectual nature as nothing else can. ' ■ ° ;

And now. liow should we alter our tests of respectability First, I -would .reply that we are already filtering is arising a social sentiment that if .people spin not-, ; and work not—neither shall they eat. The feeling, still but rudimentary, id evolving 4hat the old tests are fundamentally wrong, and that to do nothing'; useful while 1 consuming thi? proI duct of the work of others' is a descredit, and not a distinction. ... It is .being more clearly perceived that the wealth one man or woman ostentationsly. wastes, someone else has had to work to produce. ' It is being realised that the manner of its consumption of its wealth is more important toya modern community than, the extent of its production. • .The social ■ aspects of industry, idleness, and waste are appealing to us. A social conscience is Wakening, which will check, first by its own sanctions, and finally by law, the evil tendencies of idleness and wasteful luxury. The classes that separate themselves from work upon this earth and seek to live in. the elevation of rank or wealth and leisure, lose their vigour, determination, and strenuous manhood. These qualities grow "out of the discipline of toil and simple living ; out of the struggle imposed on those who. have to make their own way; My'wiolei aim in this lecture has been to show that a life of work, manual or mental,' is the true test of respectibility.