CHAPTER VII

families in Philadelphia) was an event of the day if one judges by the commotion excited among what was represented as the superior class, and the amount of attention given by the newspapers. In reality, viewing them in their proper perspective, these marriages of the rich were infinitesimal affairs, which would scarcely deserve a mention, were it not for the effect that they had in centralizing wealth and for the clear picture that they give of the ideas of the times. Posterity, which is the true arbiter in distinguishing between the enduring and the evanescent, the important and the trivial, rightly cares nothing for essentially petty matters which once were held of the highest importance. Edgar Allan Poe, wearing his life out in extreme poverty, William Lloyd Garrison, thundering against chattel slavery from a Boston garret, Robert Dale Owen spending his years in altruistic endeavors—these men were contemporaries of the Astors of the second generation. Yet a marriage among the very rich was invested by the self-styled creators and dispensers of public opinion with far more importance than the giving out of the world of the most splendid products of genius or the enunciation of principles of the profoundest significance to humanity. Yet why slur the practices of past generations when we to-day are confronted by the same perversions? In the month of February, 1908, for instance, several millions of men in the United States were out of work; in destitution, because something or other stood between them and their getting work; and consequently they and their wives and children had to face starvation. This condition might have been enough to shock even the most callous mind, certainly enough to have impressed the community. But what happened? The superficial historian of the future, who depends upon the newspapers and who gauges his facts accordingly, will conclude that there was little or no misery or abject want; that the people were interested in petty happenings of no ultimate value whatsoever; that an Oriental dance and pantomime given in New York by "society" women, led by Mrs. Waldorf Astor, where a rich young woman reaped astonishment and admiration by coiling a live boa