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Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 25 March 1907, Page 2

I!ETKIIIUTiON r . If one eoul lind it in one's heart to pity a millionaire, there is no time like the present. It is a pathetic circumstance that the. widow of that grasping old hunks liussell Sage has set. about dissipating some of the mean old man's money; pathetic, because it points to the supposition that holders ot vast wealth become so overburdened with it anil so conscience-smitten with the methods that have raised it. uat they try to make their peace with heaven by making earth more livable lor those tney have helped lo grind down and oppress. Most of (he famous money-grubbers hav ing used every discreditable means - including the slow murder ol their lel-low-men- have as an amending action broken out into a too lardy perspiration of charily. The whole sentiment in relation to American millionaires lias ol late entirely changed, due in our opinion to the example of lioosevell. who h.:s set out to light every trust llial shows

up, and who,"by tliis'means, attacks the very root of the unnatural, criminal and pestilential conditions that make nun enormously rich at the expeme oi the public ami tlie lives and health of the people who work I'm' them. Uis refreshing indeed to learn by cable that there has been a panic in Wall street, ami that enormous depreciation ol stocks ill America will all'ect the millionaires mostly. Millionaire railroad people in America have complained that Roosevelt has made laws that prevent the railroad people from doing what they like! When millionaires complain who is there to pity tlieni? Another nasty knock for the millionaires is the recent Hooding of Pittsburg, the place where Carnegie, the sanctilied Scot, who dulls his coilscience by casting libraries broadcast, made his gold ami where he shot down strikers, unknown by name to him and

registered only by numbers. The Irantic haste to get gold is responsible in America for intolerable conditions, the highest death rate ill the world and the largest percentage of deaths of people in the "prime" of lile. Reminds one ot the investigator who \vas being shown through a Yankee mill, "But 1 see no old men here," lie said to his guide. "Come with me," snid the guide, "and I'll show you the old men." lie took the instigator to the cemetery! lint even America, where the, dollar has been the national god, begins to think that there is something not altogether too splendid in the character of a millionaire. When Rockefeller the other day gave an immense sum of money to educational purposes, tlie papers alluded to Hie matter "eulilly." When one knows that the cut linger of a millionaire would formerly lead to half a column of Hare headlines and one inch of news about if,

one begins to feel that America is less of a fool country than it was. America, while it has :i vast number of the aeutest business men in the world, has the largest proportion of out and out idiots on the face of nature. The sons of millionaires are generally the ouL and out idiots and the daughters ol millionaires mostly need padded cells. Consider the appalling state of American "high" society which believes it is smart to make a piggery of a drawing-room and which condones Lhe horrors that are the reason for the Thaw-White shooting case and its attendant revelations. Some day soon the millionaires of America won't be able to buy enough men with their millions to defend their wretched carcases. .Many of them have already been fugitives, but America won't be big enough to make a hiding place for many of them in the day when the worker sizes vi]) the real weight of the man whom tiie worker made. .