ot
likely to go hungry?

I had passed through Washington Street thousands of times before and
viewed the ways of those who sold merchandise, but my curiosity
concerning them was as if I had never gone by their way before. I took
wondering note of the show windows of the stores, filled with goods
arranged with a wealth of pains and artistic device to attract the
eye. I saw the throngs of ladies looking in, and the proprietors
eagerly watching the effect of the bait. I went within and noted the
hawk-eyed floor-walker watching for business, overlooking the clerks,
keeping them up to their task of inducing the customers to buy, buy,
buy, for money if they had it, for credit if they had it not, to buy
what they wanted not, more than they wanted, what they could not
afford. At times I momentarily lost the clue and was confused by the
sight. Why this effort to induce people to buy? Surely that had
nothing to do with the legitimate business of distributing products to
those who needed them. Surely it was the sheerest waste to force upon
people what they did not want, but what might be useful to another.
The nation was so much the poorer for every such achievement. What
were these clerks thinking of? Then I would remember that they were
not acting as distributors like those in the store I had visited in
the dream Boston. They were not serving the public interest, but their
immediate personal interest, and it was nothing to them what the
ultimate effect of their course on the general prosperity might be, if
but they increased their own hoard, for these goods were their own,
and the more they sold and the more they got for them, the greater
their gain. The more wasteful the people were, the more articles they
did not want which they could be induced to buy, the better for these
sellers. To encourage prodigality was the express aim of the ten
thousand stores of Boston.

Nor were these storekeepers and clerks a whit worse men than any
others in Boston. They must earn a living and support their families,
and how were they to find a trade to do it by which did not
necessitate placing their individual interests before those of others
and that of all? They could not be asked to starve while they waited
for an order of things such as I had seen in my dream, in which the
interest of each and that of all were identical. But, God in heaven!
what wonder, under such a system as this about me--what wonder that
the city was so shabby, and th