.

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 harnessed. The team is to him both a consumers' good and a producers' good. There is not much doubt that such a farmer works more cheerfully and more steadily, and that he finds life more enjoyable, than he would if he tried to get along with an ill-matched, 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 their relation to the joy of work and to think of them as ends in themselves, 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 XL

LUXURY

goods.)

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 have to be high enough to provide the laborers with these luxuries; otherwise they would not marry and reproduce their kind with sufficient rapidity to keep the supply of labor intact. It would, in that state of society, be necessary to pay such wages as these; but it could hardly be said that everything which these well-to-do laborers consumed could be classified as necessaries of life. In short, wages which will enable the laborer to enjoy comforts, decencies, and luxuries, as well as necessaries, may have to be paid in order to keep up the supply of labor.

Comforts. Of these three classes of goods, comforts are the most difficult to define. While not absolutely necessary for the maintenance of health and strength, still they can hardly be dispensed with in any society where life is really worth living. A young and vigorous person might, by running to and from his work in cold weather, dispense with an overcoat. From his point of view an overcoat could hardly be called a necessary, and yet it would be a great comfort. Cushions or upholstered furniture, spring mattresses, etc. can hardly be called absolute necessaries, and yet they would be considered almost indispensable by the average family.

Decencies. The dividing line between comforts and decencies is likewise obscure. By decencies we mean those articles of consumption which the habits or customs of one's neighborhood or one's class prescribe, and without which the individual or the family would feel that it could scarcely maintain its position of respectability. In a community where military traditions are strong and society tends to be stratified, a military officer could almost lose caste if he condescended to ride on a street car. In such a community a private carriage would seem almost to be a necessary, though according to our definition we should call it a decency. Anything which an indìvidual member of any class, occupation, or profession would feel ashamed to be without would come under our definition.

Adam Smith1 included both decencies and comforts under necessaries and gives a very clear description of the difference, as it appeared to him in his day, between necessaries and luxuries.

By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men, but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about bare-footed. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life; and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.

Marshall2 divides consumers' goods into necessaries, comforts, and luxuries, making no special class to be called decencies.

This brings us to consider the term necessaries. It is common to divide wealth into necessaries, comforts, and luxuries; the first class including all things required to meet wants which must be satisfied, while the latter consist of things that meet wants of a less urgent character. But here again there is a troublesome ambiguity. When we say that a want must be satis fied, what are the consequences which we have in view if it is not satisfied?

1 The Wealth of Nations, pp. 466–467. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1880. 2 Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, pp. 67-69. Macmillan and Co., London, 5th ed., 1907.

Do they include death? Or do they extend only to the loss of strength and vigour? In other words, are necessaries the things which are necessary for life or those which are necessary for efficiency?...

It may be true that the wages of any industrial class might have sufficed to maintain a higher efficiency, if they had been spent with perfect wisdom. But every estimate of necessaries must be relative to a given place and time; and unless there be a special interpretation clause to the contrary, it may be assumed that the wages will be spent with just that amount of wisdom, forethought, and unselfishness which prevails in fact among the industrial class under discussion. With this understanding we may say that the income of any class in the ranks of industry is below its necessary level, when any increase in their income would in the course of time produce a more than proportionate increase in their efficiency. Consumption may be economized by a change of habits, but any stinting of necessaries is wasteful.

Luxuries. Where comforts or even luxuries have entered into the laborer's standard of living, it would undoubtedly be true, as Marshall suggests, that any forcible reduction of wages would result in less efficiency on the part of the laborers. From the standpoint of either the lawmaker or the employer, therefore, all those things which the customs of the time and country give to the laborer must be considered as necessaries. To cut down a portion of the laborer's wages would not result in the mere cutting out of a few luxuries from his consumption. He would be quite as likely to cut down his consumption of physical necessaries as of those things which, from an absolute point of view, could be called decencies or luxuries. It is a well-known fact that high-spirited people, with social standards and traditions to maintain, will, if they find themselves in reduced circumstances, deprive themselves of absolute physical necessaries of life in order to keep up appearances. This, of course, is certain to reduce their efficiency.

While this is a final consideration so far as the employer or the lawmaker is concerned, it does not alter the fact that if these people could be appealed to on moral or other grounds to rationalize their habits of consumption, they would be much better off. If they would reduce their consumption of luxuries