ved by means and methods that commend themselves
to the great economic law of wasted effort. The more reputable,
"presentable" portion of middle-class household paraphernalia are, on
the one hand, items of conspicuous consumption, and on the other hand,
apparatus for putting in evidence the vicarious leisure rendered by the
housewife.

The requirement of vicarious consumption at the hands of the wife
continues in force even at a lower point in the pecuniary scale than the
requirement of vicarious leisure. At a point below which little if any
pretense of wasted effort, in ceremonial cleanness and the like,
is observable, and where there is assuredly no conscious attempt at
ostensible leisure, decency still requires the wife to consume some
goods conspicuously for the reputability of the household and its head.
So that, as the latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic
institution, the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and chattel of
the man, both in fact and in theory--the producer of goods for him to
consume--has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which he produces.
But she still quite unmistakably remains his chattel in theory; for the
habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and consumption is the abiding
mark of the unfree servant.

This vicarious consumption practiced by the household of the middle
and lower classes can not be counted as a direct expression of the
leisure-class scheme of life, since the household of this pecuniary
grade does not belong within the leisure class. It is rather that the
leisure-class scheme of life here comes to an expression at the second
remove. The leisure class stands at the head of the social structure in
point of reputability; and its manner of life and its standards of
worth therefore afford the norm of reputability for the community. The
observance of these standards, in some degree of approximation, becomes
incumbent upon all classes lower in the scale. In modern civilized
communities the lines of demarcation between social classes have grown
vague and transient, and wherever this happens the norm of reputability
imposed by the upper class extends its coercive influence with but
slight hindrance down through the social structure to the lowest strata.
The result is that the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of
decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend
their energies to live up to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting their