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Show ! Luxury If love of luxury and beauty is a sign of national decad-ance, decad-ance, this great country is in an advanced stage of decay. The Roman Empire is said by historians to have declined and fell at the zenith of its luxury and extravagance. The moralists moral-ists and calamity-howlers predict the same for the United States. But it was only a few years ago that other moralists and crepe-hangers were lamenting the absence of beauty and the lack of luxury in these states. . .. It looks as if the masses must take a choice between home-spuns and decay and that they have selected the latter as the most remote and lesser of the two evils. Luxury in the United States shows itself everywhere. The American home is the most luxurios in the world. The home of the American wage earner is often a palace compared with that of the more well-to-do abroad. The store has been developed in this country into an institution of splendor and refined beauty and so has the hotel and the better class of resaurants. " The Pilgrim forefathers were contect with log cabins and only the plainest of foods. Civil war times found at least one. large house in every community. The twentieth century found wage earners and salaried classes content with plain houses, rag rugs or none at all and unupholstered furniture.. Today every man who works, and many who don't, believes he is entitled to luxury and beauty and is having both. , |