The labor world., 1898-07-09
IN CENTRAL PARK.
Musings on American Aristoc.
racy by a Writer in Brann's
lcOnOclast.
The American Settlement Is
Distant, But 1t will Be Made
Some Day.

Some Day.
Standing not long ago near the lower
edge of Central Park-nodestly stand
ing as tax-paying American citizen
who considers himself entitled to nc
more of the public domain than his feet
covert saw sweeping by the long train
of the American Goldfish aristocracy
The trees were dressed in their first
fresh robe of spring; the birds, more
beautifully clothed than any one of all
that mass of male and female exquisites
fitted from bough to bough, the sky
was f1awless blue, unlocked by wisp
Of white, soft fresh breeze crooned
from the reaches of the North river, and
the burly park policeman, clad in sober
gray, gazed in reverence on wealth as it
rolled along. see this sight often, but
never without momentary wonder as
to where all the money comes from.
There is no sight IN all America which
SO emphasizes the width and depth OF
the gulf between our rich and our poor,
gulf that is ever widening and ever
growing deeper. and shall grow wider
and deeper until IN some far time (pray
God not in yours or mineD it is foul and
wet with blood and bridged with corpses.
The wonder is only momentary, because
/ know, of course, that the money
comes from every section of America;
that into the nav Of this conscienceless
and ever voracious city by the sea our
men and women pour their dollars in an
unceasing stream. There is tonight in
New York more than million of Waco
money, more than a million of Spokane
money and San Diego money. New
York gathers it in and spends it in was
sail. 1t grinds up dollars and hopes and
lives as though they were wheat, and it
vast upper and neither milestone.
This is due to advantages Of natural
position and to legislation, which has
tended to enrich tho rich. It is due to
the robber tariff and to financial laws
made solely in the interest Of New
Yorkers and their kind. 1t is due to the
position won by the city, as the fashion
setter of the world. It is due to the
fact that it's lights and lightness at
tract young men and women who come
with money, hoping to achieve ame,and
60 down, and are seen no more. From
the vast whirlpool, which sucks them in
arises, not even the sound of despairing
cry. 1t can not be heard above the
rush and roar of tho maelstrom.
The steady influx Of this wealth, the
steady battening upon the carcasses of
the slain has built up here an order of
dollars-dirtied people, who have come to
imagine themselves Of finer clay than
their toiling fellow citizens, who
look down upon their toiling fell
low citizens. any one of whom
is worth hundred of them.
These are the Goldfish aristocracy. l do
not know who invented the term. It
smacks of Massachusetts origin. Any
how, it fits.
The immediate forbears OF the cod
fish aristocracy were in trade. Thearis-
tocracy itself does nothing except spend
the money acquired unscrupulously by
the said forbears. It regards business
as "low." 1t regards literature, science,
art, anything which ennobles while it
feeds, as "low." It regards outside hu-
manity as "low." Everything which
does not Immediately concern it is "low.")
That middle-aged libertine with the
bald-head and pufs under his eyes,
wheeling slowly along behind pair ct
docktailed bays, worth $4,000 apiece. is
the son of man who was born in the
marshes of New Jersey, and at one time
was captain of small coasting schooner
which hauled onions and things from
port to port. The son will not admit
that he would know an onion if it were
put before him. That little, thin, ner-
vous looking man, wrapped to his chin
in furs, though the day is mild, is the
son of one who made an immense for
tune from government contracts during
the late war. OF course his father was
a patriot, who swindled the government
outrageously, and is probably RESPONSE
BILE for the deaths of more Federal sol
diers than any thousand of Confeder
ates, but that does not affect the son
who is one of the aristocracy to his man
icured finger-tips, and believes thai
army contracts are "low." The big burly
man, bouncing laboriously in a pigskir
saddle, that is strapped to an almost
priceless hackney, got his money from
a father who got it from fools in Wal
street. Lolling upon siIken cushions
which line an English barouche, that il
drawn by pair Of grays (the outfit il