The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-18
A DEFENSE OF LUXURY
Extravagances of the Rich Furnish Elm
 pIOyment for the Wage Farmers.

Extravagances of the Rich Furnish Elm plOyment for the Wage Farmers. New York Globe.
 A magazine writer, who claims to have carefully gathered his facts from robe-makers and milliners and all other available sources of information. es- inmates that 5000 women of New York spend no less than $40,o0o.000. or an average of $6,000 each. on their ward robes. If these figures are correct, less than one per cent. of the women of the city sQuander on their clothes sum greater than IS devoted to the city's gigantic school system, and nearly 70 per cent. of the entire municipal bud get. In republican America, whose old
 ideal was one of simplicity of life, we are rivaling the sartorial excesses Of Neronic Rome.
 It is admitted the luxury Is enervat-
 ing and oorrupting to the person luxu- riating. So teaches every ancient and modern moraIist--so teaches every re- ligion. It saps the foundations of in- dividual character and makes virtue flabby and non- resistant. But the de- fense we have often heard. Luxury
 may be necessary" says Rousseau, ito give the poor a livelihood" Money must circulate, London rejoices when there Is a coronation or jubilee: our needlewomen when the opera season begins. This idea is as old as human
 society. Gibson speaks of the luxury of the capital, causing the return of
 money to the provinces, as one of the
 things which kept the Roman empire
 so long intact. The selfishness of the luxurious thus becomes the fountain of good-a species of altruism. They vi- cariously sacrifice themselves, as 1t were-condemning themselves to cor
 roding kind of life that others may thrive.
 This reasoning, however. has never
 satisfied the political economists If 1t
 is true, say they, that the mere making of work was a good thing, then Nero
 was inspired by sound economic princi- ples when he burned Rome. The fallacy we are told, Is in assuming that except for luxury expenditures money would not circulate. It always circulates, ex- cept when put in pit. The question Is thus not as to whether money will cir culate, but how 1t will circulate whether for the purchase of things which do harm, or for things that do good and assist in the further produc- ton of wealth. If $40.000,000 is spent | for clothes by 5000 New York women. then an army of 80, 900 workers, at $500 per year, are continuously employed on their wardrobes-an enormous waste of energy which might be diverted to oth- CT things.
 The argument of the political econo- mist is doubtless sound, yet since the
 world began the free spender, even though he spends on nothing produc-
 tive, has been popular, while the miser who spends nothing and therefore re-
 serves all for productive investment
 has been mathematical. Certainly, in view of the present adjustment of hu-
 man society, enormous would be the suffering which would follow If the
 rich should determine to return to the
 simple life-to wear only holden gray and dine on homely fare. Such change
 might be good for the next generation.
 but 1t would be hard on the present one, and 1t is in this present one that
 the vast majority. however much they
 may love posterity. are chiefly interest ed