The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1903-12-12
PLAGUE OF LUXURY.
How It Has Fallen Upon the People
with Prosperous Times. =,
With the XntsrOd uction of Modern
iConveniences and the Counfry's
Growth In Richer> Even the
Flat Dweller Lives High.

The growth of luxurious living in
America was very slow during the first
so years of the republic. Indeed, up to
the breaking out of our civil war the
inequalities Of fortune were not so
marked as to make those who lived
sumptuously according to the stand
ards of those days seem SO far removed
from the merely well-to-do as to be al
most in another world. In the earlier
days, any sober and Industrious man
could prosper, even though he did n OF
perform merely manual labor. There
was work for every one to do, and no
one was more in demand than Mr.. jack
of-all-trades, who now walks superfu-
GUS in the dusty highway, with no one
to applaud his adaptability, none to
need his ingenious services. Food was
plenty, land was cheap, rents were low.
Be honest and you will be happy, was
not mere can't; it was the solemn and
the grateful truth. Pretty nearly
every one lived well, but pretty nearly
all lived plainly. With better houses.
with better water supplies, with i'm
proved lamps for illumination and
then with the introduction of illum-
mating gas, and most of all with the
greater wealth which came at the end
of the civil war, the growth of luxuri-
Gus living began taking tremendous
strides. Luxury with poor light after
sunset, luxury with few. of the means
of personal cleanliness, does not mean
much to us nowadays. Why, a man in
a Harlem flat at 5000 year can COM
mand more of the kind of luxury just
mentioned than say the dissolute
Charles II. ever dreamed of. But the
wealth that comes with new fortunes
to new people was really what began
the race which may be called the Mil
lionaire Stakes for all ages, says a
writer in Ainslee's Magazine.
Before these stakes were opened
there were u few fortunes in this coun.
try. Some were made in the trade with
the east, some were made in strictly
domestic commerce, some were found
ed in piracy, and other adventures by
sea, but the greatest number and the
most stable were those which came
from the shrewd inves tments in land
which was enhanced in value by the
growth of cities. Even up to the time
that the newly rich began to splurge,
the owners of the fortunes Just Men
toned were pretty generally tolerably
plain people, who lived very quietly
and looked upon those who made I'M
usual display as too vulgar to come in
side the sacred pale which called itself
society. In New York, this class of
people at the time mentioned lived in
the neishborhood of Washington
Square; in Philadelphia. toward the
loot of Walnut street, and in Boston. in
that ever sacred Beacon street. They
were slow but sure. They had no
doubt about their position, or the pro-
priety with which they maintained
their dignity. They did what they
pleased. but they did not please to be
in the least fantastic, theatric, os-
tentatious or conspicuous. And until
the newly rich had arrived, with the
manifest intention to stay permanent
~, there were none with either the am
bition or the ability to dispute this SUI
premacy, which was maintained not by
an aggressiveness, but by the passive
power of inertia.