ready acclaim than better schools or the
extirpation of disease. The automobile and the "moving picture" probably
have a vogue today far surpassing any use of earlier "equivalents" that
a mere general augmentation of incomes could have brought about. Indeed,
the economic danger of the middle classes in present-day society lies
not in mere occasional excess at certain points but in heedless
commitment to a showy and thinned-out scheme of life in which the
elements are ill-chosen and ill-proportioned and from which, as a whole,
abiding satisfaction cannot be drawn. It is where real and thoroughgoing
change in the manner of life is hopeless that irregular intemperance of
various sorts appears to bulk relatively largest as an economic evil.

Shall we not say, however, that the superior attraction of the new in
competition with established lines of expenditure only indicates the
greater "satiation" of the wants the latter represent and the
comparative freshness of the wants the novelty will satisfy? On the
contrary the latter wants are in the full sense not yet existent, the
new satisfactions are untried and unmeasured; the older wants have the
advantage of position, and if satiated today, will reassert themselves
with a predictable strength tomorrow. The new wants, it is true, if they
are acquired, will be part of a new system, but the present fact remains
that their full meaning cannot be known in advance of trial and the
further outlines of the new scheme of uses and values cannot be drawn up
until this meaning has been learned. If, then, the new commodity is
taken, it is not because the promised satisfaction and the sum of known
utilities to be sacrificed are found equal, nor again because the new
commodity will fit neatly into a place in the existing schedule that can
be vacated for it. This latter is the case of substitution. Such an
interpretation of the facts is retrospective only; it is a formal
declaration that the exchange has been deemed on the whole worth while,
but the reasons for this outcome such a formula is powerless to suggest.

In general the new commodity and the habits it engenders could not
remain without effect upon a system into which they might be
mechanically introduced. Certain items in the schedule, associated in
use with those dispensed with for the new, must be rendered obsolete by
the change. The new interests called into play will draw to themselves
and to their further development attention