Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/40

32 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 quantity 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 modification in men's desires, in their life, in their motives to effort as such a change would work. We overlook the depressing, stupefying 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 conditions, 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 inevitably 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 operates upon every grade of the social scale. While luxury is not the only instigator of human activity, or even the principal one