nsumption as a means
of repute, as well as the insistence on it as an element of decency, is
at its best in those portions of the community where the human contact
of the individual is widest and the mobility of the population is
greatest. Conspicuous consumption claims a relatively larger portion of
the income of the urban than of the rural population, and the claim is
also more imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a decent
appearance, the former habitually live hand-to-mouth to a greater extent
than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the American farmer and
his wife and daughters are notoriously less modish in their dress, as
well as less urbane in their manners, than the city artisan's family
with an equal income. It is not that the city population is by nature
much more eager for the peculiar complacency that comes of a conspicuous
consumption, nor has the rural population less regard for pecuniary
decency. But the provocation to this line of evidence, as well as its
transient effectiveness, is more decided in the city. This method is
therefore more readily resorted to, and in the struggle to outdo one
another the city population push their normal standard of conspicuous
consumption to a higher point, with the result that a relatively greater
expenditure in this direction is required to indicate a given degree
of pecuniary decency in the city. The requirement of conformity to this
higher conventional standard becomes mandatory. The standard of decency
is higher, class for class, and this requirement of decent appearance
must be lived up to on pain of losing caste.

Consumption becomes a larger element in the standard of living in the
city than in the country. Among the country population its place is to
some extent taken by savings and home comforts known through the medium
of neighborhood gossip sufficiently to serve the like general purpose of
Pecuniary repute. These home comforts and the leisure indulged in--where
the indulgence is found--are of course also in great part to be classed
as items of conspicuous consumption; and much the same is to be said of
the savings. The smaller amount of the savings laid by by the artisan
class is no doubt due, in some measure, to the fact that in the case
of the artisan the savings are a less effective means of advertisement,
relative to the environment in which he is placed, than are the savings
of the people living on farms and in the small villages. A