WASTE AND LUXURY § 1. Accidental destruction of wealth. § 2. Intentional destruction of wealth by the owner. § 3. Intentional destruction of others' wealth.
§ 4. Careless waste. $ 5. Waste in public outlay. 8. The fallacy of waste. 7. Definitions of luxury. 8. Luxury to give employment.
13. Animal choice. § 14. Choice by primitive men. § 15. Desires and progress. § 16. Function of moderate discontent. § 17. Luxury as an incentive to progress.
§ 1. Accidental destruction of wealth. Before approach ing in the next chapter the subject of the dynamic influence of saving and the accumulation of wealth, let us look at the subject in its negative aspects, namely, waste and luxury. By waste is meant the accidental or intentional using and using up of more wealth (and services) than would suffice for the purpose of the use. In waste the potential uses in goods are applied so that they cause less desirable results to the user than they might, or even give no use at all. We are concerned here with the dynamic and social aspect of the case. The question is: What is the dynamic effect of waste as a policy ? In which way will it carry the general level of in comes, upward or downward? There is a popular opinion, long held, that waste in itself is a good thing, that it gives employment and benefits the working man.
In a simple society, without exchange, the result of waste is evidently bad for the self-sufficing families. If they destroy their food, they suffer from hunger or gratify appetite less perfectly ; if they destroy their clothing, they are cold ; if they destroy their house, they have no shelter. Waste makes their economic environment less fitted for their use. In the conditions of our society, where goods are exchanged, the re sult appears to be different. The need to replace the lost goods makes a demand for special kinds of labor or goods, and this appears "to create" employment for labor. But if a part of the income of the loser must be diverted from other uses to replace the wealth destroyed, those from whom he would have bought suffer an unexpected falling off of their sales. The thought of an immediate benefit to one obscures the corresponding loss to another. The net result is a loss of wealth and gratification to the community as a whole.
There is a real exception where the accidental destruction removes some social difficulty. Such great fires as those in London in 1665 and in Chicago in 1872 result in wonderful improvement to the city as a whole and eventually even to most of the individual owners. When an old city is built almost entirely of wood, each owner may think it to his inter est to keep the old buildings. A great fire sweeps them all away and compels the rebuilding of the city on a new and higher standard. But the usual resultant of accidental de struction is loss to the owner, rarely with benefit on the whole to others. It is a use of wealth without a fulfilling of the purpose of production, the gratifying of desires.
§ 2. Intentional destruction of wealth by the owner. Another type of case is the intentional destruction of wealth by the owner, to make trade good. The case in mind is not where the destruction is inevitable without man's action, and he merely tries to minimize it—such a case as the throwing overboard of a part of the cargo when the ship is in danger of sinking, in the hope thereby of saving the rest, or as the blowing up of buildings to prevent the spread of a fire. The case in mind is the deliberate destruction of wealth that might be kept for use. One labor leader, for example, boasted that when he drank pop he always broke the bottle "to make trade good" by helping the glass industry. The refuting of this fallacy is one of the time-honored tasks in political economy.
There is, it is true, an increase in the demand for glass and glassblowers' labor; but at the same time there is a decrease in the demand for other goods and other kinds of labor. The proverb, old in Shakespeare's time, runs, "Nothing can come of nothing." What is spent for one purpose can not be for another; "you can not eat your cake and have it, too." A given income can be spent in one of many ways, but not in all ways or even in two ways at once. It is a question of this or that, not this and that. At the same moment that the demand for pop-bottles is increased, the demand for other things is decreased. Such a form of benevolence is a futile attempt to provide labor for one man by taking it from an other. Moreover, it is an uneconomic, harmful attempt, for the breaking of one bottle to have it replaced by another adds nothing to the sum of enjoyable goods in the world ; but the same labor and other agents could and should be used to make some of the many other needed things.
If the advocate of wealth-destruction would be consistent, he should break, not merely the pop-bottle, but the water pitcher and the table as well; he should make a bonfire at least once daily of his clothing, his house, and its furnishings; he should advise blowing up the steamboat and ripping up the railroad when they have carried a single load of passen gers. Thus, when all men were naked and starving, and civ ilization had sunk to savagery, trade would have been made as "good" as, by the policy of destruction, he could ever hope to make it.
Servants sometimes excuse the breaking of dishes and furni ture on the ground that it makes work, and that the employer can afford it. But income is thus diverted from other expendi ture, either for productive use or for direct use. In the light of the theory of wages, it would appear that carelessness re duces the servant's own efficiency, and in the long run the loss, in part at least, comes from the wages of that particular servant. Bastiat's discussion of the broken window-pane is often and deservedly quoted. He contrasted what was seen with what was unseen. What is seen is a certain immediate benefit that the glass-maker and glazier get; what is not seen is that the power to expend an equal amount for other things is thereby lost by the owner of the house.
§ 4. Careless waste. The destruction of goods of unneces sarily large value to secure a given result is likewise justified as "making trade good." The blunder that compels the re building of a wall in a rich man's garden is an occasion for congratulation to those who see in it a happy provision of work for the unemployed. It is easy to forget that the proper use of goods is the final step in production. According as goods are well or poorly used, the production—that is, the real in come or gratification they afford—is large or small. Differ ences in skill in the use of wealth are great. A French cook, we are often told, can make a palatable soup from what goes from the average American kitchen into the swill-pail. Waste in the use of goods is more likely to be found in new countries where wealth comes more easily and necessity does not en force frugality upon the masses of the people.
The praise of careless waste implies the error noted in the preceding propositions. Waste makes work for a certain class, but not more work (employment and wages) for labor as a whole. It appears to be good only when the interests of a small class of workers or of tradesmen are looked at for the moment; it is bad in the long run alike for workingmen and for all other classes of society. Far more of wisdom lies in the proverb, "A penny saved is worth two earned." The economic use of wealth as surely adds to wealth (and, ulti mately, to the income of society) as any other mode of pro duction.
§ 5. Waste in public outlay. Some government expendi tures, as for local post-office buildings, and river and harbor improvements, are sometimes favored, not because their im mediate purposes are good, but because they "make work" and "distribute money" throughout the country. This apology for public extravagance in all its forms has an incredible hold on the public mind. It seems even easier to rejoice that the big impersonal thing, the government, fails to get its money's worth than that one's neighbor fails to do so. The money for public expenditure comes from taxation, and no matter what the system of taxation, the burden falls upon some one, reduc ing the incomes at the disposal of the people to expend for ob jects of their own choice. If the work is not worth doing for itself, the collection of money in small amounts from many tax-payers and its expenditure as a large sum in one locality results in a net loss to society as a whole. Where the result is worth something, but not enough by itself to justify the ex penditure, the fallacy of the destruction of wealth is present in a smaller degree. Examples are seen in useless offices, over paid officials, the extreme use of pensions, and in some public subsidies.
§ 8. Luxury to give employment. Luxury, like waste, is justified by some as giving employment to labor. Typical in stances are extravagant dress and elaborate balls where fine and costly flowers, decorations, music, and coaches require the expenditure of a large amount of money. It is said of the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, that, in order to help the glove industry of France, she wore a pair of gloves but once; in order to help other French industries, she purchased many silks and laces. It is a very comfortable doctrine to some people that the oftener they change their dress, the greater benefactors to society they are. From time to time a great society "ball" is given in the metropolis, possibly little more elaborate and expensive than many another ball; but if it chances to be a dull time for news the papers all over the land give columns to its discussion. The newspapers at such times usually print many interviews with citizens of varied occupations, and the thought appears over and over that such balls have at least the merit of giving employment to labor, evidently meaning employment additional to the total amount which otherwise would have been possible.
§ 10. Sudden changes in standards of luxury. Luxury may be in various degrees and correspondingly may have various effects upon the state of wealth and income, and upon their movements. It might accompany a general condition of conservative abstinence, where only the clear surplus of in come is given to luxury, preserving a static equilibrium. The degree of luxury may, however, change dynamically toward either extreme. First, it might increase so that it exceeded each spender's clear income, encroached upon capital, and became a policy of prodigality. The result of this must be to stimulate for a time all the trades serving to provide the superfluities, but eventually to leave them without a market for their wares. Thereupon the factors would have to be returned to the use for necessities. The community as a whole would be impoverished as well as the individuals.
Secondly, dynamic change may take the form of the de crease of luxury, expenditure being limited to necessities, and cumulative abstinence being carried to its maximum. The question of the effect of abandoning luxury should this dy namic change occur suddenly, is most difficult. What would happen if everybody at once began to live on the bare neces sities of life ? If this almost unthinkable change took place, all the factories and agents used for nonessentials would at once lose much of their value. A great industrial crisis would follow, as industry would have to adjust itself abruptly to a greatly altered standard of desires. What would happen, if that standard continued, would vary as human nature varied. There might follow an increase of population, as a result of earlier marriages and larger families; or a great improvement in machinery and other equipment, or an increase of chari table giving, or more probable than all else, a progressive lightening of labor, a use of the surplus resources and energy in study, rest, and recreation. It is well-nigh impossible to suppose that with limited desires for the objective goods of the world there would continue undiminished efforts to pro duce goods and to save them. That would be miserliness become universal. In actual life changes of standard occur gradually. Economizing in material things by simpler living makes possible not only the increased efficiency of productive agents but the increased enjoyment of immaterial goods, a union of plain living, easy living, and high thinking.
§ 11. Happiness and the simple life. We are concerned here with the economic not with the moral issues involved in luxury, but the line between the two is sometimes hard to draw. Particularly hard is it in answering the question, Does luxury enhance the man's true psychic income? Does a greater expenditure on oneself give a larger life than a moderate expenditure would give? Surely, it is partly a mat ter of individual temperament and somewhat a matter of degree. Ostentation has its penalties. Undue striving after effect defeats its own purpose. Happiness results from a har monious relation between man and the world. Life loaded with too much luggage staggers under the burden. The mere spending of a large income in selfish indulgence absorbs all the energies and interests of some men and women. Not only happiness in the narrow sense, but self-realization, is to such lives impossible. The tired faculties of the Sybarite cease at length to respond to natural pleasures. When the senses are robbed of their fineness, youth grows blase, mature manhood is ennuied, life is empty. With the growth of incomes grows the strain to reach the self-imposed standards of frivolity. Insanity and suicide are on the increase. The stress of mod ern life often makes men yearn for the simpler joys. From the days of the Stoics to our own time, philosophers and preachers in times of great material prosperity have risen to praise the simple life, and to declare that happiness dwells not outside of men, that they must seek it within.
Wise consumption depends not alone on physical pleasures, but on the spiritual unity of the uses made of goods. Happi ness and character are akin in the qualities of simplicity and unity. Happiness, so far as it depends on wealth, is a har mony of gratifications. Character is a harmony of actions. A successful life is a group of complementary deeds. There can be no harmony, without a central, simple, guiding prin ciple. The wise and moral use of goods and the economic use of them have much in common. The results of the choice of goods are reflected in the health, intelligence, happiness, moral ity, and progress of society.
The spending of income for display has never been very successfully forbidden by law. The Middle Ages are full of futile sumptuary laws which sprang from the envy the nobles had for the wealthy merchants. The growth of good taste may do what formal law found impossible. In these days even when luxury in some respects is increasing, the use of great wealth takes more social directions. It turns from dress to ward education, art, music, and travel ; then ceases to be ap plied merely to self and family, and benefits the community. Nowhere else and never before has this movement gone so far as in America with the gifts of millions annually for edu cation, libraries, art, scientific and medical research, and for social betterment.
§ 12. The question of justice. We leave untouched here the larger moral problem involved in luxury. It concerns the justice of large incomes rather than their spending. Most of the enemies of luxury c9ndemn all expenditure of wealth above a very moderate sum, declaring that it is "unjust" for one man to have much while others are in poverty. This com munistic doctrine pervades the teaching of many moral teachers, pagan and Christian. The question of luxury leads back to the question of distribution : Has the man honestly gained his wealth ? If so, he may spend it with good judgment or poor, with good taste or bad, but, so long as he does not injure others in the spending of it, there is much vagueness and confusion in the talk of "justice" or "injustice." Each must in large measure be his own judge of the wisdom of ex penditure. If expenditures were regulated by the public, few persons would be within the law. But whatever the goods that are bought, if large incomes are acquired without social serv ice, there may well be talk of injustice.
§ 13. Animal choice. The problems of human life and conduct are never quite simple and there is another side to the question of luxury. Its frankest defenders, while recog nizing the fallacy of the make-work argument, and admitting its dangers to the individual, claim that in its general effects it is a great incentive to economic progress. There the argu ment for luxury has some validity, and to appraise it better, let us recall the function of developing desires in impelling men to greater effort.
Choice among animals depends on the environment; that is to say, all that the creatures below man can do is to take things as they find them. And so the environment shapes and affects the animal. The fish is fitted to live in the water, and suffers and dies if long out of it. The horse and the cow like best the food of the fields. And so each species of animal, in order to survive in the severe struggle for existence, has been forced to fit itself to the conditions in which it lives. After the animal has been thus fitted, its choice is for those things normally to be found in its surroundings. So different ani mals choose different things, but in most cases it is the en vironment that determines the choice, and not the choice that shapes the environment. However, migration with the chang ing seasons, or in search of food, is a most effective method by which the animals, led by their instincts, bring about a change in their environment; and many other methods are employed, such as nest-making and food-storing.
§ 14. Choice by primitive men. In simpler human soci eties, choices are mostly confined to physical necessities; that is, in the earlier stages of society, man's choices are very much like those of the animals. Man, like the animals, feels the pangs of hunger and he strives to secure food. He yearns for companionship, for it is only through association and mutual help that men, so weak as compared with many kinds of animals, are able to resist the enemies which beset them. He needs clothing to protect him against the harsher climates of the lands to which he moves. To protect himself against the cold and rain, he needs a shelter—a cave, a wigwam, or a hut. Man is thus impelled to bend his energies to the choice of the things necessary to survival.
In the rudest societies of which there is any record, savages are found with desires developed in many directions beyond those of any animals. Men are not passive victims of cir cumstances; their desires are not determined solely by their environment, but are drawn to things beyond and outside of the provisions of nature.
§ 15. Desires and progress. As men become more the masters of circumstances, their desires anticipate mere phys ical needs; they seek a more varied food of finer flavor and more delicately prepared. Dress is not limited by physical comfort, but becomes a means of personal ornament. Men seek and choose the beautiful in sound, in form, in taste, in color, in motion. The rude but or communal lodge to protect against rain and cold becomes a home. Out of the earlier rude companionship develop the sentiments of friendship and fam ily life. And finally, as the imagination and intellect de velop, there grow up the various forms of intellectual pleas ures—the love of reading, of study, of travel, and of thought. Desires develop and transform the world.
In recent discussion of the control of the tropics, the too great contentedness of tropical peoples has been brought out prominently. It has been said that if a colony of New Eng land school-teachers and Presbyterian deacons should settle in the tropics, their descendants would, in a single generation, be wearing breech-clouts and going to cock-fights on Sunday. Certain it is that the energy and ambition of the temperate zone are hard to maintain in warmer lands. The negro's con tentedness with hard conditions, so often counted as a virtue, is one of the difficulties in the way of solving the race problem in our South to-day. Booker T. Washington and others who are laboring for the elevation of the American negroes, would try first to make them discontented with the one-room cabins, in which hundreds of thousands of families live. If only the desire for a two- or three-room cabin can be aroused, experi ence shows that family life and industrial qualities may be improved in many other ways.
§ 16. Function of modern discontent. Not only in Amer ica, but in most civilized lands to-day, is seen a rapid growth of desires in the working-classes. The incomes and the stand ard of living have much of the time been increasing, but not so fast as have the desires of the working-classes. Regret has been expressed by some that the workers of Europe are be coming "declassed." Increasing wages, it is said, bring not welfare, but unhappiness, to the complaining masses. If dis content with one's lot goes beyond a moderate degree, if it is more than the desire to better one's lot by personal efforts, if it becomes an unhappy longing for the impossible, then in deed it may be a misfortune. But a moderate ambition to bet ter the conditions of one's self, of one's family, or of society, is the "divine discontent" absolutely indispensable if energy and enterprise are to be called into being.
It is a suggestive fact that civilized man, equipped with all of the inventions and the advantages of science, spends more hours of effort in gaining a livelihood than does the savage with his almost unaided hands. Activity is dependent not on bare physical necessity, but on developed desires. If society is to develop, if progress is to continue, human desire, not of the grosser sort, but ever more refined, must continue to emerge and urge men to action.