Note Return to text — REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES.

That squandering wealth in ostentation and luxury is a crime becomes very apparent by a close examination of the act. There would be no harm in building a $700,000 stable for his horses, like a Syracuse millionaire, or in placing a $50,000 service on the dinner table, like a New York Astor, if money were as free as air and water; but every dollar represents an average day’s labor, for there are more toilers who receive less than a dollar than there are who receive more.9 Hence the $700,000 stable represents the labor of a thousand men for two years and four months. It also represents seven hundred lives; for a thousand dollars would meet the cost of the first ten years of a child, and the cost of the second ten years would be fully repaid by his labor. The fancy stable, therefore, represents the physical basis of seven hundred lives, and affirms that the owner values it more highly, or is willing that seven hundred should die, that his vanity may be gratified.