The Desire To Escape Equality

That the American people have drifted far from the old idea of the fathers as to equality has probably never been better illustrated than in the recent wedding of a young Vanderbilt to Miss Neilson. This wedding which like other weddings should be good taste have been a intimate family affair was made an orgy of money, simply to attract the attention of the world. It was made a vulgar display of wealth simply to show how superior these young people are to the people generally in the matter of the amount they and their friends could expend on the function. It was a manifestation of the desire which seems to have taken possession of so many of our people to escape from equality. While our government in theory concedes the equality of all men before the law and that form is kept up, yet there is probably no one of the great peoples constituting the great nations of the world that bow before privilege more than the American people of today. So far as the form of our law goes, there is no recognition of the aristocratic idea, there is an aristocracy of vulgar wealth that is quite as undemocratic and opposed to the spirit of our institutions as designed and understood by their founders. And this craze to avoid equality and show to the world the ability to do something that others cannot do, leads the very wealthy to make vulgar display of wealth, others to sacrifice almost every dignity and all self-respect to marry their daughters to a title, etc. All this results from the desire for social distinctions. The disgusting snobbery often displaced in the reach after inequality is often most wearisome.