From the White House to Capitol Hill, Pennsylvania avenue is to be built up on either side with statuary and decorations and plaster work, which will at least wear the mask of regal magnificence.
The Government will turn its Pension Bureau out of house and home, suspending public work, in order that Society’s beaux and belles may have the most magnificent ball ever known since our Government was founded.
First and last, directly and indirectly, it is quite within the range of the probable that the public and private expenditure of money in connection with Mr. Roosevelt’s inauguration will approach, if not exceed, a million dollars.
Is it in good taste for the representative of a democratic republic to give his sanction to such prodigalities as these?
Mr. Roosevelt is bound to know that there are ten millions of his fellow-citizens, fashioned by the same God out of the same sort of clay, who are today in want—lacking the necessaries of life.
He is bound to know that in this land, which they tell us is so prosperous, there are now four million paupers.
He is bound to know that there are at least one million half-starved children working in our factories, wearing out their little lives at the wheels of labor, in order that the favorites of class legislation may pile up the wealth which enables them to dine sumptuously off vessels of silver and gold.
He is bound to know that in one city of his native State of New York there are at least half a million of his brother mortals who never have enough to eat, and that seventy thousand children trudge to the public schools, hungry as they go.
He is bound to know that all over the Southern States hangs a shadow and a fear, because an industrious people, whose toil brought forth a bountiful harvest, are being driven by a remorseless speculative combine into misery and desperation.
It would have been a proof of excellent judgment if the robust manhood of Theodore Roosevelt had asserted itself against the snobbery of our shoddy “Society” in Washington, by reducing the ceremonial of his inauguration to the modest measure of what was decorous and necessary.