Our New Aristocracy
By Gertrude Atherton
(From “The New Aristocracy,” in “The Cosmopolitan.”)
Instead of laying away their sense of social supremacy in old rose and lavendar, our new aristocracy of wealth is often haughty and frigid in manner, and not only ostentatious in expenditure, but arrogantly assertive of what it believes to be its superior rights ... frivolity, selfishness and pride and the constant exercise of these qualities hardens what, for convenience, we call the heart, and breeds indifference for the feelings and rights of others. I have been interviewed by women reporters in almost every country I have visited, and it is only in America—in New York, to be exact—that they have spoken of their dread of approaching fashionable or merely rich, women.... Those we have of ancient lineage,—who have framed their family tree and proved their seven generations, whose fortunes have kept pace with the times, and who from the somewhat attenuated backbone of society, in New York, for instance—are more objectionable in some respects, than the new-rich. While they ought to know better, they are so uneasily conscious of their position as real aristocrats in a country too large to give them a universal recognition, that anxious pride has bleached their very blood, attenuated their features, narrowed their lips, and practically deprived them of any distinctive personalities, the best that can be said of them is that they are not, with one notorious exception, vulgar in the common use of the word.
By H. R. H.
(The Infanta Eulalia of Spain. In the “Century Magazine.”)
1864-1912
The glitter and magnificence of society can exist only against a background of misery and starvation.
By Mary Wollstonecraft
(In “Vindication of the Rights of Women.”)
It is the pestiferous purple which renders the progress of civilization a curse, and warps the understanding, till men of sensibility doubt whether the expansion of the intellect produces a greater proportion of happiness or misery.
By Mrs. John Martin
We have a civilization that is bloated at the top and bleeding at the bottom, and there is decay in both.