“IDLE RICH” CRITICISED.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1921, Page 5

“IDLE RICH” CRITICISED.

GENERAL BOOTH’S ATTACK.

REPLY BY SOCIETY LADY.

Outspoken criticism of the “unemployed rich” was made by General Bramwell Booth, in a recent interview. When the Salvation Army’s woiin Great Britain’s mandatory lands has been opened up, said the general, “we will tackle the unemployed rich, for they need salvation most of all. Wealth and luxury are the last stronghold, of the devil, and London is it® pivot.

“The state of London since the war makes one realise what may happen when so many of the best and bravest perish. Society’s legacy seems little, so far, but a welter of extravagance, frivolity, scandal, sensuality, and worse. The present riot of divorce looks to me like a floodtide of passion sweeping over the land, where the homes that are unhappily uprooted carry wreckage and destruction to all others in their way. “The poor have no such drug-sots and drunkards as the ‘upper classes’ harbor, nor is it possible for humble folk, familiar with work and 'privations, to sink so low in the social scale as do some of the idle rich.”

Who are the unemployed rich whom General Booth criticises so strongly? “There are no rich people left in society,” Lady Alexander said to a press representative in an interval between selling programmes at a charity matinee.

“The position of society to-day is really appalling. People are selling their houses and their cars; they are taxed almost out of existence. Nearly all of us are far worse off than we were before the war; we manage to get along somehow, but to say that we are rich is absurd!

“Attacks such as General Booth is making have been made on society since the year 1. There is nothing new in them. But except for the -few who have got rich quickly there is no one in modern society who can afford to be extravagant or luxurious. We simply have not got the money. Instead of spending we are cutting down in every direction.”

Lady Alexander turned to a crowd of beautifully dressed women laden with, programmes. /

“Don’t you agree with me ?” she queried. There was a chorus of acquiescence. “As for moral laxity,” Lady Alexander went on, “it exists in every section of life. It is not confined to society. I won’t admit that it is worse- than it used to be in society. Do you think we are worse than we were?” The latter remark was addressed to everyone in general.

“I think we are very much better,” someone retorted.

“Women are more generous than they used to be,” Lady Alexander insisted, and they work far harder. Personally, I have no spare time.