Chapter V: Some Reasons for Wrath

Had the spurious article, “American aristocracy,” confined its vaporings and exhibitions to secluded spots, it would have been tolerated by the American people, exactly like many other “isms,” shams, frauds, and delusions. Had the worshipers at the shrine of “caste,” and supposed social superiority, reserved their devotions to some secluded chapel, they might have worshiped in peace at the feet of the tinseled god whom they adore--“caste.” The American people tolerate almost any kind of “ism” for a time, provided the “ism” be not paraded before them, and flaunted in their faces in an insulting manner; but a determined people are the citizens of this nation, and when once aroused to a sense of outrage, they throw to the winds all consideration of law, danger, and consequence. The people of Chicago heard the howling of the anarchists with patience and amusement, Sunday after Sunday, along the lake front, but when the anarchists at Haymarket hurled one bomb among the citizens of the Republic, the day of anarchism was ended in Chicago. Innocent or guilty, the leaders of the movement must be punished. And they were!

Had the sham aristocrats of America been contented to reserve their exhibition of arrogance and presumption to those dervishes who worshiped at their own shrine--“caste”--and not to the general public, it is possible that their absurd “ism” might have been tolerated in a good-natured way for some time longer. It had certainly the advantage of anarchism, inasmuch as, when reserved to a few dervishes, it was excessively amusing. But, unfortunately for the champions of “caste,” their followers, possessing neither a great amount of brains nor courage (and in these particulars, even the anarchists have an advantage over the sham aristocrats), have absolutely delighted in trifling with and imposing upon the good-nature of the public. In little, mean, spiteful ways, they have exhibited a smallness of soul, and an attempt, in a cowardly manner, to impose upon those who, poor in pocket, or dependent in some way, were unable to resent it. Take the evidence of the clerks, employés, servants, of the sham imitators of English aristocracy, and, almost without an exception, you will find their bosoms filled with resentment and hatred for that class; born, not with any desire to possess the property of their employers, nor from any socialistic tendency, but entirely the result of mean, spiteful, scornful snubbing. They have been wounded in pride, for, God knows! they are entitled, as free American citizens, to the possession of self-respect and pride.

Do you ask, Madame, why it is so hard for you to secure and retain servants? The reason is given above.

An explanation of the cause for the dearth of good domestic servants was sought by a great New York daily newspaper. It opened its columns and asked for communications explaining why a young woman preferred to work in a shop ten or twelve hours a day, and receive therefor three dollars a week, rather than accept a position as a domestic servant, in your house, Madame, where she would have greater comfort in the way of food and lodging, and receive more dollars.

Read the answers received by the _Recorder_, of New York. In almost every instance, the writer of the communication would say that it was not a matter of food, lodging, and dollars, but a matter of self-respect. They were snubbed and sat upon when engaged in serving the rich.

Go to any fashionable restaurant, or saloon, where the would-be swells swill champagne. Ask the attendants their opinion of those who, with a supercilious air, throw them a dollar to fee them for their services. You will hear expressed, in reply to your question, opinions like this: “I feel like knocking their heads off. I am ready to work. I don’t want their money for nothing; but I am a _man_, and as good as they are.”

The workman was content, nor did it interest him if the rich should drive their Tally-hos. He had no desire to divide the money of the purse-proud devotee of “caste”; but when, weary from his day of labor, trudging along the road to his humble home, with tooting horn and flourish of whip the Tally-ho sweeps by him, and he has to scurry out of the road, he long remembers the derisive smile of the insolent, purse-proud occupants of the coach, and he objects--not to the coach--but to the manner and the smile of the occupants.

The heart of the shop-girl or the seamstress is not filled with envy because the fine lady (?) of fashion possesses garments of silk and laces; but the insolence and supercilious manner, when the fine lady (?) brought in contact with her, fills her soul with a sense of injured dignity. She knows she’s quite as good as a lady of fashion. Possibly her father is not a protected, petty manufacturer; and she goes to her home, resenting the assumed superiority in the manner of the fine lady, and preaches to father, brother, and lover equality and broad democracy. The fine ladies (?) of fashion have ever been most potential causes for victories by the people. No orator so eloquent as the wife, daughter, sister, or sweetheart; and her wrongs were resented November 8th.

The New York _World_, of November 20th, 1892, publishes an article in connection with New York society, that, having received a place in that great Democratic journal, because of its undoubted truth, is worthy of a place in this volume. In speaking of the death of Mrs. Belmont, the _World_ makes use of the occasion to express some remarkably forcible facts with regard to New York society. It says:--

“In the social history of New York it will be a lasting
distinction to Mrs. Belmont that she was a conspicuous figure in
good society before good society had been vulgarized. I have no
quarrel with the society of to-day, which has merely followed the
law of its evolution. I merely insist that the New York society
of thirty years ago had all the good features of to-day, and was
conspicuously free from certain faults which are now conspicuously
prominent. The society which accepted the leadership of Mrs.
Belmont had birth, and breeding, and culture, ample means and
true refinement, and it had also that last test of a genuine
aristocracy, that it held its rank by unquestioned title. It had
so little fear of the security of its position that it freely
admitted strangers of equal social rank.

“_It was possible for a rich merchant to permit a clerk to visit
at his house_, and even scholars and educated people were not
considered detrimental. While it had the respect of ingenuous
youth for the older aristocracies of Europe, it did not abase
itself in comparison with them, and was incapable of servility
before them or before anything human. _It was singularly free from
scandals._”

Then, thirty years ago,--that is, at the time of Abraham Lincoln’s great popularity, succeeding by two years the great uprising of the Common People, the “mudsills,” of the North and West,--a wealthy merchant of the North would receive his clerk, as a social equal, in his house. Then times have changed, and manners with them, within the last thirty years! The rich merchant of to-day has forgotten the force of the argument which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln,--“Americans enforce Equality.” Two years was not enough, thirty years ago, to enable the rich merchant to forget that the first man of the nation, the President of the Union, had been a laborer, rail-splitter, clerk in a grocery store, and was, while chief of the nation, still a man of the “Common People.” No, two years was not enough to bring about forgetfulness of these facts; but _thirty-two_ years was.

Hence, the overturning of the aristocratic party (or that party to which the aristocrats belong) cost what it might in dollars to the “Common People.” It is not a new economic doctrine that they demand; it is a new social system. While the assumed aristocracy of thirty years ago may have had respect for the older aristocracies of Europe, it most certainly did not abase itself, and was not as servile to them, as is the sham aristocracy of to-day.

Quoting from the Koran of that high priest of the “smart set,” McAllister, who utters the sentiments of the most exalted in the holy of holies in swelldom:--

“It is well to be in with the nobs who are born to their position,
but the support of the swells is more advantageous--for society is
sustained and carried on by the swells, the nobs looking quietly
on and accepting the position, feeling that they are there by
divine right; but they do not make fashionable society, nor carry
it on.”

The “nobs,” then, of this temple of “caste,” feel that they occupy the high places by “divine right.” The phrase, “divine right,” sounds queer to Anglo-Saxon ears, to us, the descendants of a race who elevated Charles Stuart to the scaffold as a result of a “divine right.” It sounds strangely in the ears of a nation that furnished the example of Liberty and Equality to the world, and which, when followed by the Frenchmen, caused Louis XVI. to kiss the guillotine by reason of his “divine right.”

The meaningless, senseless sentences in “Society as I Have Found It,” would be entitled to not the slightest attention, were it not for the fact that they give words to the sentiments of the “smart set,” who have allied themselves--or rather stuck themselves on, as a piece of mud on a marble column--to the Republican party, and, hence, in the minds of equality-loving Americans, the Republican party became besmirched by that mud.

Quoting further from the New York _World_, and believing that the writer of the article knew whereof he wrote, the following is inserted:--

“I am writing about a period now thirty years gone by, and,
consequently, beyond the personal knowledge of the great majority
of my readers. But New York society of to-day is known to all
readers of Sunday papers. They know it as an institution in which
the prevalence of gigantic fortunes has made its atmosphere
uncongenial for all who are not conspicuously rich. And while
the valid claims of birth and breeding and culture have thus
been crowded out at one gate of the social arena, the influences
which have forced an entry at the other end in company with the
mere millions, have all been vulgarizing influences. Society is
no longer certain that it is the genuine article. If it were,
it would not swagger so much, nor give so much thought to the
effect it produces on the outer world. It is insolent, but not
courageous; ostentatious, but not brilliant; it splurges, but does
not shine; no glimmer of intelligence relieves the dullness of its
boredom. It abases itself before the peerage of Great Britain, and
the taint of corrupt living is unpleasantly frequent on its gilded
exterior. Measured by the tests of a true aristocracy, it is below
the standard of thirty years ago.”

The readers of the papers, who are the people, know that society is an institution, as organized to-day, created by gigantic fortunes, which have been accumulated within the last thirty years, and, in many instances, by men of low and vulgar instincts, of mean origin, poor ability, who have become rich as the result of accident, and the result of the necessities of the nation while engaged in the war for the preservation of the Union. These very men, who had not the courage nor patriotism of the commonest soldier who shouldered his musket at Abraham Lincoln’s call, and vindicated on the field of battle the right of the people, in a republic, to equality, and to the control of the government by the majority, who are beneficiaries of Protection and the exigencies of the nation, would assume a superiority over that common soldier whose courage and patriotism led him to risk his life in preserving the Union--for the fighting soldiers of “’61” were of the “Common People.”

Society is not only no longer uncertain that it is a genuine article, but it _knows_ it is a sham and a fraud, and seeks to make up by impertinence, insolence, and arrogance what it lacks of the genuine article. It _does_ swagger; it does produce an effect upon the outer world, and that effect was evident by the overwhelming vote of the people, who said to it and to its successors in office, November 8th, last: “Thus far and no farther thou shalt go.” It abases itself in such a disgusting manner before that peerage of Great Britain, as to cause feelings of indignation and contempt to arise in the bosoms of the descendants of those old Continental soldiers, who, more than a hundred years ago, said to Great Britain and her aristocracy: “We have had enough of you. This shall be a land of freedom, equality, and liberty; though it should cost the last drop of blood in our veins.” And how effectively they demonstrated their determination to produce such a result, many a lord and lordling now mouldering in his grave, who sought these shores to impose the yoke of “caste” upon the colonies, could attest.

The tuft-hunting, and absolute courting of English titled adventurers, by the inheritors of the wealth taken from the people, has filled with disgust the breast of every manly and womanly citizen of this country. The people are not Socialists. Mrs. Hammersley is entitled to all that she inherited. Her right to it would be protected and defended by every good citizen of the Union, and there are few, very few, who are not good citizens, among the people. She may marry whomsoever she will. It was her privilege to select (or be selected by) the Duke of Marlborough, descendant of--not the over-honest, but original--soldier of fortune. She had a perfect right to prefer the position as wife of a divorced duke. She could take the money amassed in America and refurnish Blenheim, for the benefit (after the death of her divorced duke) of his first wife, who was still living, and will now be enabled to enjoy the fruits produced by the waters of American dollars poured upon the somewhat decayed and degenerate house of Churchill.

Mrs. Hammersley has the right to utilize the fortune of her deceased American husband under the wise provisions of his will (clever American he must have been!) as she chooses; but when she and her acquired (by purchase or otherwise) title is flaunted in the faces of American men and women, as something which entitles her to a more eminent position than she possessed as an American woman, the “Common People” object. Every time that the lady was spoken of, or written of, as “the American Duchess,” as “Our Duchess,” it aroused resentment. We have no American Duchess.

As an American wife, Mrs. Hammersley was a queen; as a duchess, by the exertion of great pressure and influence, she gained the privilege of kissing the hand of another, _called_ Queen, because of the accident of birth.

Doubtless, Mrs. Hammersley was not responsible for being dubbed “the American Duchess” by the newspapers; but men of the Ward McAllister stamp, and the “smart set,” indicated so plainly the kind of desire that seems to pervade the members of the sham aristocracy, to acquire by some method, and at any price, a title, that it was pardonable that the newspaper men assigned the peculiarly objectionable title of “the American Duchess” to one of America’s daughters. The columns of our papers, day by day mirroring, as they do, the prevalence of this servile abasement of the dignity of the American woman in the “smart set” seeking alliances with a degenerate and unworthy offspring of a decayed and odoriferous aristocracy existing in Europe, have brought the subject to the attention of the people all over the land.

What a relief it is to manly Americans to turn from a picture like that presented by the coroneted “Duchess,” whose title and coronet have been purchased by the wealth of a common American citizen, an account of which is here printed, taken from the New York _World_ of November the 13th:--

“A fine old illustration of the Duke’s financial ability was
shown in the way he obtained a _dot_ of $500,000 with his wife.
He made the Duchess borrow this sum in England and, to secure it,
insure her life to that amount. She then returned with him to this
country and here confessed judgment to her London creditors for
the amount mentioned. They took the matter into the court, which
directed that the trustees set aside annually from the Duchess’
income $50,000 a year to pay the interest on the debt she had
incurred in England and the principal. This money the Duchess gave
to her husband. She also bought and gave him a house in London.”

And then to gaze with admiring glances upon that model of the American wife and mother, the late Mrs. Benjamin Harrison. To read of her, in the columns of a paper like the New York _Herald_, politically opposed to the party represented by President Harrison, that this good woman, Mrs. Harrison, representing that which is most queenly to the minds of the “Common People” of America, “was a model wife and mother;” that “during her husband’s early struggles she helped him in many ways, and her wise counsel was often a great service to him.” “She reared and educated her children thoroughly and sensibly, and made their home always attractive to them. * * * * She was also a skillful housekeeper, and few women were more adept in the art of domestic economy. * * * To do good works was her delight, and she was for many years one of the managers of the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum. * * * * At no time a woman of fashion. * * * In all the honors that came to her husband, she remained just the same consistent, helpful woman that she was the first day they were married. * * * * The domestic life at the White House has been something that all the world might be better for knowing of. Mrs. Harrison was the queen and centre of it all.”

Of this good wife and mother, endeared to the hearts of the “Common People,” by the possession of those same qualities and virtues that make the helpmates of the poor and lowly so dear to them, was said, in the editorial columns of the New York _Herald_, October 25th, the following:--

“In this hour of his affliction, the sympathy of the entire nation
will go out to President Harrison and his household.

“The people of the country had only to learn of her worth to
recognize and appreciate in Mrs. Harrison the virtues and graces
of a noble womanhood. As mistress of the White House, she won the
affection of all, as she endeared herself to her home circle by
her qualities as wife and mother.

“Her brave and serene spirit through long suffering, and the
President’s tender devotion, have touched the heart of the
country. Her death will be mourned as the loss of a good, lovable
woman.”

The sorrow occasioned by her death inspired even poets to place a wreath woven by their art, upon her tomb. It is well for the country that the President’s wife should have been one furnishing such a noble example to the women of America, that of her could be written what James Whitcomb Riley wrote of Mrs. Harrison:--

Now utter calm and rest,
Hands folded o’er the breast,
In peace the placidest,
All trials past,
All fever soothed; all pain
Annulled in heart and brain,
Never to vex again,
She sleeps at last.

She sleeps, but, oh, most dear
And best beloved of her,
Ye sleep not, nay, nor stir,
Save but to bow
The closer each to each,
With sobs and broken speech
That all in vain beseech
Her answer now.

And lo, we weep with you,
Our grief the wide world through,
Yet, with the faith she knew,
We see her still,
Even as here she stood,
All that was pure and good
And sweet in womanhood,
God’s will her will.

The sympathy of the whole nation went out to President Harrison when he sustained the loss of that example of virtue and womanly excellence in the death of his wife. It was so deep and strong, that had the “Common People” not seen the party he represented through a glass clouded by the smoke and soot of sham aristocracy, he would have been re-elected.

By that bedside, the people saw the chief of their nation with bowed head, shedding tears for that lost love who had shared with him his joys and sorrows, his hopes and disappointments, ambitions, and his failures. No tenderer sympathy or kindlier feeling ever filled and moved the hearts of the American people than that felt for that good husband, good patriot, good citizen, Benjamin Harrison. He was bereft of a helpmate who by his side had fought the battle of life, the early struggles in Indianapolis when he was a young lawyer, hewing his way through the forest of difficulties, which, like the forests of Africa that surrounded Stanley, in American life present themselves before the struggling, ambitious men of our land. And when, at last, bursting through the maze and underbrush of obstacles, like Stanley, he came upon the open plain of success, her voice had been first to join his in a prayer of thanksgiving. The bowed head of the aged chieftain of the nation, upon whom the heavy hand of sorrow had been laid, was an object to occasion even the most partisan political opponent to pause and shed one sympathetic tear. How full must his mind have been of the recollection of the hours anxiously spent by this loving American wife and mother, while he was exposed to hourly danger in defence of the American Union. How each sad hour must have been recalled to him, and how slight had been the recompense, accorded in the harvest of time to the faithful heart that had beat in rhythmic accord with his.

President of the United States, 1889-93.]

The sympathy of the nation was deep, broad, and strong; and had Benjamin Harrison represented anything else but what the people knew was the aristocratic party, on the flood-tide of that sympathy he would have been carried into office by an overwhelming majority. Let those who would excuse their own errors and the errors of their _class_, let the would-be astute politician and the abashed assumed barons ascribe the defeat of the Republican party to the lack of personal magnetism of their candidate, but the great heart of the people will feel that that charge was as false as the claim of the “Four Hundred” to social superiority.

Benjamin Harrison will long be remembered as an exemplary President, if patriotism and the performance of those pledges made to the people who elected him, entitle a President to remembrance. Great as we all recognize the personal magnetism of that magnificent statesman, James G. Blaine, to be, it could not have exerted the influence over the minds of the masses that the death of Mrs. Harrison in the White House did. Death robbed the President of the position of the First Man in the Nation. He became at once the husband, the father, and the man; and had the issue been alone to be decided by personal magnetism, sympathy of the people, the outburst of approval and approbation would have been in favor of Benjamin Harrison. But he and the party whom he represents, justly or unjustly, had become accursed with the crime of “caste” in our country. He was defeated by those who, to a man, bowed their heads in sorrow with him, and shed tears of sympathy at his great loss as a fellow-man and citizen, but could not give him their votes as representing what to them became the party of sham, affected, foreign aristocracy.

Another picture that rises simultaneously before the eyes of the masses as representing those queens in America, to whom more ready homage is paid than was ever accorded to a coronet or crown, is our Frances Cleveland. Ours, because the “Common People” claim her, as only an ordinary, sweet, lovely, modest American woman.

That picture made more votes for Grover Cleveland than any political chicanery could have accomplished. With her baby in her arms, she represents American womanhood, motherhood, and simplicity; that which is best, purest, and dearest to the hearts of all of us, the “Common People.” No higher place is it possible for woman to attain than that she occupies with her babe on her bosom.

She had gone into the White House a young, guileless, average, common American girl; she had represented, in the high position accorded to her by the hearts of the people, the first lady of the land, with a simplicity and dignity pleasing to every American woman from Maine to Texas. She had welcomed the friends of her girlhood, before, as wife of the President, she became the most prominent female figure in the land, with the same cordiality that as Miss Frances Folsom she had exhibited towards them. The unassuming air with which she occupied her high position as sharer of the honors of the Chieftain of a free people, endeared her to the hearts of the mass of us, “Common People.” The farmer’s wife in Illinois, the mechanic’s wife at Homestead, Pa., the banker’s wife at Philadelphia, the railroad president’s wife in New York, felt a ray of sunshine warming that spot in woman’s heart, which is the Holy of Holies with them, young wifehood; and when Time, the great scene-shifter, had rearranged the setting of the stage, and presented to us the picture of the young mother, she became as interesting an object as the President himself. She had given to America another American. She had set an example for the women of our land which it would be well, my lady in your palace on Fifth avenue, to follow. Do not leave the future generations, who will rule the destinies of this nation, to be the offspring of foreigners; forego your balls, receptions, entertainments, and your trips to Europe; endure the inconvenience and annoyance of the nursery. Let us have some American children born. The prattle of the baby’s tongue will be sweeter music to your ear than the lisping flattery of some foreign duke. You may have the honor of being a mother of some future Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Lincoln, Garfield, Cleveland.

God bless you, Frances Cleveland, for the example you have set! Thoughts of you and sweet memories of the past, as dear even to the poorest woman as to the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, make Democrats of the hard-worked, poor old wife and mother in the little farmhouse of Illinois and Indiana. There is no scene in Grover Cleveland’s career to-day so embalmed in the hearts of the people as that wherein he is described as refusing to talk politics with one of the political satellites that ever hover round planets of the political firmament, putting them aside that he might watch the tottering footsteps of baby Ruth. It was just like any other man of the people, and the people recognized, as they did in the life and acts of Abraham Lincoln, that Grover Cleveland is one of us.

When some member of the “smart set,” who allies herself with the effete nobility of Europe, gives to the world a sample of what a man should be, as did the humble American wife, Nancy Lincoln, then the “Common People” will forget their wrath at the absurd assumption of the worshipers of the British peerage. Women like Martha Washington, Nancy Lincoln, Carrie Harrison, and Frances Cleveland, will ever be contrasted with those samples of the “smart set” who seek the society of the snobs and swells of foreign nations. The wrath of the people will ever be aroused at the arrogant assumption of snobbery and sham aristocracy upon the part of the successful searchers after titles.

The saying, by the “smart set,” that the “Common People” have nothing to do with them or their actions, or with how they dispose of their wealth, is quite true; but the unwise exhibition of an attempt to create class distinctions, can arouse such gusts of anger that that wealth, which is held only by paying such taxes as the “Common People” may decree (being, as they are, the majority), that much-prized wealth may be swept away, as a handful of dust, before the storm of the people’s anger.

The correspondent of the New York _World_ hastens to vindicate the just censure written, from any suspicion of prejudice concerning New York’s “Four Hundred”; but, in the attempt to vindicate, gives evidence enough of the thought of the people with regard to the morals of any “smart set” possessed of unlimited millions, totally idle, selfish, and luxurious:--

“To vindicate my censures from any suspicion of prejudice, let me
hasten to add that the tone of New York’s ‘Four Hundred’ is better
than that of any corresponding set in the world. Comparisons are
not satisfactory, because the society of Paris is the society of
all France, and the society of London is the society of the whole
British Empire. Compared with these, the social aristocracy of
New York is merely a little clique. It is only just to say that
it has not yet reached the coarseness of that fast set in London,
which it aspires to imitate, and, if it lacks the refinement
which centuries of courtly teaching have given to even the most
unruly elements of French aristocracy, it also falls short of that
cynicism which ignores all moral influences. Perhaps the present
lowered tone of society may be only a passing malady. Perhaps
things may get better before they get worse. Who knows? We can
only say that unlimited millions, total idleness, and selfish
luxury, are conditions not usually conducive to the elevation of
morals.”

What the people meant by the exhibition of their wrath last November, in the vote that they cast against what they deemed the party of the “smart set,” was the creation only of pictures in future, so sweetly pure as that with which the _World_ correspondent winds up the article:--

DIED DECEMBER, 1892, WORTH $70,000,000.]

“What a different social vista is presented to us when we turn
to look back on the long and peaceful life of _Emerson’s widow_,
who died last week at the ripe age of _ninety_. Although she made
no claim on the world’s regard, we catch pleasant glimpses of
her personality along the path of the great philosopher’s life,
like the sunshine showing through the leaves of the Concord elms.
Beside the simple dignity of a life like hers, how unsatisfactory
appears the career of an over-dressed, over-fed, over-rich woman
of fashion, worn out in the scramble and struggle to keep up with
the procession.”

The people desire, and have so expressed themselves, by the mighty voice of the majority, a return to the simple, natural condition of social life in America, wherein “caste” has no place, from which social distinctions disappear; the simple, homely, every-day, virtuous life of the mothers, wives, and daughters of those who made the Republic.

The “Common People” have recorded their protest against snobbery, sham aristocracy, “smart sets,” Ward McAllister, and multi-millionaires, who assume to be better, either by “divine right” or otherwise, than the ordinary American citizen. They have taught, by the lesson preached in the tremendous majorities for that party whom they deemed least tainted with this repugnant crime, that wealth, arrogance, assumption, and snobbery may have obtained an undue amount of influence, disproportioned to its merit, but that, thank God, on election day, every citizen of the Republic enjoys an equal right to the franchise, and that, by the voice of the majority, he will create such laws as to eradicate the insidious disease of “caste” from the wholesome body of the nation.