Idaho Semi Weekly World

The Luxury of Today.

Now, the growth of luxury for the last half century has been very great and very general. We do not merely mean that the rate of living has advanced. This of itself is not necessarily to be deplored in any class, and in some classes is a matter for serious congratulation. That an agricultural laborer, for instance, should be able to procure more food, better clothing, better housing, and better education for his children than he could fifty years ago is a matter to rejoice over, and a state of things to secure by every proper means. What we mean is, that the scale of comfort deemed necessary by every class has enormously grown. Take the upper classes. The great houses throughout the country are administered in a style the increase of which is quite disproportionate to the growth of income of their owners. The expenditure on far-fetched foods and most recherche wines, the most costly amusements, has vastly developed. And the tendency is ever upward. Young men beginning life try to start where their fathers left off. Some quarter of a century ago there was a discussion in the newspapers as to the prudence or otherwise of young persons in the upper classes marrying on an income of £500 a year. Three times that income would be now considered inadequate by the critics who conducted the discussion.—Quarterly Review.