All this is very well in a world where flies and cherries are free to all, but America is fast ceasing to be a happy uncrowded orchard in which the young find more than enough room and food for the taking.
In the past, the boy--inured to plain living and a certain amount of labour from childhood--had only to take the girl of his choice by the hand and go make a home out of virgin soil, wheresoever chance or fancy led, himself and his parents both confident he could not suffer in a land where only industry was needed to ensure conquest. These boundless possibilities relieved the parent of half the cares incident to the relation, and that sense of freedom from responsibility has remained, while conditions have altered. The bird-like fashion of refusing further liability once the child has made his first flight is still the rule.
To the European parent this seems a most flagrant abandonment of duty. There the anxious care for the offspring reaches out to the third and fourth generation, and every safeguard which law or custom can devise is thrown around the child. From the moment of its birth the parent of Continental Europe begins to save, not only for the education and upbringing, but for the whole future existence of the child. It is not alone the daughter who is dowered, but the son also has provision made for his married life, when, as his parents keenly realize, the greatest strain will be made upon his resources and capabilities.
In America it is the custom--very nearly the universal custom--for the parents to spend upon the luxuries and pleasures of the family life the whole income. The children are educated according to this standard of expenditure, and are accustomed to all its privileges. No thought is taken of the time when they must set up households for themselves--almost invariably upon a very different scale from the one to which they have been used. To the American parent this seems only a natural downfall. He remarks cheerfully that he himself began in a small way, and it will do the young people no harm to acquire a similar experience--forgetting that in most cases the children have been educated to a much higher standard of ease than that of his own early life. The parents do not consider it obligatory to leave anything to their children at death. They have used all they could accumulate during their own lifetime; let their children do the same. The results of the system are crystallized in the American saying: "There are but three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves." The man who acquires wealth spends what he makes. His children, brought up in luxury, struggle unsuccessfully against conditions to which they are unused, and the grand-children begin in their shirt sleeves to toil for the wealth dissipated by the two preceding generations.