Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1918 — DO WELL TO SPEND [ARTICLE]

DO WELL TO SPEND

Lecturer Upholds Extravagance of the Wealthy. Lavish Expenditure for Luxuries Means That the Prosperity of the Country Is Assured, Is Assertion He Makes. “Because we are the most luxuryloving people on earth, we are also the richest; therefore we have been called upon to finance and to fight to a finish this most extravagant of all wars, and we are able to do it,” said E. Leroy Pelletier, speaking on “Prosperity,” at Detroit "We hear a lot nowadays to the effect that we Americans are a wasteful and extravagant people. And it is said by way of condemnation, or at least of reproof. Yet when the war had been precipitated by the most frugal people on earth —except the more .primitive races of shvages—the extravagant nation was asked to finance and to prosecute the war to a successful finish. “We expect to do Ws from the surplus left from our extravagance. Test And it is because of our extravagance that we have the money to do it “China has great resources. Why are not the Chinese wealthy? Because they have worn the same style of clothes for a thousand years, and have subsisted on one diet —plain rice I The Japanese tried the same form of frugality for centuries and just man-aged-to subsist When they began .to copy American ’extravagances* they became a world power. “It doesn’t matter that the $5,000 roadster is a non-essential to the son of a rich man, or that the luxurious limousine could be dispensed with by the rich man himself —that doesn’t ‘matter. “The point is, those luxuries, those extravagances, those non-essentials are virtually essential to the millions of men and the families of the men whose jobs depend on the making of our twentieth-century vehicle. “The sewing machine, the phonograph, the electric light, the piano, the furniture; yes, the very schools wherein the workmen’s children are educated, are the direct result of the craving on the part of the rich man for those -luxuries. “Here’s to the wealthy man and to the rich, woman who is extravagant—for these play the game. They pass the prosperity around. Rank sophistry those phrases, ‘an old suit is a badge of honor,’ and ‘a dollar paid for a boy to play with is a traitor dollar.’ If taken seriously they would result In terrible suffering in a short time. “Food conservation, not by short rationing, but by changing our diet so as to use those meats and - grains that cannot be shipped so as to supply our allies with those that contain the most nourishment In the most compact form —that is commendable. Every intelligent, patriotic American indorses it and will gladly do his part. “The other is contrary to all laws of economics. And they are laws, not merely rules. 1 *