The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JULY 29,1909 CRIMINAL OSTENTATION

New Zealand Tablet, 29 July 1909, Page 1181

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JULY 29,1909 CRIMINAL OSTENTATION

fN the course of an essay on wealth Godkin says : ' From the very earliest times its doceitfulness, its inability to produce happiness, its fertility in temptation, its want of connection with virtue and purity, have been among the commonplaces of religion and morality. Hesiod declaims against it, and exposes its bad effects on the character of its possessors, and Christ makes it exceedingly hard for the / rich man to get to heaven. The folly of winning wealth or caring for it .has a prominent place in mediaeval theology. Since the Reformation there has not been so much declamation against it, but the rich man's position has always been held, even among Protestants, to be exceedingly perilous.' Indeed, since the Reformation the old Catholic idea of riches as a trust has sunk more and more beneath the horizon of our social life. But we hear at times refreshing notes of warning regarding the perils of wealth and the sin of its abuse. Some of these are lay sermons — now by Mr. Carnegie; anon by Mr. Charles Broadway Rouss, ' the blind millionaire,' and again by Lord Rosebery, the modern Dives who commands values sufficient for the ransom of a little nation, and stands on Persian rugs, and ' owns ' a chef with a salary of £2000 a year.

Lectures on health by a consumptive, on temperance by a dipsomaniac, on consistency by a professional politician, on the folly of wealth by a millionaire — they are all much of a piece. But one listens with respect to a calm and reasoned and statesmanlike pronouncement on the abuse of wealth, such as was delivered in Dunedin during the past week by the Hon. Dr. Findlay," Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. We pick from his discourse — which was on ' Ideals of Modern Government '-"-the following extracts as a sort of sub-text for oxir own little homily : ' There is a growing and widespread sentiment that in th* same city — or even country — m which men, women, and children, and especially women and children, are starving, gorgeous luxury and wasteful extravagance on the part of the rich is more than a moral wrong — it is a social crime No doctrines as to the rights of property, no reasoning about the liberty of the subject, no economic expediency can silence this sentiment. Before all the old principles of statecraft and cold reasoning the human heart stands up and speaks in wrathful condemnation. So lar, however, our British deep-seated regard for individual freedom has prevented — as it may always prevent — any direct attempt to limit wasteful extravagance. The Romans tried with partial success such direct attempts through their censor. Our nation centuries ago tried to do jbhe same through sumptuary laws forbidding certain forms of wasteful luxury, but modern Government knows the futility of this -and contents itself with taxing severely luxuries themselves, and with a graduated taxation against those whose incomes make possible such wasteful luxury. . . All through life we are applying to ourselves and others social tests of respectability and striving without any compulsion of law to keep within them. It is upon the real nature of these tests that the moral, intellectual, and ethical tone of any country mainly depends. If good, they are making for social improvement — if bad, for social destruction. But what are still among the chief tests of respectability in Engi land — using the term in its proper sense of obtaining the respect of society — are they not, even now, an imposing display of wealth, impressive proofs of its possession such as ostentatious extravagance — complete independence of any need of earning a livelihood, a maximum of expense in living and a minimum of life's usefulness? Are not the Gargantuan feasts, the fortune-costing social functions of which even the cables tell us, taken as proofs of eminence and respectability? But these standards of respectability are changing slowly — painfully slowly in the Old Country — but they_ are changing, as a higher and truer sense of humanity spreads through the people. As it is seen even dimly that it is nob respectable, but disgraceful, for millions of pounds sterling to be ostentatiously wasted in the same country in which millions of human beings are in want of the barest necessaries of life. This contrast of wasteful luxury and pinching poverty has a consequential evil. It is largely responsible for that social discontent that prevails among the masses of the large cities of Great Britain. This social discontent lends itself not' unnaturally to the false theories of revolutionary socialism — it accentuates an antagonism between capital and labor, between employer and employed — an antagonism which prevents their loyal or hearty co-operation, and results in a diminished productiveness which spells incalculable loss to the whole nation. This spirit can only disappear with the tantalising contrasts which help to provoke it. Tho day will come — nay, is not so far off — when, in the great poverty-haunted metropolis of London, the announcement that Mrs. Millionaire spent on her last night's gorgeous function £10,000, will aroxise no sentiment of respect, but one of widespread indignation and disgust. The sooner that day comes the better for the" social contentment of the people of England.'

Nowadays the wealthy ' old nobility,' as a rule (which has its exceptions), seek ease and comfort first. These are, to them, the law and the prophets. Their mode of using their wealth is broadly settled for them by, wellostablished use and precedent. It is the ' new rich ' who hanker most after the vulgar and criminal ostentation which — no matter by whom *t may be displayed — should provoke ' widespread indignation and disgust.' In the olden days of slavery the display of wealth and power was a comparatively easy matter. Uncomplaining service cou\l be bought in indefinite quantity at a cheap rate, and it created the luxurious splendor of Hadrian's villa, and if_ Diocletian's palace at Spalatro, and of the villas of Lucullus and Maecenas. The cheap service of the seventeenth century also enabled the Sevignes and the* Montespans and the Colignys and the Rohans and the Montmorencis to career over the surface of France with retinues that resembled the baggage trains of modern infantry battalions. Fashion changes, but folly is a constant. The newly enriched soap-manufacturers or wooden-nutmeg makers of America now storm over Europe with no fixed idea beyond a wild ostentation of wealth — getting rid of money as fast

as possible, glorying in the paying of monstrous prices and monstrous fees, and committing other-such vulgar eccentricities. Reckless and ostentatious expenditure, however, is not by any means a folly that is monopolised by the American tiouveau riche. Baron Grant, for instance, spent £40,000 on a single staircase in the home which* was known as ' Kensington Palace.' Another wealthy . Englishman expended £14,900 on the furniture and decorations of his billiard-room. The late Lady Brassey possessed a feather cloak valued at £100,000. Jin 1832 Lady Mackin paid £210 for a silver dog-collar studded with diamonds; and as far back as 1806, a wealthy and foolish English nobleman parted with close on £4000 for another collar — of gold and precious stones — to circle the neck of a favorite dog. Returning to the American ' new rich,' we find Mr. TKomas Lawson, a wealthy Bostonian, paying £6000 for the ' rights ' of a pink carnation. Mr. Stephen Marquand (New York) spent £200,000 on a single bedroom — the wardrobe alone costing £29,000, the dressing-table £12,500, and the bed the tidy fortune of £38,000. William C. Whitney, the well-known New York millionaire, paid" some £10,000 for the painting of a ceiling in his mansion. Howard Gould .expended £20,000 for a fan as a casual present to a lady. His father, Jay Gould, spent a king's ransom on the purchase of a SpanishsCrown for his daughter, the Countess Castellane. William 1 Waldorf Astor spent £50,000 oiit of his bloated £40,000,000 on the * fountain of love ' in the grounds of Cliveden. And 'Silver King' Mackay's mausoleum is estimated to have involved an expenditure of £80,000. - There was recently issued in London a work -which gives some idea of the lengths to which the criminal folly of wealthy ostentation is still being carried there, in sight of the starving 'and discontented masses of the proletariate of '-the city of dreadful night.' We refer to Mr. W. B. Northrop's Wealth and Want. Here are a few of the cases picked from that saddening book: £2000 for a dog's necklace; 18s for a pound of strawberries; -£200 for four fish; £1000 for a dress; beds that cost 1000 guineas; £500 for a brand-new complexion; £100 on facial massage and manicuring. One well-known society woman (we are told) sets apart the whole of the top floor of her London house for her pets. They have luxurious carpets sofas, cushions, eat the best meat, and have many changes of raiment. There are elaborate ' toilet establishments ' especially for dogs, where the ' little dears ' are groomed, and, at a hospital for animals, beds for dogs are endowed for £100 each — while a mother in the East End is feeding her new-born babe on hot water and biscuit. Milk she cannot afford. Next, we find exhibited in a window in , Oxford street (London) a gorgeous little brass bedstead, with do™ n quilt, embroidered counterpane, and brocade canopy. At first sight (the writer says) it was thought to be for a Royal baby. As a matter, of fact, the costly cot was for a dog. One woman (we are likewise told) wlio moves m the * best ' society recently spent no less than £10,000 for a dress embroidered with pearls, which she wore once only Little comment is now aroused when ladies spend £500 to £1000 for a dress. For a mantle of silver fox they will cheerfully pay 600 guineas, while the material for a £SQOO Court dress for one evening's wear will cost- £25 per yard. Yet (as Mr. Northrop points out) not two miles away thousands of .young girls are wearing out their lives making men's trousers at 5d each and ladies' nightdresses at 2s per dozen. Tennyson says : -'The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together — dwarf 'd or godlike — bond or free; If-she be small, light-natur'd, miserable, _^ How shall men grow ?' Unfortunately, a very great""deal of this sinful folly must stand to the account of the heartless butterflies of fashion in that society that is called ' high.' It is, for instarice7 largely to their rivalries and love of ostentation that we owe the scandalous spectacles of repasts that cost from £50 to £100 per plate, with decorations running into hundreds of pounds for the dining-room alone, and after-dinner entertainments that have cost £1250 each. And, within, a^ stone's throw, unemployed workers had to wait outside shelters to get a crust of bread or beg a ticket for a bowl of soup ; ' there are in the great metropolis 507,763 families, with children, occupying single rooms; homeless men think themselves " in luck " if they get 2d to sleep in a " coffin covered by a piece of American cloth . . . and destitute women and children are supposed to "enjoy" floor bunks in London shelters, which are unfit for human beings. Boxes of cigars are sold which cost £50 for fifty, or £1 ""each, while hundreds of tailors in Soho slave every day of the .year for £25.' # The rich sorely need to have the Gospel preached *o them, and to be taught the lesson that the energetic Irish

Chief Secretary, Thomas Drummond, once vainly tried to instil into the unwilling minds of rack-renting Irish landlords — that property has its duties as well as its rights. America and England at the present day are witnessing a sinful and heartless misuse of wealth, and an insanity of ostentation and luxury, such as preceded the down-" fall of the Roman Empire long ages ago, and such as towards the close of the eighteenth century did so much to precipitate the great cataclysm of the French Revolution.