good name and their self-respect in case of failure, they must conform
to the accepted code, at least in appearance. The basis on which good
repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is
pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and
so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous
consumption of goods. Accordingly, both of these methods are in vogue
as far down the scale as it remains possible; and in the lower strata
in which the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part
delegated to the wife and children of the household. Lower still, where
any degree of leisure, even ostensible, has become impracticable for the
wife, the conspicuous consumption of goods remains and is carried on by
the wife and children. The man of the household also can do something
in this direction, and indeed, he commonly does; but with a still lower
descent into the levels of indigence--along the margin of the slums--the
man, and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume
valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually the sole
exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class of society,
not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all customary conspicuous
consumption. The last items of this category of consumption are not
given up except under stress of the direst necessity. Very much of
squalor and discomfort will be endured before the last trinket or the
last pretense of pecuniary decency is put away. There is no class and
no country that has yielded so abjectly before the pressure of physical
want as to deny themselves all gratification of this higher or spiritual
need.

From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure and
consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for the purposes
of reputability lies in the element of waste that is common to both.
In the one case it is a waste of time and effort, in the other it is
a waste of goods. Both are methods of demonstrating the possession of
wealth, and the two are conventionally accepted as equivalents. The
choice between them is a question of advertising expediency simply,
except so far as it may be affected by other standards of propriety,
springing from a different source. On grounds of expediency the
preference may be given to the one or the other at different stages of
the economic development. The question is, which of the two methods will
most ef