MORALS OF LUXURY. 675 



Bastiat suggests, in his " Harmonies Economiques," that we can 

 not find a solution to the questions raised by the introduction of ma- 

 chinery and external competition while we consider want as an invari- 

 able quantity ; we must admit that our needs are indefinitely expan- 

 sible, and invoke luxury to afford an opportunity to put surplus labor 

 to use. Machines, the economists of this school reason in effect, 

 abridge labor ; the more they are multiplied and perfected, the fewer 

 hours of labor are required to obtain the same products. Thus the 

 demand for hands is diminished, and an increasing number of work- 

 men are put out of employment. In order to keep these men at work, 

 new wants must be invented as fast as actual wants ai'e satisfied by a 

 smaller amount of effort, so that the hours that have been placed^ at 

 our disposition may be utilized. 



I claim that we ought to ask that the time that has been gained by 

 the increased productiveness of machinery should be devoted, not to 

 the creation of superfluities to satisfy factitious demands, but to the 

 cultivation of the mind and the enjoyment of society and of the beau- 

 ties of art and nature. At present the effect of machinery seems to 

 have been not to shorten but to lengthen the hours of toil, and to ex- 

 tend them through the night, and to make life more intense and cause 

 a greater expenditure of nervous force. 



To satisfy our rational wants we requii'e food, clothing, and habi- 

 tation suitable to the climate and season ; to these we may add the 

 cheap accessories which the progress of industrial art has put within 

 the reach of all. The line between a consumption that is reasonable 

 and one that is not so may be found in every case by answering the 

 question whether the satisfaction which the desired object will pro- 

 cure is worth the time and effort necessary to produce it. If it is, 

 I am right in procuring it ; but, if to get it I have to divert human 

 labor from a more useful destination, I am wrong. I saci'ifice what is 

 necessary to what is superfluous. M. Baudrillart regards everything 

 superfluous as a luxury. I agree rather with M. J. B. Say, who thinks 

 it must be also dear. Thus, a Japanese fan costing a cent or two and 

 a cheap looking-glass are superfluous ; but, as it costs but little effort 

 to get them, the satisfaction they afford is quite worth the expendi- 

 ture. When the countryman drinks his wine which he would sell, per- 

 haps, at four sous a quai-t, it is not extravagance. When a Croesus 

 drinks Johannisberger at eight dollars a bottle, the expense is rela- 

 tively little for him ; but he has, nevertheless, consumed the equivalent 

 of twenty days of labor, which have been taken from the whole of the 

 time available to humanity for the satisfaction of its essential wants, 

 and for what advantage ? Only to secure the fugitive taste of a 

 flavor that is hardly appreciable to the finest palates. No one will 

 hesitate to say that the time has been put to a bad use. The fact 

 escapes the world under the complications of exchange ; neverthe- 

 less, people have an intuition of it, for they often blame certain 



