Waste and Luxury

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.

§ 17. Luxury as an incentive to progress. It

is impos sible to know just how important the service of luxury as a pacemaker has been in this progress in the past, tho doubtless it has been great. But what is needed now is a rising standard of taste in the lives of the many, not excessive display or indulgence by the few. But a dead level of conditions seems to be unfavorable to invention, arts, and industry. There must be some motive for emulation, and for ambition to attain finer material means of enjoyment after the bare necessities of life are provided, or no new forms of wealth will be demanded. Necessities, strictly understood, are things absolutely essential to life and health. No hard line can be drawn between neces sities and comforts, between comforts and luxuries. The level

rises; it is a trite and true saying that the luxuries of one age become the necessities of the next. The rise of the bathtub in the nineteenth century is an epitome of the progress of civili zation in that period. The free baths in our cities surpass the hopes of the wealthy of a century ago. The automobile was first the toy of the rich, but is becoming the necessity of daily life. Even the meaner motives of envy may have their social and eco nomic functions. The lower social grades, emulous of the higher standard held before them, labor with greater energy. The successful and capable enterprisers, not content with necessities, continue to give their efforts to production. Even abstinence may be stimulated by the hope of attaining for one's self and one's family the imaginary joys of conspicuous dis play. Doubtless these effects are more or less offset by the temptations to live beyond one's income, and to seek wealth in devious ways to make luxury possible. Still, luxury in a moderate measure has had, and still has, a part among the forces of dynamic society.