The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-20
THE NEWPORT BAND.
Of Aristocracy, Compared With Aristo-
 ties Idea.

anything else, and whose forbears have
 not been anything else for millienni-
 um or so, has some of the attractive qualities of an ancient vintage or of ex- Iceptionally ripe old cheese. Brand new
 aristocrats are not pleasing. They still
 smell of machine oil and paint. Would
 be aristocrats who have a measure of
 blue blood in their veins, but who are
 doomed to live in democratice society,
 are in no wise attractive, but they are
 unobjectionable when they don't talk
 too much. When they talk they get foolish. E lg t We don't know whether Mrs. Stuyves-
 ant Fish really said to St. Louis re- porter the other day the silly things that the newspapers attributed to her, and,
 so far as the public is concerned, it
 doesn't matter We have all of us
 heard the woud-be aristocrat say such
 things in private, and the remark attri-.
 buted to Mrs. Fish will therefore serve
 well enough as a pronouncement of the
 would-be aristocratic views of Ameri-5
 can society. We need not finger on the.
 indelicate remark that Mrs. Roosevelt
 dresses on three hundred dollars year
 and she looks it." We should be sorry
 to believe that many American citizens are capable of making such comments
 upon the wife of the president
 We see no reasonff for enlarging on the assurance that Harry Lehr never gave any monkey dinner at Mrs. Fishs home in Newport. We're glad to know that he didn't. and are wiling to let the affair go at that.
 The opinion upon which we have a
 word or two to say relates to an alleged necessity, or inevitableness, of class distinctions. It is true that Europe is older'' and perhaps more worldly wise
 than America, i" and that Europeans.
 have not eliminated class distinctions;
 but it has hitherto been the boast of loyal Americans that they were working out national life on this continent which was an advance beyond European systems in this particular respect. We have abolished class distinctions in so
 far as they were established in the body of law brought by the colonists from Europe. At the polls and before the law we have made men equal. To a great extent we have hitherto succeeded in maintaining in most parts of our country an approximate equality in social intercourse. Whether by inevi-
 table necessity. or not, that equality is
 rapidly disappearing, in consequence of
 our later industrial revolution, with the
 astounding disparity of economic condi- I tion that it has created. Any aristoc- racy of blood that existed here has long 1axyn 1alE I,, aristocrats are to have satisfaction of
 their dreams they will have to find it in
 the class inequality of brutally
 materialistic money power. We suspect l that true blood, to the manner of old aristocracy born would as soon eat I with a polite negro as with some recent arrivals on upper Fifth avenue or the Ocean drive. 5:#a But to return to the fundamental question. Will there "of necessity be l two classes-the aristocracy and the
 common people?" Is it mistake, and even dangerous, to "be democratic?"
 And must admit that people are not
 equal anyway s
 l There was once wise and worldly I wise gentleman named Aristotle, who defended the thesis that aristocracy is
 the best form of society, and that all I civilization rests on slavery. Aristotle
 associated with well-born people in his day, and was the companion and tutor iof a youth who in later years became known as Alexander the Great. It may be presumed that Aristotle didn't speak or write without reflection, and we think it might interest ladies like Mrs. I Stuyvesant Fish to know just what he meant by aristocracy and by slavery. l Boiled down to brief and simple ex- \ pression, his philosophy was that any
 slavery which is created by the brutal power of the strong to subjugate the
 weak is an abhorrent thing, but that some men and women are slaves by na- ture. They would rather be lackeys to l the great than to lead self-respecting, ] Independent lives in obscurity or pover- | ty. In like manner the aristocracy that \ is born of mere wealth or power is a spurious article. which levels the pride | of nations by reducing them to vulgar
 vice and inbecility. The only true \ aristocracy is that of those great souls \ who are aristocrats by nature; the men and women of noble ideals, of civic courage, of fortitude in days of trouble, the men and women of thought, of 4 moral power, of beauty of spirit. Happy, indeed, in Aristotles view, is \ the state in which. these aristocrats by
 mature hold sway, and in which the groveling ones who are slaves by nature
 are relegated to their proper place.
 | We suspect that Aristotle and Mrs.
 Stuyvesant Fish are both right. "Peo- l pie are not equal anyway" Law and linstitutions cannot make aristocrats by
 nature out of men who spend their days in bribing Legislatures and in their lust
 of wealth, squeezing the uttermost
 service out of human flesh and blood; or \ out of women whose thoughts habitually \ rise to the level of such questions as the \ annual expenditure for the clothes of I the presidents wife. Nor can the fair est traditions of a self-respecting re- ! public prevent the semi-public sale on the matrimonial auction block of as- sorted lots of slaves, by nature, in so-
 ciety where it becomes necessary for a distinguished leader of an exclusive set to deny in the public prints the giving of
 ia monkey dinner" at her touse,-In- dependent. ;. -t.
 \ 1.-the Baby ia cutttng Teeth
 Be sure and use that old and well-tried rem. II sad ell e Cnn no5 fo,