Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1918 — NECESSITIES VS. LUXURIES. [ARTICLE]

NECESSITIES VS. LUXURIES.

Our people have a saying, which has become current, that the "luxuries of one generation are the necessities of the next. And really we seem to have practiced just such a system of evolution. Our people are shinging examples of the truth that extravagance breeds extravagance. We of this generation listen to old people as they describe conditions of thefr day, and we wonder how they managed to render life at all endurable.

Yet these same old people, in their day, enjoyed life to the full. They did not consider themselves in any sense objects of pity. They lived simple, wholesome lives, and the wisdom of their mode of life is amply demonstrated by the mere fact that they, the exponents of this simple, frugal life, are yet with us to bear testimony to its ■merits.

There is great need that, In many respects, we revert to the frugal life of our ancestors. True, in many matters their luxuries have really become our necessities and are no more an extravagance than were their simple luxuries. But we have added unnecessarily to / these luxuries. It is these we are called upon to forego. Mark well the man or woman who continues the extravagances of former years. Their patriotism is of a purely negative quality. Henceforth, until this war is won, extravagance and disloyalty are going to become almost synonymous terms. And even then our frugality will be worthless unless it be practiced in the name of the cause, and the results applied to the cause.