e cheapest
available light for domestic use. Nor are candles even now found to
give an acceptable or effective light for any other than a ceremonial
illumination.

A political sage still living has summed up the conclusion of this whole
matter in the dictum: "A cheap coat makes a cheap man," and there is
probably no one who does not feel the convincing force of the maxim.

The habit of looking for the marks of superfluous expensiveness in
goods, and of requiring that all goods should afford some utility of the
indirect or invidious sort, leads to a change in the standards by which
the utility of goods is gauged. The honorific element and the element
of brute efficiency are not held apart in the consumer's appreciation of
commodities, and the two together go to make up the unanalyzed
aggregate serviceability of the goods. Under the resulting standard of
serviceability, no article will pass muster on the strength of material
sufficiency alone. In order to completeness and full acceptability to
the consumer it must also show the honorific element. It results that
the producers of articles of consumption direct their efforts to the
production of goods that shall meet this demand for the honorific
element. They will do this with all the more alacrity and effect, since
they are themselves under the dominance of the same standard of worth in
goods, and would be sincerely grieved at the sight of goods which lack
the proper honorific finish. 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, m