Daily Arizona silver belt., 1910-02-10
SET A FASHION OF SIMPLICITY

Those who have great wealth usually profess to wish to do good to humanity. Some of them call themselves custodians of the people, $ wealth, and declare that Providence put much money in their possession in order that they might do good with it. Too often the good they do is for themselves alone; too often, too the good they do themselves is harm, because it means sOftening and cOrrupting luxury and fast living.
 The talk that extravaganza is one of the chief contributing causes of the high cost of living in this country suggests way in which such people might, if they would, do great good If ex- travagance is widespread, it is the result of an example. The people of this country haven't yet quite got over believing that they are just as good as anybody and that they are entitled to just as good things as anybody gets. God for bid that they ever should get over that belief But if there is widespread extravaganza, 1t is due to that feeling. People see others rolling in OstentatiOus luxury, and they wish to experience some of it themselves. So they live beyond their means. That is how extravaganza comes; by the force of example.
 Let those who have much, if they really wish to do good to their country and their country meh, set fashion of simplicity. Let them eat simply, dress simply, live simply. They will be surprised to find how much virtue there is in simplicity, though apparently they never have suspected that it contained any virtue at all. Eating simply will mean better appetite and bet ter health. Dressing simply will mean better taste and finer beauty. Living simply will mean greater content and pleasures more real than any to be found in high priced ostentatiOn.
 Nothing could happen to this nation that would do it more good than a return to that fine simplicity which is so far in the regretted past. The lack of simplicity is responsible for the mad rush to get money; which means to get money without much regard to how it is gotten.
 Many man has sacrificed peace, content, health, honesty-his very soul-in order to get the money needed to keep up the extravagant scale of living set by his wife and daughters. If the truth must be told, the crazy pursuit of rich es which has become so rapid and so fierce that considerations of honesty and moral well-being are forgotten is due quite as much to the de- mands of luXurycraving wives and daughters as to anything else.
 Let those who have set this deadly and dread ful fashion of ostentation and senseless display set new fashion of simplicity. Let them cease striving to outdo each other in luXuriOusness and barbarous magnifcence, with the heartache and heartbreak, the discontent and envy, the crime and corruption, that come with that strife. Let them strive to Outdo each other in setting new fashions of simplicity and sanity, and try, for change, the peace and content and happi- ness and self-respect there is in plain living.
 We haven't the remotest idea that anybody will adopt this advice. This discussion is prob ably a wicked waste of time and space. It is hard to believe that there is enough good sense afoat in the country to make such thing possible. But honestly, now, don't you believe it would be a fine thing if such fashion were set and fol lowed? And don't you believe that down in the bottom of their hearts great majority of the people who are engaged in the wild competition to see who can make the bravest show are tired of it, and would be glad if they dared return to that simplicity which this country needs more than almost anything else