The objection of course presents itself
that expenditure on women's dress and household paraphernalia is
an obvious exception to this rule; but it will appear in the
sequel that this exception is much more obvious than substantial.
During the earlier stages of economic development,
consumption of goods without stint, especially consumption of the
better grades of goods, -- ideally all consumption in excess of
the subsistence minimum, -- pertains normally to the leisure
class. This restriction tends to disappear, at least formally,
after the later peaceable stage has been reached, with private
ownership of goods and an industrial system based on wage labour
or on the petty household economy. But during the earlier
quasi-peaceable stage, when so many of the traditions through
which the institution of a leisure class has affected the
economic life of later times were taking form and consistency,
this principle has had the force of a conventional law. It has
served as the norm to which consumption has tended to conform,
and any appreciable departure from it is to be regarded as an
aberrant form, sure to be eliminated sooner or later in the
further course of development.
The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes
of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence
and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a
specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed.
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