Great Throughts Treasury

"So soon as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would be dissipated and it would presently lose caste."

"So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem... it becomes also a requisite to the complacency which we call self-respect."

"So thoroughly has the habit of approving the expensive and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking that we instinctively insist upon at least some measure of wasteful expensiveness in all our consumption, even in the case of goods which are consumed in strict privacy and without the slightest thought of display."

"Social advance, especially as seen from the point of view of economic theory, consists in a continued progressive approach to an approximately exact "adjustment of inner relations to outer relations", but this adjustment is never definitively established, since the "outer relations" are subject to constant change as a consequence of the progressive change going on in the "inner relations.""

"Social structure changes, develops, adapts itself to an altered situation, only through a change in the habits of thought of the several classes of the community, or in the last analysis, through... the individuals which make up the community."

"Some fighting... would be met with at any early stage of social development...The known habits of primitive groups, as well as the habits of the anthropoid apes, argue to that effect, and the evidence from... human nature enforces the same view."

"Some... higher wants, as for instance the habitual use of certain stimulants, or the need of salvation (in the eschatological sense), or of good repute, may in some cases take precedence of the lower or more elementary wants."

"Special training in personal service costs time and effort... it argues that the servant who possesses it, neither is nor has been habitually engaged in any productive occupation. It is prima facie evidence of a vicarious leisure extending far back in the past."

"That such has been the practical outcome is due to the fact that these enlightened principles of the eighteenth century comprise as their chief article the "natural" right of ownership. The later course of events has decided that the ownership of property in sufficiently large blocks will control the country's industrial system and thereby take over the disposal of the community's net output of product over cost; on which the vested interests live and on which, therefore, the kept classes feed. Hence the chief concern of those gentlemanly national governments that have displaced the dynastic states is always and consistently the maintenance of the rights of ownership and investment."

"That the alleged beauty, or "loveliness," of the styles in vogue at any given time is transient and spurious only is attested by the fact that none of the many shifting fashions will bear the test of time. When seen in the perspective of half-a-dozen years or more, the best of our fashions strike us as grotesque, if not unsightly."

"The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today."

"The accepted standard of expenditure in the community or in the class to which a person belongs largely determines what his standard of living will be. It does this directly... but it does so also indirectly through popular insistence on conformity to the accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of propriety, under pain of disesteem and ostracism."

"The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale. It is a commonplace that, wherever it occurs, a considerable degree of privation among the body of the people is a serious obstacle to any innovation."

"The aesthetic value of a detected counterfeit in dress declines somewhat in the same proportion as the counterfeit is cheaper than its original. It loses caste aesthetically because it falls to a lower pecuniary grade."

"The ameliorations wrought in favor of the pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend... to substitute the "soulless" joint-stock corporation for the captain, and so they make also for the dispensability, of the great leisure-class function of ownership."

"The articles or forms of consumption to which the consumer clings with the greatest tenacity are commonly the so-called necessaries of life, or the subsistence minimum."

"The aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate; and this solidarity of the system of institutions of any given culture or of any given people strengthens the instinctive resistance offered to any change in men's habits of thought, even in matters which, taken by themselves, are of minor importance."

"The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods...in the lower strata in which the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part delegated to the wife and children of the household...with a still lower descent into the levels of indigence?along the margin of the slums?the man, and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually the sole exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all customary conspicuous consumption. Very much of squalor and discomfort will be endured before the last trinket or the last pretense of pecuniary decency is put away...gratification of this higher or spiritual need."

"The best development of this vicarious leisure lies in the past rather than in the present; and its best expression in the present is to be found in the scheme of life of the upper leisure class."

"The business man's place in the economy of nature is to "make money," not to produce goods. The production of goods is a mechanical process, incidental to the making of money; whereas the making of money is a pecuniary operation, carried on by bargain and sale, not by mechanical appliances and powers. The business men make use of the mechanical appliances and powers of the industrial system, but they make a pecuniary use of them. And in point of fact the less use a business man can make of the mechanical appliances and powers under his charge, and the smaller a product he can contrive to turn out for a given return in terms of price, the better it suits his purpose. The highest achievement in business is the nearest approach to getting something for nothing. What any given business concern gains must come out of the total output of productive industry, of course; and to that extent any given business concern has an interest in the continued production of goods. But the less any given business concern can contrive to give for what it gets, the more profitable its own traffic will be."

"The canon of beauty requires expression of the generic. The "novelty" due to the demands of conspicuous waste traverses this canon of beauty, in that itresults in making the physiognomy of our objects of taste a congeries of idiosyncrasies... under the selective surveillance of the canon of expensiveness."

"The captain of industry is an astute man rather than an ingenious one, and his captaincy is a pecuniary rather than an industrial captaincy. Such administration of industry as he exercises is commonly of a permissive kind. The mechanically effective details of production and of industrial organization are delegated to subordinates of a less "practical" turn of mind?men who are possessed of a gift for workmanship rather than administrative ability."

"The case of the fast horse is much like that of the dog. He is on the whole expensive, or wasteful and useless?for the industrial purpose. What productive use he may possess... takes the form of exhibitions of force and facility of motion that gratify the popular aesthetic sense...The horse is not endowed with the spiritual aptitude for servile dependence in the same measure as the dog; but he ministers effectually to his master's impulse to convert the "animate" forces of the environment to his own use and discretion and so express his own dominating individuality through them."

"The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries...The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors...The greater abstinence of women is in some part due to an imperative conventionality... strongest where the patriarchal tradition?the tradition that the woman is a chattel?has retained its hold in greatest vigor."

"The ceremonial inferiority or uncleanness in consumable goods due to "commonness," or... slight cost of production, has been taken very seriously by many persons. The objection to machine products is often formulated as an objection to the commonness of such goods. What is common is within the (pecuniary) reach of many people. Its consumption is therefore not honorific, since it does not serve the purpose of a favorable invidious comparison with other consumers. Hence... the sight of such goods, is inseparable from an odious suggestion of the lower levels of human life... a pervading sense of meanness that is extremely distasteful and depressing."

"The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay."

"The close-cropped lawn is beautiful in the eyes of a people whose inherited bent it is to readily find pleasure in contemplating a well-preserved pasture or grazing land...Public parks of course fall in the same category with the lawn; they too, at their best, are imitations of the pasture. ..to the average popular apprehension a herd of cattle so pointedly suggests thrift and usefulness that their presence in the public pleasure ground would be intolerably cheap. This method of keeping grounds is comparatively inexpensive, therefore it is indecorous."

"The code of proprieties, conventionalities, and usages in vogue at any given time and among any given people has more or less of the character of an organic whole; so that any appreciable change in one point of the scheme involves something of a change or readjustment at other points also, if not a reorganization all along the line. When a change is made which immediately touches only a minor point in the scheme, the consequent derangement of the structure of conventionalities may be inconspicuous; but even in such a case it is safe to say that some derangement of the general scheme, more or less far-reaching, will follow."

"The commercial value of the goods used for clothing in any modern community is made up to a much larger extent of the fashionableness, the reputability of the goods, than of the mechanical service which they render in clothing the person of the wearer. The need of dress is eminently a "higher" or spiritual need."

"The common good, so far as it is a question of material welfare, is evidently best served by an unhampered working of the industrial system at its full capacity, without interruption or dislocation. But it is equally evident that the owner or manager of any given concern or section of this industrial system may be in a position to gain something for himself at the cost of the rest by obstructing, retarding or dislocating this working system at some critical point in such a way as will enable him to get the best of the bargain in his dealings with the rest. Sabotage of this kind is indispensable to any large success in industrial business."

"The conditions under which men lived in the most primitive stages of associated life that can properly be called human, seem to have been of a peaceful kind; and the character?the temperament and spiritual attitude of men under these early conditions or environment and institutions seems to have been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to say an indolent, cast. For the immediate purpose this peaceable cultural stage may be taken to mark the initial phase of social development...evidence of its existence is to be found in psychological survivals, in the way of persistent and pervading traits of human character."

"The conspicuously wasteful honorific expenditure that confers spiritual well-being may become more indispensable than much of that expenditure which ministers to the "lower" wants of physical well-being or sustenance only."

"The consumption of expensive goods is meritorious, and the goods which contain an appreciable element of cost in excess of what goes to give them serviceability for their ostensible mechanical purpose are honorific."

"The control exerted by the accepted standard of living is chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual."

"The conventions of the business world have grown up under the selective surveillance of this principle of predation or parasitism. They are conventions of ownership; derivatives, more or less remote, of the ancient predatory culture. But these pecuniary institutions do not entirely fit the situation of today... there is a more or less consistent trend in the leisure-class guidance of institutional growth, answering to the pecuniary ends which shape leisure-class economic life...The community's institutional furniture... is of immediate consequence only to the propertied classes, and in proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion as they are to be ranked with the leisure class."

"The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work."

"The cultural stage which lies immediately back of the present in the life history of Western civilization is what has here been called the quasi-peaceable stage. At this quasi-peaceable stage the law of status is the dominant feature in the scheme of life. There is no need of pointing out how prone the men of today are to revert to the spiritual attitude of mastery and of personal subservience which characterizes that stage."

"The decay of the ceremonial code?or as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life?among the industrial classes proper has become one of the chief enormities of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate sensibilities."

"The development of... institutions is the development of society. The institutions... may, on the psychological side, be broadly characterized as a prevalent spiritual attitude or a prevalent theory of life. As regards its generic features, this... is in the last analysis reducible to terms of a prevalent type of character."

"The dog has advantages in the way of uselessness as well as in special gifts of temperament...the dog is man's servant and that he has the gift of an unquestioning subservience and a slave's quickness in guessing his master's mood...the dog has some characteristics which are of a more equivocal aesthetic value. He is the filthiest of the domestic animals in his person and the nastiest in his habits. For this he makes up is a servile, fawning attitude towards his master, and a readiness to inflict damage and discomfort on all else...The dog is at the same time associated... with the chase?a meritorious employment and an expression of the honorable predatory impulse."

"The domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the ‚clat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of observers...hence the exclusiveness of people, as regards their domestic life, in most of the industrially developed communities; and... the habit of privacy and reserve that is so large a feature in the code of proprieties of the better class in all communities."

"The dominant traits of the early barbarian leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and a free resort to fraud."

"The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive employment...feminine bonnets go even farther towards making work impossible than does the man's high hat. The woman's shoe adds the so-called French [high] heel... obviously makes any, even the simplest and most necessary manual work extremely difficult...The substantial reason for our tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this; it is expensive and it hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for all useful exertion."

"The earlier?acquired, more generic habits of the race have never ceased to have some usefulness for the purpose of the life of the collectivity and have never fallen into definitive abeyance."

"The earliest form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able bodied men of the community."

"The economic situation contemplated by Adam Smith as the natural (and ultimate) state of industry and trade in any enlightened society, conducted on sane and sound lines according to the natural order of human relations, was of a simple structure and may be drawn in few lines, -- neglecting such minor extensions and exceptions as would properly be taken account of in any exhaustive description. Industry is conceived to be of the nature of handicraft; not of the nature of mechanical engineering, such as it has in effect and progressively come to be since his time. It is described as a matter of workmanlike labor, "and of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is commonly applied." It is a question of the skilled workman and his use of tools. Mechanical inventions are "labor-saving devices," which "facilitate and abridge labor." The material equipment is the ways and means by manipulation of which the workman gets his work done. "Capital stock" is spoken of as savings parsimoniously accumulated out of the past industry of its owner, or out of the industry of those persons from whom he has legally acquired it by inheritance or in exchange for the products of his own labor. Business is of the nature of "petty trade" and the business man is a "middle man" who is employed for a livelihood in the distribution of goods to the consumers. Trade is subsidiary to industry, and money is a vehicle designed to be used for the distribution of goods. Credit is an expedient of the needy; a dubious expedient. Profits (including interest) are justified as a reasonable remuneration for productive work done, and for the labor-saving use of property derived from the owner's past labor. The efforts of masters and workmen alike are conceived to be bent on turning out the largest and most serviceable output of goods; and prices are competitively determined by the labor-cost of the goods. Like other men Adam Smith did not see into the future beyond what was calculable on the data given by his own historical present; and in his time that later and greater era of investment and financial enterprise which has made industry subsidiary to business was only beginning to get under way and only obscurely so."

"The emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership...for these two institutions result from the same set of economic forces."

"The energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end. Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated, especially among that large portion of the leisure class whose plebeian origin acts to set them at variance with the tradition of the otium cum dignitate [retirement with dignity]. But that canon of reputability which discountenances all employment that is of the nature of productive effort is still at hand, and will permit nothing beyond the most transient vogue to any employment that is substantially useful or productive. A reconciliation... is effected by a resort to make-believe. Many and intricate polite observances and social duties of a ceremonial nature are developed; many organizations are founded, with some specious object of amelioration... there is much coming and going, and a deal of talk... And along with the make-believe of purposeful employment, and woven inextricably into its texture, there is commonly... a more or less appreciable element of purposeful effort directed to some serious end."

"The evidence... indicates that the institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life."

"The evolution of social structure has been a process of natural selection of institutions."