Hence it has come about that there are today no
goods supplied in any trade which do not contain the honorific
element in greater or less degree. Any consumer who might,
Diogenes-like, insist on the elimination of all honorific or
wasteful elements from his consumption, would be unable to supply
his most trivial wants in the modern market. Indeed, even if he
resorted to supplying his wants directly by his own efforts, he
would find it difficult if not impossible to divest himself of
the current habits of thought on this head; so that he could
scarcely compass a supply of the necessaries of life for a day's
consumption without instinctively and by oversight incorporating
in his home-made product something of this honorific,
quasi-decorative element of wasted labor.
It is notorious that in their selection of serviceable goods in
the retail market purchasers are guided more by the finish and
workmanship of the goods than by any marks of substantial
serviceability. Goods, in order to sell, must have some
appreciable amount of labor spent in giving them the marks of
decent expensiveness, in addition to what goes to give them
efficiency for the material use which they are to serve. This
habit of making obvious costliness a canon of serviceability of
course acts to enhance the aggregate cost of articles of
consumption.
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