AS TO FRUGALITY. 1 33 



ential through these expenditures ; but the people pay 

 for them. The patent-medicine vender spends his hun- 

 dreds of thousands in advertising, for the purpose of 

 creating an interest in his compounds. The more con- 

 spicuous for costliness these outlays, the better they pay ; 

 but the consumer foots the bill. The merchant spends 

 his thousands upon plate-glass windows for his store, be- 

 cause it pays ; but the customers at his store pay the 

 bill. The clerk and the commercial traveller must dress 

 well, and the latter must visit the best hotels ; and the 

 consumers of the goods he sells must eventually settle 

 the bill. We can safely say, that whatever may be the evil 

 of a too liberal use of income, such habits have not been 

 engendered within the ranks of the farmers, but come 

 from without. 



But is there justice in the growing inability of farmers 

 to equal others in a liberal consumption ? Probably not 

 one farmer in a hundred, no, not one in a thousand, is 

 consuming as liberally as we desire that he should, 

 though perhaps less rationally. It is a calamity for a 

 class to lose its power to consume. Being continually 

 so situated, it must relapse into slavery of some kind. 

 The man who is in bondage to another, consumes merely 

 that he may produce. The one who can only consume 

 what barely suffices for an existence, is a slave to his 

 necessities. As man gets beyond this, and can become 

 victor over nature, he becomes free. The greater the con- 

 sumption, provided it be complete, the more advanced the 

 individual, the more rational, the expansion of all the en- 

 dowments with which God has been pleased to favor him. 



No ! instead of less consumption for the farmer of 

 America, to allow him more should be the aim of all 

 who would guide his destinies to a happy issue. 



