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For the effective influencing of consumers, certain new arts and devices have come into vogue in recent years. These are contained in the technique of publicity and propaganda. The World War more than any other single factor was responsible for developing the importance of propaganda. Propaganda was a means of stimulating patriotism at home and disaffection in the enemy countries. The Food Administration used publicity as a means of economizing in the use of certain scarce foods and directing consumption toward foods which were. available in plenty. Seeing the effectiveness of propaganda in the hands. of governments, private business associations took up the same weapon for business purposes. Large industries and leading trade and commercial associations maintain publicity experts, whose duty it is to put before the public mind in multitudes of ways information calculated to predispose the public favorably. This tendency is fraught with some danger to the public, since the information so broadcasted is tarnished with the selfish and mercenary point of view of some particular business organization. The public can not rely upon the impartiality or accuracy of propaganda news. Much of propaganda is aimed not to lead but to mislead public opinion. As an offset to commercialized propaganda, public agencies resort to the same technique to persuade public opinion in a more disinterested way. Broadly viewed, propaganda carries the danger of forming public choices on half truths, plausible deceits, and specious suggestions.

Over against the powers of propaganda we may set the powers of mature reflection and discriminating judgment. The possibility of developing sensitive appreciation of higher and better choices is a real one. Education, information, stimulation of rational choice making, offer hopeful pathways of progress. The consumer may, by taking careful thought, weed out of his budget the wastes and futilities which beset him at every hand. He may balance the proportions spent for food, for clothing, for recreation, for education, and for each particular purpose. He may plan his expenditure so as to save an ample amount to buy his home, to carry his life insurance, to provide an estate for his old age. He may restrict the wanton play of fashion and foible in his choices, and adhere to more permanent and enduring satisfactions. Although all the powers of emotion and of impulse are utilized to batter down. his reflective and rational resistance, nevertheless there is a vitality and latent strength in these resistances which offers the only sound hope of progress.

As reflective judgment is brought 'into action, the importance of cultural factors in consumption becomes stronger. The literature which appeals to a people is a fair index of the standards of appreciation. The music, the dancing, the pictures which a people like, are a measure of their æsthetic level. The features which they demand in their newspapers and magazines reflect their true character. Their desire to be informed upon developments in science and in thought is a register of their intellectual curiosity. One caustic criticism brought against

contemporary standards in all these respects is that decay and degeneration have set in. All that is connoted by "the jazz age" has reference to new and different levels of artistic interest. The need for a maintenance of high standards of art, appreciation, and culture is a pointed challenge to the public agencies hoping to guide consumption.

The Unconscious Evolution of Choices.-The foregoing discussion deals with the deliberate guidance of wants. But deliberate guidance is not the whole explanation of choices. Of equal importance are the mass of unconscious choices made chiefly as a result of custom and social habit. Sociology and social psychology have made clear the force of group tradition in guiding human conduct. The group traditions of China differ sharply from those of America, and those of peasant Russia differ from those of metropolitan England. Not only do customs differ from country to country, but also they differ in the same country from one period of time to another. The customs and conventions of colonial days were as much different from those of the Civil War period as the latter were in turn different from those of modern America. The traveler and the historian are the most competent authorities to relate the countless differences in social custom as between country and country and generation and generation.

Various terms have been used to express the many phases of social custom in guiding choices of consumers. In economics, the common phrase is "the standard of living." The standard of living is the number and variety of wants which a given class of people at a given time and place deem it necessary to satisfy. It is a state of mind, a psychical fact, a mass of ideas. People think it necessary to wear a certain style of dress, to drive a certain make of car, to live in a certain grade of house. The fact that they think each standard of expenditure necessary is the all-important fact.

Standards of living are in large measure the accumulation of folkways over hundreds of generations. Each new generation inherits in the form of custom and convention the codes and canons of the previous generation. This handed-down lore of social custom constitutes the social heritage of the race. The child grows into customs of his forefathers. Each modern custom is rooted in the history of a long past. The social heritage is the climax of prolonged social evolution. As the child grows up in a given social environment, the ways of life seem natural, right, and good. The ways of the past become the ways of the present, and millions of minute folkways give character and content to the standards of living of the present day.

The social heritage of today, although designed by past generations, nevertheless is steadily undergoing current change and modification. The contact of mind with mind develops new outlooks and new thoughts. One school of sociologists maintains that virtually all social progress comes from the contacts of cultures of different human groups. Migration, immigration, travel, and commerce are claimed to be the great forces which break up the ruts of national habit and provincial custom.

The mixing of peoples is, according to this view, the all-important force which guides the evolution of choices and wants. Although this force of culture contacts is of great importance, we probably should not assign to it a position of such exclusive importance. Other forces are also of marked importance. Originality, invention, new ideas, may appear independently of a mixing of peoples of different cultures. Science, research, and discovery set in motion new wants and new desires. The new wants are at first a luxury for the fortunate few. But gradually the wants spread among the mass of the people and, for all but the very poor, come to be looked upon as necessities of life. Two forces of evolution of wants are, then, of primary importance, namely, contact of different cultures and originality, science, invention, and discovery.

When wants become firmly established in social custom, they exercise a kind of tyranny over the individual consumer. The individual is not free to depart from what is considered good form and good taste. He dare not violate the conventions of the group, for fear of becoming an outcast. The standards of fashion impose arbitrary restraints upon the consumer's freedom of choice. It is not so much the individual's will which chooses as it is the social will of the group. The social codes stamp a pattern of uniformity upon consumers' choices. Obedience to the canons of good form and propriety ordinarily is taken as the test of safe and sane citizenship.

The binding force of social custom is nowhere more clear than in all matters of pecuniary emulation. Such emulation involves countless ways of displaying luxury and extravagance. Prestige in consumption is attained by ostentatious expenditure. Social esteem is acquired by making a prominent show of rich living. The result is competition among consumers to determine who can make the most glaring and gorgeous expenditure of money. Competitive extravagance and conspicuous waste penetrate all modern standards of living. The leisure classes at the top of society set the pace. Their conspicuous indulgences in the sports, the arts, the luxuries, and the dissipations of high society constitute a standard envied by all other classes. The middle classes seek to emulate the fads and foibles of those higher up in the scale of spending, and even the laboring classes are prone to copy and imitate in ways often crude and pathetic. Each consumer tries to keep up with the class above. The pecuniary canons of taste filter down from the rich to the poor. A man is known by the size of his income and his dramatic display of the art of spending. Pecuniary emulation is a dominating factor in setting the standards of living and in guiding the course of consumers' choices.

Ideal Standards versus Actual Standards.-The standards of living which have been discussed are the actual standards of modern life. These may be compared with imaginary or ideal standards of living. with a view to discovering how the actual deviates from the ideal. Thus we can construct quantity food budgets setting forth the requirements for nutrition in terms of calories, proteins, fats, vitamins,

and the like. We can discover the minimum amount of food elements necessary to yield a balanced and adequate diet. Then we can compare with these theoretical food standards the actual food habits of given classes of people, and can ascertain in what respects actual standards of food consumption fall short of ideal standards. This same process can be applied to other parts of the family budget. The chief difficulty is that in many cases there are inadequate objective facts to serve as a basis for drafting an ideal standard. What, for instance, is an ideal standard of dress? Personal opinion and fancy deeply affect the answer, and yet, underlying countless differences of personal opinion, there are certain standards of health, decency, economy, display, and convenience which can be set up. Even in matters of dress, those who fall short of the standards of good taste are quickly detected and branded with a certain social taboo. No matter how much personal whim and fashion may enter in, certain ideal standards can be set up, and used as a point of comparison with actual standards. Even though complete ideal standards cannot be set up in all cases, there can be established numerous partial standards to be used as a basis of comparison with actual expenditure.

Progress in standards of living, in so far as it can be brought about by deliberate social effort, must largely be a result of setting up ideal standards as goals toward which to strive. Gradually, by processes of education, advertising, and propaganda, new habits and customs can be formed which square with the ideal standards.

Population and Standards of Living.-The standard of living has long played an important part in theories of population. The relationship involves two main propositions: First, that growth of population tends to encroach upon the means of subsistence and to keep the standard of living low; second, that growth of population tends to be checked as a result of the determination to maintain given standards of living by means of restricting the birth rate.

The first proposition was a cardinal point in the doctrines of Malthus. He viewed with dismay the future of human kind, because he anticipated that the multiplication of mouths to feed would exceed the resources wherewith to feed them. The congestion of population and the low standard of living in many parts of the world, such as India or China, illustrate the reality of this tendency. But this tendency is not inevitable and uncontrollable. A counter force has been brought into operation, namely, the desire to keep the size of families small enough to permit the maintenance of a high family standard of living. In each country, the people of larger incomes and higher education are so firmly set upon having the comforts and enjoyments of life that they avoid the burden of care and duty involved in large families. The standard of living among the higher groups acts as a drastic restraint upon the birth rate.

The balance struck between these opposite tendencies at any one time varies a great deal between countries and between classes in the

same country. At one extreme are countries dominated by the first tendency, and characterized by overpopulation, congestion, and low living standards. At another extreme are countries dominated by the second tendency, and characterized by "race-suicide," small families, and high living standards. The balance is not a fixed and constant ratio between population and living standards, but is a changing ratio in process of evolution in one direction or another.

Welfare and Consumption.-Why should economics fear to deal frankly with the welfare outcome of economic action? The end all and be all is certainly not to grind out cold chunks of commodities nor to pour lifeless dollars into consumers' pockets. The economic struggle is all in vain, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing, unless it builds human personality, releases capacity, stimulates the mind, gives appreciation of beauty, makes healthy bodies, and insures that men shall have life and have it more abundantly. From every angle comes the query, "What is to be gained by merely heaping up that material wealth with which civilization is already top-heavy? Wealth and ever more. wealth. Is this to be our everlasting cry? Forever grasping at the means and forgetting the ends of human life and welfare? The need of the nation is not more wealth, but more wisdom in the art of using wealth toward rational aims. This is the slowly attained ideal of the worthiest economic thought of our time. It makes economics not the slave of industry, rather it would make industry the servitor of mankind.”

In an age when nearly every one acts upon the assumption that the most important thing in life is the size of his income, it is appropriate to sound the challenge that the most important thing in life is the quality of his personality. Smallness, meanness, pettiness, abound in the circles of high incomes as well as low. More wealth does not seem to mean more character, more health, or more happiness. As one author expresses the matter, "Men waste their substance in a vain and rapacious scramble for the power to acquire possessions and command services that bring satisfaction neither to themselves nor to others, but which nevertheless deprive whole hosts of their fellow creatures of true forms of well being. The welfare of wealthy persons in regard to quite ordinary matters of every day life is often very low, and that of poor people relatively high.'

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Graham Wallas has said, "Two types of industrial organization might be equally efficient in the production of wealth, and yet life under one might be happy and under another unhappy."5 A similar observation is made by Seager in a biographical note on the life and work of

3 F. A. Fetter, American Economic Review, March, 1925, p. 26.

4 William A. Robson, The Relation of Wealth to Welfare, pp. 5, 169. Compare the statement of E. Cannan, "It is a commonplace that material welfare does not increase pari passu with increasing income," in The Economic Outlook, p. 273. Also compare the statement of R. T. Ely, "There are two kinds of poverty: one a lack of goods for the higher wants, the other a lack of wants for the higher goods," in Outlines of Economics, p. 5.

5 Graham Wallas, The Great Society, p. 321.

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