The Wilmington morning star., 1947-11-04
AS Pegler Sees It
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, BY King Features Sym
dicate, Inc.)


dicate, mc.)
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3. - Among my
bigotries, if any, you will find, SO help
me- not the faintest prejudice against
money, or those who pursue it or have it,
as such. Time was when 1 warmed my
revolutionary fibers with smoldering ha-
tired of the rich because it seemed to me
that they were all ill-mannered. Actually,
however, at that time l knew no rich peo-
pie and my state of mind was a naive
tribute to the shrill hauteur of the high
busted burlesque queen who squawked "the
very audacity'' at the bum who flicked
ashes down her front She made the rich
seem awful stuck-up.
STILL that was snobbish of me and the
application of double-standard because
l knew that we poor, or the non-rlch, were
often unrefined ourselves.
I think my first exposure to wealth in
the mass occurred when Tex Rlckard
formed his bund of the most-well-to-do and
socially-exclusve millionaires in New
York at the new Madison Square Garden
uptown. Those were the days which will
ever be remembered as the days when.
recall sense of surprise that so many
of them were not yet 40. I was secretly
skept;ca' because some of the older ones
were 50 borny-handed in their speech and
social bearing and I half-expected their
purple smoking jackets - they did wear
pur,'eS then-and fine linen to fade into
dur IS. Some of the sprouts had been
brol ere' boys just few years before and
some of the portly fellows had skun mules
and fired locomotives.
John McEntee Bowman, who strewed
Biltmores from New York to Coral Gables
to Phoenix to Los Angeles, gave a big
eating at the Commodore one night, with
a whole octave of glasses, which h
L. i
tantivv-yo-ho and I was putting mine host
down for not half-stinking sort of rotter,
y'know, when Mr. Bowman wank up the
whole side of his chubby face and said
it made him sentimental to sit among
horsemen lust precisely where he was.
Because, Mr. Bowman said, it was just
here, forty Second and Park, that he used
to back up dray from the Belmont hotel
about my age, to fetch and carry the
trunks.
Now I am not going to stop Oft here
to argue whether such talking is boasting
or humblng, for it can be either or neith-
er and it all depends on the man. And
if it's boasting he is, maybe the poor
fellow is still dazed by his luck and just
wants to talk about it. And if he is low
downing or commonizing himself to show
he has no airs well what would you want
him to do? Boast of his rich grandpar-
ents?
Statistics show that there are now l47.7
millionaires in the United States to every
one registered in 1898. Allowing for dol
lar initiation of 200 per cent in SO years,
this still means that the advantages of
great wealth have been widely distributed
and the overall picture of the set-up is
further implemented by the fact that the
mink coat population has increased as
| Economically at an average current value
of 81, 730 as against $50 in 1900 only those
were sealskin not mink. Yachts, too. Auto
mobiles not quoted, as there were none
then.
The complaint against the rich is no
more valid in morals and law than so
much heckling on a picket-line. An essay
ist who addressed the subject lately called
as one witness Mark Twain, whose auto
biography is said to have viewed with con-
tempt a passion for gold which debased
the morals and enervated the manhood
of the glorious old United States OF A.
That from Mark Twain, pot-bolllng mon
ey-lover who wore white dress SUIT IN
London for the same reason that Holly
wood hams wear smoked glasses in the
Stork. is on a par with the late Roose-
velt's threat to the money-changers ex-
cept that we must admit that Twain new
er put himself in Gods place. Mark Twain
was as bad as he was good and it he
did say this about the pursuit OF wealth ne
knew what he was doing when ne Or
dered his memoirs sealed until he was
dead. His "roughing it, was disgraceful
reporting and he might better have rested
and charged his batteries. But, like other
trash that he wrote, it added to the flrst
great American Literary fortune which is
historic in the trade.
If the pursuit of money degrades those
who get a lot of it, were the motives
any finer or the results preferable in the
millions who were actually Instructed how
to stall and cheat and protected in the
practice by unions in the war? The pas
sion for gold was burning there and the
difference between the plunger and the
pinker, the big-shot and the punk IS not
of morals but only of size.
A great man, truly Indifferent to money,
given prominence and influence during his
life by noble example could qualm the
writhing in our tripes and induce us to
sweeter works on earth. My own feeling
against the whole greedy, mocking horde
Of freebooters who came plundering un-
der pietistical notices in 1888, from Roo
seveft down to the dirtiest little union
racketeer, is not mere primitive anger at
cheats and thieves. It is not mere con-
tempt for hypocrisy. 1t is bigger than that.
It is a loathing of those takers who pro-
fess to hate avarice but still honor him
who profiteered in the faith of millions.
The nations of Europe will not calmly
allow nine countries to force down their
tthroats the doctrine of communism-Sen
: Tom Connally (D) of Texas.
The time is past when the labor move
, ment OF any country can safety refrain
from interesting itself in national foreign