Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1909 — LUXURY IS THE MODERN TYRANT. [ARTICLE]

LUXURY IS THE MODERN TYRANT.

If we should tell Newmoney that he was a second edition of the Roman spendthrift, he would point to his pew in the church, his subscription to charity and his contributions to the improvements of our village, says Lynn Raby Meekin in the March Designer. He wouldn’t understand. Worse still would be our own unwillingness to admit that we ourselves are not doing more swimming against the current. Indeed, the Tyrant has cast his spell over the land. At church conferences last year pious men pointed out how the country districts—even the remote mountain places—were being demoralized by the city boarders, whose manners, frivolities and extravagances were leading the rural minds straight to the sacrifice. There is wailing throughout the land at the enhanced cost of living. We are agast at the high prices of food —and yet they make a very small part of the total. We complain about dress—and yet the average American family does not spend a tenth of its income on clothes. We declare rents are soaring—and yet the difference is but a fraction in the whole sum. Where, then the explanation? Seek and we shall find it in the luxuries—most of them little, some large, possibly one unreasonably'extravagant, but whether big or little, many or few, the aggregate forms our ruinous offering to the Moloch of the age. The moment we move beyond the boundaries of our means we meet sorrow and danger—and Luxury is always bidding us to cross the line, even tempting us to go further ihto debt and discouragement and never giving us a single rebate on our investment in suffering. For the Tyrant we eke out the largest sacrifices of all that makes life worth living, and his best honors and prizes are hut Dead Sea fruit that, When touched, turns to dust.