The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 4, 1906, Page 11

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. —\ PXTRAVAGA follies as an example and warning to her sisters. But it is not only the rich woman wh is extravagant. She is only the mo: conspicuously extravagant. v It is, the German professor judicially . points out, the American woman in every rank of life who “wastes much of what is bought and who buys so many things because they are wanted, not because they are needed.” The woman of the smart set already quoted has this charge to make £ tells of the pretty young wife of a brok- /' ~er’'s clerk, who, wr i lucky flier made $1X buy a hat—one little hat B season—merely because it was. be and she wanted it th living a hotel life up te ery limit of their income and had no prospect of a kome. What the broker's wife does the bank clerk’s pretty. much-indulged young wite too, and the his degrees ok, his well y-spending. ys, after the most y into jumping:at c ican woman > spends the dollars. He has discovered that other people, money-maker and woman the nder. Y n see them downtown . - B g streets, in the smart 3 g grills after t p feathers and g palr of the specta somebody is alwa - body else, “I wonder how they ying for his salary. and a rabbi has worked ing twe which is p ent form of est of all a world o in liners, the the furnit surroundings against her—and poor thing? i 4 asked t, that makes the f. and wholesome, or o spending of t ncome i entirely in the Ame: d the wonder is,” for and bher debt. e I show her 2 mportation—aze * 3§ beantiful new s and she was h tempted.” There, perhaps, is the the designers, are needed s comment is the acturers, ainst the she must be explic igure necessary n American woman herself and her kind. most spect: avagant Ame Smart Set, or she ancial collapse squeezed hi e the crash came a bankrupt and to a fashionable ablishment to trim hats and custom: ever knew what my expenses were, t our income was. If I wantea a ordered it, whether it was a new bi money to pay for him. I never knew elf anything, or d have it or must shepping and saw any- I ordered it sent home price. It was enough [ wanted it. I never gave a thought I needed it Thus %t was had many sets because I when one or two sets sufficed, even for a woman I had many more jews than ear; many more gowns than even the exigencles of fashionable life demanded. I changed the decorations and furnishings f r different homes as T r cavrice suggested, and not as mone that of ‘With American women money spend- ing is a diversion. They do it to drive away ennui. The Englishm go out and he American woman when is bored and says, something she is go out and buy some- bored thir not because she needs not as a matter of And she buy things she buy the egr £ N necessity or investment, but simply to " amuse herself and please her fancy. “That is why when the crash in my husband’s affairs came we had spent our rey and bad nothing to show for it We were lving in a rented house in- 1d of our own. Our country place was rigaged instead of paid for. ¥ had furniture, pictures. bric-a- brac. but they sold for what peaple would give for them, out of all proportion to what we paid. 1ling. jewels is a very different thing from buying them. o ather en- , we B ) German professor owns, furs, hats—my whole expen- sive wardrobe was out of fashion. *f found I had spent thousands of dol- lars where hundreds judiciously used would have sufficed—and I had done only-— what every American woman who can get the money is doing.” This is the story of a woman of New York's luxurious smart set. a woman whose beauty might well be her exeuse for extrayagance, whose social opportunities might be offered in defense, zenith of the and was entertained by royalties—that public, in the papers and the magazines, offering her light-hearted, for she entertained tells it not to her best friend, but to the jump ahead of the bill collector. climber’s ambition; and she They spread their snares fop ler. And she, poor thing, being merely human, is tempted. For the rich woman with taste there is all the product of the arts. For the woman with taste who is not rich there is the same allurement S0 much stronger because less pos- sible. And sometimes the answer comes in the For the women of lesser means.there intermittent sensation of another man are the imitations—still alluring. missing from the place that has known Even for the humblest there are the him, of trust betrayed, of gambling on snares that promise to make life a the races here, in stocks there. little gayer, a little easier, a little more Incidents like that are only extreme bearable—and only a little, a very lt- cases, however. tle, more expensive. The common result of extravagance is Is it any wonder that the American usually only worry, discomfort and the woman—vsho is at best a poor mathe- loes of self-respect. matician, and has the spending of the It means being perpetually only one, American income—is the most extrav- agant creature on earth? It meane *he momentary satisfaction of For she is, as Mrs. Talbot so naively after all, heedless possessing %= thing you want, and the confessed, only a woman