5. As a question of consumption luxury involves for the individual both an economic and a moral problem. The economic question is, Does luxury enhance the man's real income? Does a greater expenditure on himself give him a larger sum of gratification in life than a moderate expenditure would give? Ostentation has its penalties. Undue striving after effect defeats its own purpose. This is the cold fact of experience, not a speculative proposition. To get back to the fundamental principle: gratification results from a harmonious relation between man's nature and the world. Life loaded with too much luggage staggers under the burden. 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. The praise of "the simple life" has lately been heard in a quarter whence such counsel does not usually come. In gay Paris, a wise pastor has made one of the most beautiful and rational pleas for plain and sincere living that society has heard since the time of the stoic philosophers. The word is needed. 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 modern life makes men yearn for the simpler joys. Happiness dwells not outside of men; they must seek it within.

An economic failure, luxury is likewise in most cases a moral failure. Morality has to do with others; the social aspect of luxury is its effect on other people. 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. Those absorbed in display can give no due measure of thought to social obligations. A society made up of self-absorbed and self-centered individuals is a selfish society, foredoomed to decay.

Luxury vs social welfare.

6. The larger moral problem involved in luxury is connected with distribution or the justice of the income, rather than with consumption or the spending of the income. The individual effects of luxury broaden thus into the larger social effects. Most of the enemies of luxury condemn 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 communistic doctrine pervades the teaching of many moral teachers, pagan and Christian. In many ways a public opinion can be developed to disapprove and condemn ostentation. Frivolous display becomes bad taste. Flaunting riches meet the public frown. The spending of income for dress and display has never been successfully forbidden by law. The Middle Ages are full of futile sumptuary laws which sprang from the envy of the nobles for the wealthy merchants. The growth of good taste may do what formal law found impossible.

Luxury generally condemned.

Increasing social uses of wealth.

The use of wealth in these days is taking more social directions. It turns from dress toward education, art, music, and travel; then ceases to be applied merely to self and family, and benefits the community. Nowhere and never before has this movement gone so far as in America. Andrew Carnegie, with his gifts of millions annually to public libraries; Peter Cooper, founder of the People's Institute; Ezra Cornell, the patron and prophet of the modern type of higher education - are citizens of a kind better known in this country than in any other.

Justice of the large income.

The immorality of luxury rests in most minds on the conviction that it is unjust that any one should have so large an income to use. 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 expenditure. Luxury is not always a question of wealth. Every person of moderate income has relatively superfluous and expensive tastes. One spends more for music than many a millionaire does; another more for books. How many college students' budgets could pass the censorship of Hetty repression of luxury inadvisable.

Green, reputed to be the richest woman in America? If expenditures were regulated by the public, few persons would be within the law. But whatever the goods that are bought, if income is unjustly acquired, if its distribution is by rules that do not give the best possible approach to social service, there may well be talk of injustice. There is need of better standards of taste and judgment in expenditure, but not of sumptuary laws. If there is any legal change, it should be rather in the law of property.

Questions On Chapter 40. Waste And Luxury

1. Can we determine what luxury is, or give the notion definiteness?

2. Do you feel a sense of injustice when you read of a millionaire's ball if you are not a millionaire?

3. Can you excuse the sense of injustice felt by the hungry man when he sees you wear patent-leather shoes and kid gloves?

4. Under private property, can men complain of the use made by others of their wealth on the ground merely that it was unwise?

5. Is luxury necessary to give employment to labor?

6. Is the spendthrift the best friend of labor?

7. Ought legislation attempt to prevent luxury, or can publie opinion affect it?

8. Is smoking high-priced cigars economically justifiable, assuming that the smoker is wealthy and does not injure his health thereby?

9. Wines, balls, pensions are said to be good because they put money into circulation. Criticize.

10. What is the difference between the consumption of wealth and its destruction?

11. In what ways can a piece of iron be consumed, economically speaking?

12. Was the great Chicago fire, which led to the rebuilding of the city, a good thing economically?