The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1877-11-15
RuinOus Social Ambition.

IN the light OF the recent failures and
criminal prosecutions in New York and
elsewhere, of bankers, brokers and
trustees, it can be seen that an insidi-
GUS evil has been rapidly growing of
late years in American social life. That
evil can be properly denominated social
ambition, or the desire to make ruin
GUS and corrupting social display. Gil
mans confession and Alliger's down.
fall are only the surface indications
which reveal the depth and strength of
the current underneath. 1t is hardly
too much to say that the resources of
hundreds, if not thousands, more of bust.
ness men have been and are being
slowly devoured day by day and year by
year through the exigencies and neces-
sites arising from an attempt to keep
up with the expenditures of the social
circle. One family makes "a great
supper or entertains its friends royal
ly and generously, and all other fami-
lies who accept of and enjoy this
princely hospitality are expected to re-
ciprocate in like manner, or he
counted out;" and SO the social dissi-
patton goes on with fearful slaughter of
money, until death or bankruptcy or
enforced retirement into poverty puts
an end to this succession of refined car
nivals. In hundreds of instances the
business men who submit to this social
drain upon their financial life are lily
qualified or competent to bear it with
out serious detriment to their CONNER
cial standing and integrity; but the be-
hests of society are merciless and I'M
discriminating, and, rather than ac-
knowledge their real condition or break
with the :" set into which they have
mortised their social life, they will con-
sent to be driven into financial straits
which can only have one ending.
A distinguished clergyman of this
city recently told his large and fashion,
able congregation that he was ashamed
to say that many of them spent more on
one evening party than they gave for
religious purposes the full year round.
And no one could rise up and say the
statement was false.
We greatly fear that good people
generally are not awake to the ruin
which this form of respectable vice is
The despotic sway of fashion and So
cial custom in this particular is more
demoralizing and crushing than are the
edicts of any crowned tyrant in the
world. All of the class known as the
''upper ten,' or those who wish to be
considered such, tremble in reality be-
fore the DEGREES of this invisible social
monarch. Not to do what society
insists upon, is, in their diseased appre-
hension, to suffer 4 social ostracism
which to them is more uncomfortable than
death itself.
In the Good Book which serves as the
moral guide to so many minds, we read
that the Perfect Man was crucified be-
tween two thieves. All of the interests
which he eNemplified and embodied
have suffered a like fate ever since.
To-day, goodness, virtue, piety, honesty
and truthfulness are being daily cruci-
fed between the two thieves which ply
their hellish vocation with unintermit-
tent cruelty. One of these thieves lives
in the saloon, and the other moves in
what is called the best society. One
represents the lower classes and the
other the fashionable upper ten; but
both alike are eating out the life of the
Nation like two cancers, which, start
ing from opposite sides of the body
polite, make their way toward COM
mon center of destruction and DEATH
Let any man follow either tendency
long enough and he is sure to be found
sooner or later in the central cesspool
of ruin.
We are not inveighing against all So
cial life, for there is one kind of society
which is not only pleasant but elevating
and enrolling; but the expenditures Of
this circle are always marked by mod
GRAFTON, and their entertainments char
acterized by good sense and prudent
regard to consequences. The society
which kills and blasts and destroys is
that which is urged on by reckless
social ambition to make display and
keep up appearances, no matter what
the financial results may be. And the
sooner the life and light and power of
this society-thief is put out by storm
of pitiless public persecution and indig-
nant abandonment, the better it will be
for churches and families, for savings
banks and business houses, for individ-
ual integrity of character, and the gen.
eral welfare and honor of the Nation
Chicago Journal