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Show DOMESTIC SORROWS OF MILLIONAIRES Rev. Father Phelan, iu the Western Watchman, says: , The only son of Marshall Field died of a self-inflicted self-inflicted wound last Monday. One of the Mackey boys was killed a short time ago in an automobile accident. A son of Richard Croker was found dead out west. One of Eugene Kelly's sons lost his life a few years ago, being drowned while fording ford-ing a stream. The two sons of Fullman are dead or in a sanitarium. We V'ould run up the list to hundreds. In this city all the young men of the old families died young, and most of them by violent vio-lent deaths. The rich brewers of this city have only girls to leave their vast fortunes to. The sons on whom they depended to inherit and carry on the business are all dead, and iu nearly every case l)y anticipating the stroke of the fell dest-yer. , i:TtttiLioV-Vuirg-h wer'e-Subtly shrouded in suspicious mystery. j Why are the young scions of our' rich families, going so fast to the grave and the devil? The answer is very simple: They are not. brought up right. They are taught u(o moral restraint. They have no religion. If they ever had, it was driven out of them by the exantple of their parents and of early immoral companions. Rich fathers and .mothers will mix with the Four Hundred, and their children must go with the children of the Four Hundred, even should that mean to go to perdition. That is the simple explanation in a nut-shell. Rich young men need religion and its restraining restrain-ing influence more than 'poor young men. They have more and stronger temptations, and the consequences con-sequences of youthful wrng-doing are not so disastrous dis-astrous for them. , Moral lapses they need not care about, as gilded youth is supposed to be above the ordinary laws of . moral! tyf But if religion is powerless pow-erless to assert its claimt nature will have her revenge.. The young men who have brought sorrow sor-row and shame to the jhornes of the multi-millionaires of the land in tlie past quarter of a century cen-tury have been physical as well as moral wrecks; and it was because they vere physical wrecks that they came to their untimely ends. It is terrible to behold these young men in the thirties showing all the. signs of debauched senility; stomachs gone; kidneys gone; hearts gone, and trembling on- the verge of drunkards' gra s.J They were not always so. They inherited stron constitutions from their fathers and mothers. Bu t they joined the club and had a night key to their' rooms. They had plenty of money to purchase fo. bidden pleasure, and none to say to them, nay; th y contracted extravagant and destructive habits, and in' the hey-day of young manhood , they be( ame rakes. Rich; fathers and. mothers in this country should learn from their brothers and sisters across the water. There are no children so carefully brought , up or more closely watched than the sons of the European nobility. They do not always turn out well, but certainly they are not all profligates. profli-gates. Very many of thjs best men in every walk of life in Europe are sons of the nobility. With us there is scarcely a hajlf dozen "men of -any honorable hon-orable prominence in e&piety or. business whose fathers were even wealth'. It is become an aphorism apho-rism among . thinking mn that to leave- a young man a fortune is surely to consign him to an early and dishonorable grave. ' ' As we are. most interested, in the fate of our rich Catholic: boys, we wjould ask what becomes of the promising crop ' df ' .toung " men', sons' of our Catholic families, whom mr Catholic colleges turn out every year? -. You hear from them" for a while and then they disappear, as if the earth": swallowed them up; and 'you never hear from 'them again, until the papers are called on some fine morning j to explain away .a suspi cious case, of suicide or I .. . : death surrounded by shameful circumstances. These Catholic young men began their downward career by neglecting Mass and the sacraments. A hopeful and indulgent father or mother sees no danger in this neglect of religion. It is only a case of sowing wild oats. The boys will get sense when they get older. But they do not get older. The pace they start out in kills them early. .We would tell our rich Catholics to see to it, as their equals in Europe do, that their boys do not law away, their religious practices, when they not lay away their religious practices, when they ; close touch with their priests. The priest is the only reliable and safe guardian of the child of opulence. All those of ,that class that have been saved owe their, salvation to: the friendly, and fatherly interest of a priest. He- had? influence over them in their youth; he can influence them, in their after-scholastic years. tJ He. has the mind that, masters and compels obiience; and it is only mind that makes men. What the world needs more than anything else today is the priest in 4he home an the priest in society. . .. 'V ." '' -' ' : ; 'r . - .i - s J - -- V:- i ; " ; f - ' |