We can no more prevent this than we can prevent the
growth of wealth itself; and our duty is, instead of wasting our
breath in denouncing extravagance, or hailing panics as purging
fires, to do what in us lies to give rich people more taste, more
conscience, more sense of responsibility for curable ills, and a
keener relish of the higher forms of pleasure. Extravagance--or, in
other words, the waste of money on sensual enjoyment, the production
of hideous furniture or jewelry, or of barbarous display--has to be
checked not by the preaching of poor people, but by the rich man's
own superiority to these things, and his own repugnance for them.
This repugnance can only be inspired by education, whether that of
school and college, or that of a refined and cultivated social
atmosphere. Much would be done in this direction if public opinion
exacted of the owners of large fortunes that they should give their
sons the best education the country affords; or, in other words,
send them to college, instead of setting them up in the dry-goods
business or the grocery business.
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