The herald., 1897-07-05
A RoTTING FABRIC

The aristocracy, so-called, in this
country is the aristocracy of wealth, and
the acts of its increasing number of de-
generates is sending it to the devil at a
rapid rate. Society is rotting at the
top and the decay is passing downward
to the vitals of our most cherished in
stitutions.
Of what use is wealth? What does it
produce? What does it accomplish in
the hands of society? Let the Bradbury
case answer. Mrs. Bradbury was an
offspring of one of the oldest and veal
thiest families in Southern California.
Her every want was supplied. From the
day Of her birth she lacked nothing that
money could give. She was given a
finished education, rounded off in Eu-
rope. Then she came home and married
man who occupied her own station in
life, who also had wealth. Great oppor-
tunities were before her. She had
money, power, influence, friends. There
was scarcely any limit to the good she
might have done.
But the woman was a degenerate. She
had no honorable purpose in life; no
high ambition. Humanity was to her
an unknown quantity. The virtues of
domesticity, charity, of being useful, did
not appeal to her. She lived in an at
mosphere of selfish qualification.
There could be only one outcome in
case of this kind. Scandal was inev-
table, and when it came Mrs. Bradbury
proved her degeneracy by showing that
she has no sense of shame, no womanly
modesty, none of the attributes that
placed her sex 80 high in the estimat tion
of mankind. To her there was nothing
vile nothing wrong about the elope-
the public as one might expect the ver-
lest drab of the gutter to do.
The Herald is not making war on the
woman in the case. The man is no bet
wretched pair. He, too, is a choice il
lustration of the "best society in this
democratic republic of ours. A worth
less sponge, who probably never did an
sole claim to the title of gentleman
rested in his Discrimination to pay his
debts and the fact that his wife sup
ported him in idleness. A man who
deliberately violated his marriage vows
and set about to seduce and steal away
the wife of another man. But l am
gentleman, 1 am a gentleman" reiter-
ates this base libel on decent humanity
gentleman, forsooth! God help this
unhappy country of ours if such as Ward
are to define and maintain the title.
Yet Ward was cordially received into
the highest circle of wealthy society. He
was a part of it. He helped to make it.
Society was responsible for him, and
being responsible for him and for the
woman, lowered itself to their level.
After all, it is not upon the man nor
the woman upon whom the greatest re-
sponsibility rests. 1t is the aristocracy
of ostentatious, foolish, useless wealth
that must bear the burden. The de-
generacy of the one and the worthless
scoundrelism of the other are its 1egiti-
mate fruits.
We are approaching a dangerous cri-
sis when such conditions exist. Given,
as a general proposition, the'greed for
wealth and the misuse of law and gov
ernment in order to acquire it; given the
establishment of society based upon
that wealth and upon it's vulgar dis
play; given second generation, brought
up in idleness having no honora BILE am
bition. no useful purpose in life, no
sense of decency no patriotism, no vir-
tue, and what must be the result? Yet
these conditions prevail and they are
sapping our internal life.
Society as here understood is setting
a very dangerous example to the rising
generation 1t produces envy and dis
content among those who see only the
gilded sepulchre. and not the rotting
corpses within it. 1t exasperates the
poor and the unfortunate and aggra-