bles, and spreads them before her nest, for no purpose, apparently, except the pleasure of looking at them. Now tools may be just as beautiful as the greater number of those useless objects which people of leisure and bower birds collect for their own delectation. Those who work spend a large portion of their time with their tools and in their shops, more than they are likely to spend anywhere else except in their own homes. Next to the adornment of their homes, the adornment and beautification of their working-places must furnish them the pleasure of living. Pride in work. The spirit which regards work as a more or less repulsive necessity-which tries to cover up in many ways the evidences of work-is probably responsible for a large part of the neglect which we have shown in the case of our workingplaces. Naturally enough a person who regards work merely as a disagreeable necessity-something to be ashamed of and avoided on every possible pretext-is not likely to spend very much money on the polishing or adornment of his tools or the beautification of his working-place. No rural neighborhood, for example, is quite so desolate as that from which people retire as soon as they have accumulated enough to enable them to live in town. Farmers who retire as soon as they can possibly afford to do so are not likely to spend much money in adorning their farmhouses or in making the neighborhood attractive. It is only where you find farmers who are glad that they are farmers-who expect to remain farmers and whose children look forward to the same career that you find the farms, the homes, and the community adorned and embellished with the evidences of civilization. -- Absentee ownership. No town or section of a town is generally quite so unattractive as the place where the people work. It has not occurred to many of the owners of these workingplaces that the people really live there a good portion of their lives, and that if they cannot get a part of their joy of living there they will miss a good deal of it. No doubt this is due partly to the fact that the owners themselves live elsewhere. In this respect a factory district resembles a farming district whose land is owned by absentee landlords. The surplus which the land affords is all spent somewhere else, where the owner lives, in adorning and embellishing his home; there is none left to adorn and embellish the countryside. Similarly, the surplus which the factory yields is spent somewhere else, usually as far from the factory as the owner and his family can get. If it were not for the fact, referred to above, that we have inherited certain aristocratic traditions (or else that we try to ape those who have) and are rather anxious to get away from the sources of our incomes, we might find it possible, in some cases at least, to live near our places of business. If we all did so we should spend our money there and should also, if we could afford it, beautify those surroundings as we now beautify the suburban districts where we live. What is drudgery? Even inside of our homes or dwellingplaces the same tendencies show themselves. When the people who can and do appreciate art and beauty all keep servants to do the housework, such places as the kitchen, the laundry, and the scullery, where the necessary work of the household is done, are unattractive places. Adornment is reserved for those parts of the house where the family live. Even those people who love beautiful things and, at the same time, have to do their own household work, frequently imitate the same customs. It is unnecessary to remark that their work seems like drudgery because it has to be done under unattractive conditions. There are, however, many fine exceptions to this general rule, as in the case of the old-fashioned rural kitchen. This noble institution could never have developed except among people of intelligence and taste who cheerfully accepted the fact that work was a necessity and tried to make the most of it. There was no pretense that living and working could be divorced and no desire to keep them apart. There was the frank recognition of the fact that life must consist very largely of work, that the working-place and the living-place could not be separated, and that the joy of life must be derived largely from the working place during the working-time. Having once accepted the fact that work is a necessity, and having developed customs and institutions in harmony with it, there is no further mystery connected with the fact that such people took their work cheerfully and that it never occurred to them that it was drudgery. Unfashionableness of work. It is astonishing how much of the fashion of the world is due to the desire to avoid the appearance of having to work, or even to advertise the fact that one does not have to work. In ancient times certain Chinese magnates used to allow the finger nails to grow to extraordinary lengths as a visible sign that they did not have to work. The binding of the feet of the girls is said to have had the same origin. The train, which only lately was a fashionable necessity for every lady in Christendom, answered much the same purpose. Seeing that we have been so anxious either to avoid work or at least to avoid the appearance of having to work, it is not. strange that we have done very little to make our work agreeable. The opposite tendency shows itself once in a while, however, as in the case of those New England shoemakers of an earlier day who coöperated to hire readers to read to them while they plied their trade. Such people cannot be kept down. They built up a great shoemaking industry in New England. One finds good workmen who delight in nice tools,-tools with which it is a pleasure to work, and who, if they have an opportunity, adorn their shops with flowers. A good farmer usually likes to work with a handsome team, well groomed and well harnessed. The team is to him both a consumers' good and producers' good. There is not much doubt that such a farmer works more cheerfully and more steadily and finds life more enjoyable than if he tried to get along with an illmatched, unattractive team. It is reasonable to suppose that we should all do better and more persistent work and get more enjoyment out of life if we took some pains to make the conditions of our work attractive. If this is so, it is a matter of great economic importance and one which will contribute to the prosperity, strength, and greatness of the nation, and even more to the enjoyment of the people. Expenditure for such things would form a part of a rational system of consumption. But it is important that all such enjoyable consumption should be regarded in its true relation to the problems of the national life upon which our individual lives depend in the long run. To forget its relation to the joy of work and to think of it as an end in itself, unrelated to the larger problems of life, is to diminish our own value to the nation and, to that extent at least, endanger the position of our posterity. CHAPTER XLIII LUXURY Different classes of consumers' goods. Consumers' goods have been divided into four classes, according to the kind of desires which they are designed to satisfy. They are necessaries, comforts, decencies, and luxuries. This, however, is at best only a rough classification. It may seem fairly easy to distinguish between necessaries and comforts, and there are doubtless many cases where goods are easily classified; but there are also many line cases where it is difficult to determine whether the good in question is a necessary or a comfort, or even a decency. Another difficulty which tends to obscure the distinction is found in the fact that no one, however poor, confines himself to necessaries. Part of his expenditure will go for comforts, part for decencies, and part even for luxuries. Again, no one, however rich, can avoid the buying of necessaries and comforts. Necessaries. In a general way we may define necessaries as all goods which are required for the maintenance of physical health and strength, not only of the mature man but also of his family and even of his young children. In discussing what used to be called the iron law of wages, it was said that the natural wages of labor are made up of those things which are necessary in order that the laborer may maintain his health and strength and reproduce his kind so as to maintain the supply of labor without increase or diminution. Aside from the unwarranted use of the word "natural" as applied to this rate of wages, it would be impossible to say that such wages would consist entirely of necessaries. It is quite possible that the laborers might demand luxuries and forego the gratification of their domestic instinct unless they could get them. In that case wages would |