32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It has been objected that if luxury did not exist the world 

 would be better provided with articles of use. The millions that 

 are spent in luxury, these objectors say, could be better applied to 

 the production of wheat or of potatoes or of common clothing ; 

 if some were not too -rich, none would be poor. This reasoning 

 is at fault in two points : First, a million's worth of luxuries 

 does not, as some persons think, represent the amount of labor 

 and human force required to produce a million's worth of wheat 

 or potatoes or common clothing or plain furniture. The cost of 

 luxuries bears only a comparatively small relation to the quan- 

 tity of good work ; by far the greater proportion of it is paid for 

 quality. An accomplished jeweler or engraver can earn three 

 or four times as much in working at the art in which he excels 

 as in applying the same quantity of labor to a coarser trade 

 blacksmithing, for instance. And if luxuries were abolished, and 

 the artists now employed in producing them were set to some 

 common labor in farming or the ruder trades, they would not be 

 able to produce at them more than one third of the value which 

 they now bestow upon the world of taste and refinement. In 

 the second place, we need not deny that materially, and aside 

 from a fact to be noticed, if mankind would limit its wants to 

 bread and meat, to the commonest clothing, the most modest 

 abodes, and the simple articles of use, it would be able to get a 

 considerably larger number of such things. If all the painters, 

 engravers, upholsterers, pleasure-coach makers, jewelers, makers 

 of fine furniture, lace-makers, embroiderers, etc., should return 

 to tilling the soil, spinning, weaving, and knitting, a more ample 

 stock of the products of the common callings might be obtained. 

 This is only possible. It is not certain. In assuming it we leave 

 out of view the indirect consequences of such a profound modifi- 

 cation in men's desires, in their life, in their motives to effort as 

 such a change would work. We overlook the depressing, stupe- 

 fying influence which monotony and uniformity in occupation 

 would exercise upon man's activity, his spirit of initiative, and 

 his zeal in research and invention. A society in which all were 

 engaged upon nearly the same tasks, living in identical condi- 

 tions, having narrow wants, none of them enjoying visions of a 

 brilliant future different from that of his fellows, would fall dead 

 with inertia and routine. It would lose in elasticity and inevita- 

 bly becomes stationary, and finally retrograde; and it would not 

 be paradoxical to assert that the suppression of luxury would 

 result, in the course of time, in a diminution even of objects of 

 ordinary consumption. 



The stimulating action of luxury is incontestable, and oper- 

 ates upon every grade of the social scale. While luxury is not 

 the only instigator of human activity, or even the principal one 



