The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-12-02
SHAMS OF SOCIETY.

The celebrated English lecturer
and reformer, Miss Emily Faith
full, is visiting this country for the
third time, delivering her excellent
lectures in the leading cities of the
east. Recently one of her subjects
was "The Shams of Modern Soci
ety." and the lecturer was particu.
larry happy in exposing the hypoc.
risy that is destroying society by
leading men and women to practice
fraud and deceit and pass them
selves off as something th"t they
are not. She said she would not
sound her voice against wealth or
the proper spending of money, but
she would proclaim and protest
against the wasting Of money upon
sham living or in mere ostentation
for the purpose of creating the inn
preston that the individual was
wealthy. The lady said that in
London in five years $1,000 had
been spent to keep the Lord Mayors
coach in repair, while mere pit
tanee only had been appropriated
to the public libraries. Referring
to the loud extravaganza and sham
living in this country. as well as in
the highly civilized nations of the
old world, Miss Faithful said it
seemed as if men and women
had lost the taste for sim.
pie pleasures, everything being
sacrificed for earning large fortunes,
which once obtained were spent in
show. The household deity is the
Goddess Of Getting-on." To keep
up appearances our women wear
false jewelry, our architects build
fancy exteriors to houses, the in
teriofs Of which are mere sham
sham plumbing, sham drainage,
poor material whenever hidden from
sight. And this is not only the fact
in cities. the country is just as bad {.
A hard, narrow materialism is found
in country life. Servants are shifty
and unthrifty, and the fine lady is
slammed in the kitchen. The two
nations, Great Britain and the
United States, have given them
selves up to money-getting and
money spending; wealth, without
ancestry, endeavors by ostentation
to make up for lack of import
ance. It is the sham which
most disgusts;ss sham wealth.
sham respectability and sham reli-
gion. The poor follow the rich,
end ndeavoring by desperate shams to
keep up with the leaders, bringing
the misery Of real debt as revenge
for the hypocrisy of sham wealth.
When the handbook becomes the
criterion of merit, we have shams
in literature and art. The greed for
gold brings the shams of loveless
and affection is slammed
when mothers sell their daughters
to the highest bidder. Modern
society on both sides Of the Atlantic
is passing through a very grave
crisis, England is a paradise to the
rich and the speculators, but it is a
hell to the poor. Wealth crowds
into the opera house. while $4,000
Iaborers stand outside asking for
work to keep their frmilies from
starving.
Miss Faithful is not without
faith in reform, believing 1t can
bs brought about, and correctly
assigns the task to the press and
the pulpit. Newspapers, she says,
should urge a return to simplicity
of manners, and preachers ought
to denounce such shams as charity
balls, where thousands are spent on
9 nights amusement under the sham
of helping the needy. Both must
expose the sham Sunday piety
which closes the museum and lib
rary and opens the rum shop.
The lecture was most powerful
arraignment of one of the greatest
evils of the times. It is not likely
that it will have any marked or i'm
mediate effect, for the reason that
at present sham has stronger hold
upon mankind than reason or good
sense.
DrA nf Vl1nulll0