ust 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.
It puts us on our guard against cheapness by identifying merit in some
degree with cost. There is ordinarily a consistent effort on the part
of the consumer to obtain goods of the required serviceability at as
advantageous a bargain as may be; but the conventional requirement of
obvious costliness, as a voucher and a constituent of the serviceability
of the goods, leads him to reject as under grade such goods as do not
contain a large element of conspicuous waste.

It is to be added that a large share of those features of consumable
goods which figure in popular apprehension as marks of serviceability,
and to which reference is here had as elements of conspicuous waste,
commend themselves to the consumer also on other grounds than that of
expensiveness alone. They usually give evidence of skill and effective
workmanship, even if they do not contribute to the substantial
serviceability of the goods; and it is no doubt largely on some such
ground that any particular mark of honorific serviceability first comes
into vogue and afterward maintains its footing as a normal constituent
element of the worth of an article. A display of efficient workmanship
is pleasing simply as such, even where its remoter, for the time
unconsidered, outcome is futile. There is a gratification of the
artistic sense in the contemplation of skillful work. But it is also to
be added that no such evidence of skillful workmanship, or of ingenious
and effective adaptation of means to an end, will, in the long run,
enjoy the approbation of the modern civilized consumer unless it has the
sanction of the Canon of conspicuous waste.

The position here taken is enforced in a felicitous manner by the place
assigned in the economy of consumption to machine products. The point
of material difference between machine-made goods and the hand-wrought
goods which serve the same purposes is, ordinarily, that the former
serve their primary purpose more adequately. They are a more perfect
product--show a more perfect adaptation of means to end. This does not
save them from disesteem and deprecation, for they fall short under
the test of hon