refore, stands
ready to absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency
or output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have
been provided for. Where this result does not follow, under modern
conditions, the reason for the discrepancy is commonly to be sought in
a rate of increase in the individual's wealth too rapid for the habit of
expenditure to keep abreast of it; or it may be that the individual in
question defers the conspicuous consumption of the increment to a later
date--ordinarily with a view to heightening the spectacular effect
of the aggregate expenditure contemplated. As increased industrial
efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with
less labor, the energies of the industrious members of the community are
bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous expenditure,
rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace. The strain is not
lightened as industrial efficiency increases and makes a lighter strain
possible, but the increment of output is turned to use to meet this
want, which is indefinitely expansible, after the manner commonly
imputed in economic theory to higher or spiritual wants. It is owing
chiefly to the presence of this element in the standard of living that
J. S. Mill was able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all
the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any
human being." The accepted standard of expenditure in the community
or in the class to which a person belongs largely determines what his
standard of living will be. It does this directly by commending
itself to his common sense as right and good, through his habitually
contemplating it and assimilating the scheme of life in which it
belongs; but it does so also indirectly through popular insistence
on conformity to the accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of
propriety, under pain of disesteem and ostracism. To accept and
practice the standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable
and expedient, commonly to the point of being indispensable to personal
comfort and to success in life. The standard of living of any class, so
far as concerns the element of conspicuous waste, is commonly as high as
the earning capacity of the class will permit--with a constant tendency
to go higher. The effect upon the serious activities of men is therefore
to direct them with great singleness of purpose to the largest possible
acquisition of wealth, a