e
leisure-class formulation of the principles of status and pecuniary
decency. This new schedule of proprieties is intruded into the
lower-class scheme of life from the code elaborated by an element of
the population whose life lies outside the industrial process; and this
intrusive schedule can scarcely be expected to fit the exigencies of
life for these lower classes more adequately than the schedule already
in vogue among them, and especially not more adequately than the
schedule which they are themselves working out under the stress of
modern industrial life.

All this of course does not question the fact that the proprieties
of the substituted schedule are more decorous than those which they
displace. The doubt which presents itself is simply a doubt as to the
economic expediency of this work of regeneration--that is to say, the
economic expediency in that immediate and material bearing in which the
effects of the change can be ascertained with some degree of confidence,
and as viewed from the standpoint not of the individual but of the
facility of life of the collectivity. For an appreciation of the
economic expediency of these enterprises of amelioration, therefore,
their effective work is scarcely to be taken at its face value, even
where the aim of the enterprise is primarily an economic one and where
the interest on which it proceeds is in no sense self-regarding or
invidious. The economic reform wrought is largely of the nature of a
permutation in the methods of conspicuous waste.

But something further is to be said with respect to the character of the
disinterested motives and canons of procedure in all work of this
class that is affected by the habits of thought characteristic of the
pecuniary culture; and this further consideration may lead to a further
qualification of the conclusions already reached. As has been seen in
an earlier chapter, the canons of reputability or decency under the
pecuniary culture insist on habitual futility of effort as the mark of a
pecuniarily blameless life. There results not only a habit of disesteem
of useful occupations, but there results also what is of more decisive
consequence in guiding the action of any organized body of people that
lays claim to social good repute. There is a tradition which requires
that one should not be vulgarly familiar with any of the processes or
details that have to do with the material necessities of life. One may
meritoriously show a quant