Of Money and Manners in 1907

“Garish vulgarity taints what is regarded, commonly at least, as the ‘best society.’ How much richer may we get before degenerating into utter savagery?”      ———— Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 novel, “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today,” satirized the era from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. It was a period of great division in the United States, between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ — a period when serious social problems and changes were marked by a thin vermeil gilding, amid great wealth inequalities.

A Gilded Age Lament

We of this blessed country have more money and less manners than any other people on earth. The more money the more neglect of manners. We rush through life in such a hurry these days that there is little time or thought for the refinements and courtesies that, in the good old days of our grandparents, were considered necessary elements of good breeding. We have cut courtesy out of business hours. We have come to regard it as a time-consumer and a waste —an indefinable and rather boresome something in the way of an affectation, which we may put on with our best clothes for weddings, parties and other such affairs, but not to be carried about with us on ordinary occasions.

The man or woman who has really good manners, nowadays, we distinguish as being of the “old school.” Unfortunately, the old school is passing away and there is no new one to take its place. So far have we sunk, that the man of genuine courtesy and polish must balance it with some sort of coarseness or be damned as a “sissy.” Maybe it is ill-mannered to say such things, but the fact, no less than the ill-mannered assertion of it, fits the times. Garish vulgarity taints what is regarded, commonly at least, as the ‘best society.’ How much richer may we get before degenerating into utter savagery?— Indianapolis Sun, 1907

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