The manufacturing world has similar experiences of imprudent consumption in the effort to forestall a market. But the record of failures in this respect is scarcely as marked, because of more business-like collection of information for the guidance of judgment. Farmers too generally follow the lead of their neighbors in adjustment of crops or stock. Manufacturers more generally try to do what their rivals are not doing. Success in producing what is not finally wanted we call overproduction. [pg 317] While the whole world is warned against this, each individual producer fails to study as well as he might the means of avoiding it.
Prudential consumption does not properly provide for those speculative dealings which end simply in a readjustment of wealth by gains on the one side through losses on the other. All these imply an actual waste of wealth and energy, whether they are exhibited in a gambling machine or a board of trade. But there are certain great enterprises, like wonderful inventions, which involve a prudential consumption of wealth. The wealth consumed in developing the electric telegraph system, or in laying the Atlantic cable, everyone would judge to be well invested. Every thought of prudence sustains such expenditure. Yet the spirit of invention, as a mere venture in desire to hit upon something which may chance to be wanted, shows lack of prudence, and the world suffers by great waste of energy in this direction. The only test of prudential consumption in provision for the future market is in the careful study of all conditions, favorable and unfavorable.
Consumption for growth.—True prudence in public improvements has just been mentioned, but such prudence has a larger range in promoting the permanent growth of human powers and capacities. Every wise father wishes his children to know more, be more efficient in the arts of life, and enjoy more of true welfare than he does. Communities which show no advancement in these respects are called dead, and decay is sure to follow. Prudence looks after all educational interests by expending wealth upon the means of education; not [pg 318] only sustaining schools, but making more permanent provision and increasing facilities for instruction. This is not only a means of preserving and wisely using the wealth accumulated, but a means of increased production. Such prudence suggests large endowments for public education, including the support of government machinery for uniformity of education. A similar prudence sustains the philanthropic spirit which maintains all the means of philanthropy. The endowment of asylums for the weak and afflicted and the support of religious institutions are prudent ways not only of caring for present welfare, but of increasing the welfare of the future. The next generation will be stronger and happier for the prudent foresight of this generation in overcoming obstacles to health and wisdom and virtue. To leave wealth thus invested is far better for successors than to leave it in form for ready consumption upon temporary wants. Thus all prudent consumption of wealth has for its basis the genuine welfare of a continuous society of human beings subject to improvement. Any forming community looks surely to future welfare when it invests wealth in good homes, good schools and good churches.
Chapter XXV. Imprudent Consumption.
Society interested in imprudence.—This fact, that the wealth of each generation is so largely dependent upon the prudence of the preceding, emphasizes the importance of public sentiment in favor of prudential consumption. Public criticism naturally attacks the most noticeable failures of prudence, and it therefore seems worth while to consider some of those imprudent forms of consumption which society may seek to prevent. It is also proper to consider the ways in which society may act for prevention of imprudence.
Luxurious consumption.—The question of luxury in the same society with extreme poverty is always prominent. Luxury is supposed to be extravagant expenditure in meeting individual wants. Though such wants may be real and legitimate, lavish expenditure by any portion of a community seems at first sight a trespass upon common welfare. Some have considered that person wanting in good will to his fellows who expends upon his own comfort more than his neighbors can afford. Others define luxury to be expenditure for living above the average expenditure in the whole community. Still others regard any expenditure a luxury which is not needed to maintain physical powers.
It is easy to see that all these efforts at definition are [pg 320] imperfect, because the idea of luxury implies such a mode of life as does not contribute to the total welfare, and each one's idea of total welfare enters into his definition of luxury. It is an evident fact that the so-called luxuries of one generation become the actual necessities of the next. This is because the life of the race means more and includes more with each succeeding generation. To live in the twentieth century will mean, as it has always meant in the past, to have such exercise of every ability as circumstances permit. Luxury is therefore always relative to the duties one has to perform, as well as to the society in which one moves. Moreover, luxury is relative to individual abilities and individual plans. It would be luxury for a farmer to go without a needed plow for the sake of buying a lawn mower. It would be luxury for a student to own two coats, if he must go without a dictionary to buy the second.
It is easy to settle the luxuries of others, but less easy to so define luxury that the public can agree in the definition. In general, it is described to be a meeting of fanciful rather than real wants. Any individual in society is spending his wealth in luxury if he allows his imagination to conjure up adornments of person or household which contribute chiefly to display rather than to comfort or enlightenment. All such adornments of person, or home, or the public streets, as cultivate genuine taste and inspire to more of energy contribute to the general welfare far more than mere expenditure for food can do. Yet in times of starvation the food must come first. The world sometimes sneers at the desire among very poor people to cultivate flowers and maintain [pg 321] a canary or other pets; yet every philanthropist knows that these desires are among the strongest incentives to greater thrift and keener exertion.