OUR YOUNG WOMEN.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 208, 26 September 1874, Page 2

OUR YOUNG WOMEN.

(From the Sunday Chronicle, San Francisco ) The young women of America of the present generation seem to have entirelv lost the capacity for enjoying the simple and inexpensive pleasures which sufficed for their grandmothers. Unless they can live in an atmosphere of constant excitement they are miserable. Fashion and style, costly dresses and and splendid entertainment*, palatial residences, and ambitious equipages arc no longer regarded by them ns luxuries, without which existence becomes a humiliation and a burden. Display and extravagance are necessary to enjoyment, and an insane disposit ion'to measure the satisfaction to be derived from any pleasure by its cost prevndes all ranks of society. The wealthy give themselves up to the semibarbarism of ostentatious Jiving, and people of moderate incomes arc drawn into the terrible vortex by an inordinate and often fata, ambition. Hence comes the fearful annual crop of defalcations, embezzlements, breaches of trust, and other crimes of a still darker complexion. Hence, in the desperate effort to win fortunes nt n stroke, or by n bold risk to avert impending financial ruin, come wild speculations, gigantic swindling schemes, and reckless gambling. To this cause mny be traced half the suicides which hare become so common that they cense to shock us. The extravagance of our living is nnswerable in a large measure for the corruption of our morals. On the altar of Fashion men daily sacrifice their integrity and women their virtue. Unless all current testimony a< to American manners and morals in this year of our Lord, 1874, are grossly exaggerated, republican New York and republican Washington are not far behind the powdered Paris of the Regent d’Orlenns or the libertine London of Charles If, And we feel justified in declaring that for this fearful condition of things the women of America are mainly re*|M>nsibie. As a general thing, men are not. strongly possessed by that kind of ambition whi 'h finds its gratification in fashionable extravagance and costly establishments. Il is not ofien that a man of mature years, in the possession of the comforts of life, is so wbak ns io feel miserable because his neighbor or his friend lives in a more splendid mansion, maintains a more showy establishment, or gives more magnificent entertainments than he can himself afford. It is only to the feminine heart that the pomps and vanities are so dear us to make any sacrifice seem slight that is necessary to compass them. It was the social ambition of a wife that not long ago induced a member of Congress, who had borne a spotless reputation, to sell his influence as a legislator and left, him with a blasted character and ruined career. It was the same fatal thirst for fashionable distinction on the part of a beautiful and accomplished woman that more recently drove a distinguished lawyer and rising statesman to petty frauds upon the Department of Justice, the exposure of which has blighted his future prospects. No one who not<*s the changes in our social conditions and the style of living that have been going on for the last twenty years, and more especially since the close of the war, can be blind to the rapid demoralisation of what are callerl “ the upper classes ” of our society ; springing, as the evil undoubtedly does, from certain ineradicable tendencies in human nature, and from causes which are still in aftive operation, it. does not seem easy to prescribe a remedy. The exhortations of the pulpit nnd th“ press appear produce no appreciable effect; and we linvfiH little hope of seeing the current stemmed until that class of American women who, by their social position nnd their wealth, have the power of setting the stamp of fashion upon such customs and usuages ns they will, shall unite to wield that power in restoring the simplicity in dress and the frugality in living which prevailed in the days of our grandmothers. Whether any su« h united and concerted effort on the part of those by wlioiu alone it can be made successful, is a thing that can he regarded as among the hopeful probabilities, is a problem for the solution of which we do not at present feel competent.