What truth, if any, is there in these hardy criticisms? We have noted how, under the leadership and inspiration of the capital of plutocracy, New York, every city in the country is, with true American rapidity, developing its individual fashionable society. It is directed by the wives and daughters of rich men; it is, as we have seen, devoted chiefly to spending time and money in unproductive and more or less frivolous forms of self-amusement. The character of this “set” varies slightly for each locality--but only slightly. In the West the wealth-worship is franker; in the East more hypocritical, more beslimed and bemessed with cant about birth and culture. But whether Mammon is naked and unashamed or is draped and decorated, he is still Mammon. The monotonous sameness of the people comprising each division of the set, the sameness of their opportunities and aims, the world-neighborliness which railways and telegraph and printing press have brought about, prevent any notable differences. To dress, to talk, to eat, to drive, to entertain, to bring up one’s children, all in accord with the standards of “good form” established by the aristocratic societies of Europe; to spend each day in pleasures that permit one to shift most of the labor and all the thinking and providing to hirelings of divers degrees, from lawyers and industrial managers to secretaries, housekeepers, butlers, valets and maids; to live worthlessly without useful work--these are the aims, East, West, and South. And in rapidly increasing measure the aims are accomplished. Universal freedom, universal opportunity, all but universal toil, have indeed very suddenly brought vast riches to America, vast wealth to a few. This sudden wealth, coming to a people whose characteristics are energy, restlessness and lightning-like adaptability, has all in a day relieved a relatively small but, in another aspect, very numerous and most influential part of each large community from the necessity to labor. Many, a great many, of these continue to strive to cherish the ideals of a life of useful labor, continue to strive to set a worthy example to their children and to their fellow-citizens--that is, to remain sane and American. But a great many others have eagerly adopted those alien ideals of the aristocracy of idleness and the vulgarity of toil which appeal so strongly to the vanity and other ancient weaknesses of the human animal the world over.