"We did not," he replied, "and are ourselves surprised at the quantity we sell. Besides, there are several other factories, which produce greater numbers than we do. But when I reflect on the extent to which the business has already gone, I find the facts to be only in keeping with results in other cases. I have thought and read much on the very subject which so greatly interests you. Some years ago I was puzzled to account for the immensely increased circulation of newspapers,—rising, in some instances, from one thousand up to forty thousand. I knew that our population had not grown at one tenth that rate, yet the circulation went on extending. One day I asked a country postmaster how he accounted for it 'Why,' he replied, 'the question is easily answered;—where a man formerly took only one paper, he now takes seven. Cheap postage, and the establishment of news-agents all over the country, enable the people to get papers at less cost and with only half the trouble of twenty years ago. The power of production is complete, and the machinery of distribution has kept pace with it. The people don't actually need the papers any more now than they did then, but the convenience of having them brought to their doors induces them to buy six or seven where they formerly bought only one. That's the way it happens.'"
"Then," continued my polite and communicative informant, "look at the article of pins. You ladies, who use so many more than our sex, have never been able to tell what becomes of them. You know that of late years you have been using the American solid-head pins, which were produced so cheaply as immediately to supersede the foreign article. Now," said he, with a smile, "don't you think you use up six pins you formerly used only one? Careful people, twenty years ago, when they saw one on the pavement, or on the parlor-floor, stopped and picked it up; but now they pass it by, or sweep it into the dust-pan. Is it not so, and have not careful people ceased to exist?"
I confess that the illustration was so full of point that some indistinct conviction of its truth came over me; it was really my own experience.
"So you see," he continued, "that, while of all these new and cheaply manufactured articles there is a vast consumption, there is also a vast waste. People—that is, prudent people—generally take care of things according to their cost. You don't wear your best bonnet in the rain. It is precisely so with our cuffs and collars. We sell them so cheaply that some people wear three or four a day, while a careful person would make one suffice. When the collar was attached to the shirt, it served for a much longer time; what but cheapness and convenience can tempt to such wastefulness now? My family, at least the female portion, use these articles about as extravagantly, and I think your whole sex must be equally fond of indulging in the same lavish use of them,—otherwise the consumption could not be so great as you see it is."
I could not but inwardly plead guilty to this weakness of indulging in clean cuffs and collars,—neither could I fail to recognize the soundness of this reasoning, which must have grown out of superior knowledge. It gave me new light, and settled a great many doubts.
"I suppose, Miss," he resumed, as if unwilling to leave anything unexplained, "you use friction-matches at home? Now you know how cheap they are,—two boxes for a cent. But I remember when one box sold for twenty-five cents. People were then careful how they used them, and it was not everybody who could afford to do so. The flint and tinder-box were long in going out of use. But how is it now? Instead of one match serving to light a cigar, the smokers use two or three. They waste them because they are cheap, carrying them loose in their pockets, that they may always have enough, with some to throw away.
"Take the article of hoop-skirts. Women did very well without them, and looked quite as well, at least in my opinion. But some ingenious man conceived the idea of tempting them with a new want, and they were at once persuaded into believing that hoop-skirts were indispensable to a genteel appearance. They were adopted all over the country with a rapidity that outstripped that of the cuffs and collars,—not, perhaps, that as many were manufactured, because, if that had been the case, they could not have been consumed, unless each woman had worn two or three. And they may in fact wear two or three each,—I don't know how that is,—but look at the waste already visible. Every week or two, new patterns are brought out, better, lighter, or prettier than the last; whereupon the old ones are thrown aside, though not half worn. Why, Miss, do you know that your sex are carrying about them some thousands of tons of brass and steel in the shape of these skirts? As to the waste, it is already so large as to have become a public nuisance. An old hat or shoe may be given away to somebody,—an old scrubbing-brush may be disposed of by putting it into the stove; but as to an old skirt, who wants it? You cannot burn it; the very beggars will not take it; and hence it is thrown into the street, or into the alley close to your door, where it continues for months to trip up the feet of every wayfaring man quite as provokingly as it sometimes tripped up those of the wearer. It is the waste of hoop-skirts, as much as anything else, that keeps the manufacture so brisk.
"Then, again," he continued, as if expanded by the skirts he had just been speaking of, "look at the long dresses which the ladies now wear. See how the most costly stuffs are dragging over the pavement, sweeping up the filth with which it is covered. To speak of the foul condition into which such draggletailed dresses must soon get is positively sickening. If a dozen of them were thrown into a closet and left there for a few hours, I have no doubt they would burn of spontaneous combustion."
I was half inclined to take fire myself at hearing this, but remained silent, and he proceeded.
"See, too, what a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both hands to keep it at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these ridiculous trains because they think they look more graceful in them. But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel the most profound contempt for a woman who is so weak as to make such an exhibition of folly? It might do for great people, at a great party,—but in dirty, sloppy, muddy streets, by servant-girls as well as by fashionable women, it is considered not only indecent, but as evincing a want of common sense. Moreover, the quantity of material destroyed by thus dragging over the pavement is very great. It must amount to thousands of yards annually, and it appears to me that the more it costs per yard, the more of it is devoted to street-sweeping. Here is wastefulness by wholesale."