The women of the land made more speeches, and effective speeches, to the voters of the land when they thought of the much-advertised American Duchess. They had felt most keenly--for woman’s life is social much more than man’s--the attempted social distinction; and, strange as it may appear to some of the skillful politicians that they had never recognized it, the women of America had become largely Democratic, and in them the Democratic party had its most powerful orators; for even the most brutal, neglectful, and unloving husband resents in a vigorous manner the least slight or insult offered to his wife. Upon every occasion, gathering, entertainment, charitable undertaking, some wife had been slighted. Because of the attempted creation of “caste,” she became a powerful factor, at once, in the campaign of the people. It mattered not whether her husband was a millionaire or not, no matter in what portion of society,--the clerk in a dry-goods store, the farmer, the banker, the millionaire,--the same result would follow. Some would attempt to arrogate to themselves a better position, and claim certain superiority over her. The banker’s wife feels as keenly the slight of the wife of a railroad president, as the wife of a longshoreman does any assumed difference in social position on the part of the wife of the retail grocer. This all-prevailing crime of “caste” does not, like most crimes are supposed to do, originate in the gutter, but it permeates the mass of the population, like the source of a great river, starting at the very top of the mountain, and dripping constantly downward. The example of the rich in imitating the immoralities of the privileged classes of Europe, presents a spectacle of presumed immunity from the consequences of their crimes which would be as detrimental to the continuation of the purity of American homes, as the increase of the feeling of “caste” would be to the happiness of the people. A most beautiful illustration of corruption in high places was presented in the disgusting and nauseating Drayton-Borrowe affair, wherein the daughter of an Astor, a multi-millionaire, one of the members of the supposed upper “caste,” is paraded before the public as imitating the vices and immoralities of the Court of Charles II. Yet these same Astors would claim, by reason of their assumed position, some exemption from the result of the crime, which would not be accorded to the wife of a farmer, clerk, or a bank cashier, to say nothing of the fact that, had this beautiful sample of America’s sham aristocracy been a laborer’s wife, she would, by the peculiar ethics adopted by the corrupt English aristocracy, have been a fit subject for the police court.