Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/260

246 reason to be saving of the expensive raw material, and lavish of the cheap human labor. He adulterates and diminishes the quantity of the former but gives the finished products a handsome appearance by laborious or complicated processes of labor, that is to say, by an unstinted use of human labor. In the finished piece of calico offered by the English manufacturer in the market, there is the smallest possible amount of cotton fibre and the largest possible amount of human labor. The calico is cheap because the manufacturer is not obliged to pay his human slaves for their toil as much as the earth requires for her cotton fibre. But it is far from necessary that these goods should be so cheap. Their low price leads to an extravagant use of them. Even the poor people in our present civilization, renew their clothing and household goods oftener than is strictly necessary, and throw aside articles that could still yield good service, that in reality to continue to yield service, as is shown by the great trade in secondhand clothing etc., between Europe and the colonies. At the close of the year the European has spent the same amount for clothing as he would have spent if the goods had been far higher in price, for in the latter case, he would certainly have worn them longer. Thus we see the practical results of this vaunted lowness of prices, the pride of the economic world. It does not bring any actual relief or saving to the consumer, because the tyrannical custom of lavish use of the goods keeps pace with it. It is a curse to the labor that produces the goods because it diminishes the amount of its earnings more and more, while compelling it to constantly increasing exertions. Every individual that does not belong to the minority of wealthy idlers, is a producer of some one article and a consumer of others. Hence the result of the whole vaunted development of the