on for their
being unable to accomplish it is (1) that they have too many "social
duties", and (2) that the work to be done is too severe and that there
is too much of it. These two reasons may be restated as follows: (1)
Under the mandatory code of decency, the time and effort of the members
of such a household are required to be ostensibly all spent in a
performance of conspicuous leisure, in the way of calls, drives, clubs,
sewing-circles, sports, charity organisations, and other like social
functions. Those persons whose time and energy are employed in these
matters privately avow that all these observances, as well as the
incidental attention to dress and other conspicuous consumption, are
very irksome but altogether unavoidable. (2) Under the requirement of
conspicuous consumption of goods, the apparatus of living has grown so
elaborate and cumbrous, in the way of dwellings, furniture, bric-a-brac,
wardrobe and meals, that the consumers of these things cannot make way
with them in the required manner without help. Personal contact with the
hired persons whose aid is called in to fulfil the routine of decency is
commonly distasteful to the occupants of the house, but their presence
is endured and paid for, in order to delegate to them a share in
this onerous consumption of household goods. The presence of domestic
servants, and of the special class of body servants in an eminent
degree, is a concession of physical comfort to the moral need of
pecuniary decency.

The largest manifestation of vicarious leisure in modern life is made
up of what are called domestic duties. These duties are fast becoming a
species of services performed, not so much for the individual behoof of
the head of the household as for the reputability of the household taken
as a corporate unit--a group of which the housewife is a member on a
footing of ostensible equality. As fast as the household for which they
are performed departs from its archaic basis of ownership-marriage,
these household duties of course tend to fall out of the category of
vicarious leisure in the original sense; except so far as they are
performed by hired servants. That is to say, since vicarious leisure
is possible only on a basis of status or of hired service, the
disappearance of the relation of status from human intercourse at any
point carries with it the disappearance of vicarious leisure so far as
regards that much of life. But it is to be added, in qualification