The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-12
THE RED RAG TO LABOR.

4 eighteenth century between opulence
and want had more to do with the
French revolution than any other one
factor in the working out of that ca
Itastrophe. 1t was not so much hunger
and rags and squalor which turned the
tcommon people into ravening wolves as
| was the sight of pampered ariStocrats
clad in bravery of silk and purple, pa
Trading their vanities of wealth. When
1.-The fated Queen of France asked with
charming nafvete why, if the people
could not get bread, they did not eat
cake. she showed how little her bright
world rocked of the dark world be-
yond it, So the fine play went on
/ Monsieur led Madame to the table
where the dainties were spread on the
, and as they ate and drank starV-
ing men and women peered through Tue
na1inps: and when evening came the
| eallants on horseback and the hlSh-
loo,.,, DANES in their Sedan chairs, a
retinue brilliant with gems and nutter-
;,,. With laces. threaded the foul streets
! Of Paris. leaving the odor of patchouli
~ reconcile the ragged wayfarers TO
+beir lot after me, the deluge," said
the King. and His Majesty was right.
IF came. The poor seized the firebrand
and the pike and the rich and hlgh-
horn exchanged the ostentation OF
court progress for the sad procession
| of the carts rumbling towards the gull
lotine.
Things are not so badly off in the
world todav-far from it,-as they were
| a little more than hundred years ago
in France. There is a wider area OF
comfort and intelligence, a better OPP
portunity in life, a duller instinct OF So
cial revolution. But after all human
nature is the same. Greed and envy
still sway the multitudes; ostentatious
wealth is still an offence to those who
toll hard for little sustenance. What
reprisals 1t brings depend on tempera-
ment. on the defences of society, on the
spirit of the age and on the width of
divergence in the social classes-but the
reprisals always come.
What old Californian does not recall
the Cotton letters in which that far
sighted man of affairs, the late c. P.
Huntington, rebuked, in scathing Ian
guage, not always chaste, the building
of great houses on Mob Hill by the
nouveau richie of the railroad and the
mines. His pet antipathy was Stan
ford whose palace, so imperial and
overlapping, looked down upon the
humber dwellings of the poor. It was
not Stanfords fault nor Crocker's that
the mob which mounted the hill one
day from the sandlots, hoarsely chal-
Ilenging the millionaires, did not leave
that crested manor bare knoll covered
with ashes and broken stone. Had
times pinched little harder; had Denis
Kearney not been venal, a tragedy
might have happened there which would
have appalled, the land
So far as Huntington was concerned
he always avoided display. His Mob
Hill house was the least pretentious
there: and he refused for years to live
in the New York palace which his wife,
in her efforts to enter society, insisted
on having built. The writer we'll re-
members getting an indignant letter
from the old magnate, asking one San
Francisco paper to correct the state
ment of another, that he had bought a
| 81 500 carpet. ct never paid more than
| $3.50 for a carpet in my life,' wrote the
man of multi-millions. Far be it from
him to rouse the sleeping devil in the
proletariat.
The latest bad effect from ostentatfon
in the matter of money is the strike cpl
demic on the Mainland. The strike in
the iron and steel industry came direct
ly after the formation of the billion-dol-
lar trust and the appearance of Mr.. Car
negie in the role of Croesus, able to
give vast iron-made fortunes away on
every hand without fmpairing his re-
serve or Gripping his prestige as a
financier. We have heard much OF the
Carnegie benefactions. of the thirty
young millionaire partners of the great
man and of Skibo castle The atmos-
phere OF millions and multi-millions Is
the orly one through which the name
of Carnegie can be deserted. The low
est estimate of this one mans fortune.
made in iron and steel is ten times
that of the late A. T. Stewards. All
this ia very interesting to the curious
public: but to the s2-per-day laborer In
the iron mines. to the man sweating at
the furnace for just enough to keep his
family alive and under a roof, the
thought comes that there has been a
very unequal division of the profits he
has helped to create. The philosophy
is bad; the economic plea cannot hold
water: but the laborer believes that he
has been wronged. The circus process
sion of wealth which Carnegie has de-
lighted in has stirred the grinny toiler
to revolt. He wants to ride, If not in
one of those gilded chariots, at least In
a modest equipage of his own. So the
strike comes on and where it will end
no man can say. Fortunately the times
are good. What If there were five mil
lions of idle men to rise and declare
that the day has come to abolish the
plutoorat?
That day may yet be reached IN
America, and the flaring magnif1cence
of the rich will be the means, perhaps,
of imparting to the crisis a more serious
hue than any this country has ever had
to see before. Patriots have much to
dread in another era of industrial de-
preston; but unless the vulgar and
prodigal display and boast of millions
succumbs to the growth of prudence
and good taste, who shall say that the
carmagnole may not yet sound In the
streets Of great American cities while
beneath those surging thoroughfares
one may hear the black angels laugh?
INCOME TAX INEQUALITIES.