Barre evening telegram. (Barre, Vt.) 1898-19??, 1902-10-07

Of the Argyle rooms. The women were
still women-God bless them!--a little
vulgarized by SO much money, but ig-
norant Of the pinchbeck airs and
graces of the dcmimondalne and the
unspeakable dirt of London and Paris
Yet then. as now, the best people, no
matter how rich, turned silently aside
and gave them the middle of the road.
The tragic end of Fisk was for time
m object lesson. 1t let In a food of
light and gave moments check to the
orgy of license which was exceeding
Its natural bounds and beginning to
make its influence felt in dangerous
proximity to those regions where
wealth was recognized as paramount.
1t was this which secured the modtfi
cation of the Stokes verdict from
death to a short term of imprison-
ment.
The noxious weed, however, had TAX
ell root. The bucket shop was to be-
come an institution, the stock gambler
a power, the market as familiar to
women as to men. Mr.. Carnegie may
give all of his millions to the noblest
works, the Messrs. Rockefeller may en-
dow thousand schools and charities,
while dozen billionaires may show
by their wise and lavish use Of money
how Ill they think Of it except as the
means of doing good; but, as the poor
are always with us, SO are the vul-
garians, who, given money enough,
cat ,,p a vnl,,rt,,ovc nj n01ttv II
1t the Four Hundred and, having made
sure of its boundaries and their isola
ton, proceed to make their own moral
code, hardly deigning even to ask the
rest of the community, What are you
going to do about it?'
The seagoing palace, the modern au-
to, the struggle for equivocal notori-
; ETY., the strife for titles, the eating
from the tree Of forbidden knowledge,
the aping OF the manners OF the for
eign swell and the fancied great, the
marriage as an experiment and the
marriage Of convenience, the hot pur-
suit of pleasure at home and abroad
in short, the constant striving after the
ostentatious display Of wealth inevita-
BILE to the sun worship of money-these
are among the features that distin-
gulsh the Four Hundred from other
rich people, who do not need to affect
! anything, who heartily despise such
proceedings, who, with fortunes secure
and social positions fixed, live without
scandal and travel without adventure,
but whom the wantons Of the smart
set describe as the "bourgeoisie."
! In separating the sheep from the
goats and properly ticketing the goats
shall one be accused Of bias
! phemy? -"
| Back Of all this stands not alone a
great moral problem, but a great ma
! tional and economic problem. The
| pretense that we have maligned any
body or spoken outside the record Is a
device of the guilty and their news
paper apologists to hide behind the
self respecting and the virtuous. 1t is
, Of the essence Of caste distinction
(, where the rule is touch one, touch all,
+, a rule which during the reign Of ter
ror brought thousands Of the innocent
| and the good along with the bad to the
f; guillotine.
/ Licentiousness, like revolution, never
goes backward. The assumption of to-
day becomes the claim of tomorrow
In a land where there are no patents Of
nobility and where in some sort money
must set the standards the rich them
selves, before all others, should look
to 1t that their colleagues in good for.
tune do not disgrace the order-shall
we say Of the Golden Fleece by their
disregard Of common rights and their
Indifference to public opinion. ~
we do not need to institute any his
toric parallels; to take to ourselves any
lessons from ancient Greece and Rome
or modern France, suggestive as these
may be. He is but poor observer of
contemporary life and no prophet at all
who does not see that the whole trend
Of public affairs is set toward an ulti-
mate conflict between the forces of
prerogative, on the one hand, and the
forces of what the exclusive few de-
light to call 1.-The great unwashed" on
the other; between capital, too often
dNdIlClOuS anu EFisl)IIlR, anu IiDOI,
grimy and passionate, and left rider
less, a monster without head.
1t is beside the purpose to say that
there are rich men humane, generous,
charitable. So are there poor men pa
tient, wise, conservative. 1t is with
forces, not individuals, we shall have
to deal, and, though temporizing may
postpone the day, the day is surely
coming when it is to be decided who
own the country, who control the gov
eminent - the aggregations of wealth
mainly piled up in a single section or
the hewers of wood and the drawers of
water who do the work and fight the
battles and pay the taxes, the great
commonalty of what Abraham Lin
coin called 1.-THE plain people"
Enlightened men would moderate
that conflict. The scandalous behavior
of the conspicuous rich plays directly
to the lead of the extremist and the
agitator with unclean hands preparing
the pickax Of the leveler and the brand