Thrift Versus Splendor, The Perennial Conflict

“ Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance. Heaven knows I for one speak disinterestedly in the matter; for I cannot clearly remember saving a half-penny ever since I was born. But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste. It is prosaic to throw money away, because it is prosaic to throw anything away ”

“ It is not so much for the money, as for what it means to have earned and saved money; it is the idea of thrift. If we have not been thrifty, if we have not saved anything, the world will look upon us as good for nothing, as partial failures, as either lazy, slipshod, or extravagant. They regard us as either not having been able to make money, or if we have, not being able to save it.
But let it be remembered that thrift is not parsimony not miserliness. It often means very liberal spending. It is a perpetual protest against putting the emphasis on the wrong thing. ”

“ Economy is not a natural instinct, but the growth of experience, example, and forethought. It is also the result of education and intelligence. It is only when men become wise and thoughtful that they become frugal. Hence the best means of making men and women provident is to make them wise.
Prodigality is much more natural to man than thrift. The savage is the greatest of spendthrifts, for he has no forethought, no to-morrow. ”

“ Short-sighted, superficial, unreflecting people have a way—which in time fossilizes into a principle—of mending everything as soon as it comes up from the wash,—a very unthrifty, uneconomical habit, if you use the words thrift and economy in the only way in which they ought to be used, namely, as applied to what is worth economizing. Time, happiness, life, these are the only things to be thrifty about. But I see people working and worrying over quince-marmalade and tucked petticoats and embroidered chair-covers, things that perish with the using and leave the user worse than they found him. ”

“ Homely and humdrum enough is the virtue of thrift, but thrift and its fellow virtues of industry and sobriety mean trustworthiness. With its birth, and only with its birth, can the attack upon the obstacles to social reconstruction take heart of hope. In its hands self-help holds opportunities which, were they exhausted, would not simply contract the area for centralized sway, but incidentally prepare men to establish that sway in so far as it may be gainfully done. ”

“ Why, Joanna, that is the clearing of two pounds twelve and three-pence per annum. At that rate you may burn coals and I will not grumble.’
‘There is nothing like thrift, is there, master?’
‘Ah,’ said the Jew, ‘talk of the beauties of nature! What I look to is the moral lessons it preaches. How many of your holiday-takers, who run over the sea cliffs, look at the thrift that covers them, and lay the flower to heart? I’m not one who approves of hoarding. Hoarding is a low and savage virtue, but Turning over is the cultured virtue. Turn your eggs and they don’t addle, but they won’t set. ”

“ All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,—that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,—that they should lay by a store of savings as a breakwater against want, and make sure of a little fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in fact, the very reverse of these disgusting dispositions.
It means economy for the purpose of securing independence. ”

“ FITS OF THRIFT. Nothing is more common in the middle ranks of life than to find housewives taking what may be called fits of thrift. Though sensible women in their way, excellent advisers and charming gossips, and though by no means spenders on a great scale, they have no enduring principle of economy, but are only frugal by fits and starts. ”

“ Luxury has outstripped nomenclature.
The covering ought, in my judgment, to show that which is covered to be better than itself, as the image is superior to the temple, the soul to the body, and the body to the clothes. But now, quite the contrary, the body of these ladies, if sold, would never fetch a thousand Attic drachms. Buying, as they do, a single dress at the price of ten thousand talents, they prove themselves to be of less use and less value than cloth. Why in the world do you seek after what is rare and costly, in preference to what is at hand and cheap? ”

“ Men love to dress their women in expensive clothes, to provide them with luxurious surroundings, because this advertises to the world the fact that they are able to purchase a superior, i. e., a higher priced commodity. Women give much time and spend money extravagantly in articles of conspicuous waste for the simple reason that by so doing they announce the fact that they are finer than other women, higher priced, of a fancier brand, possessed of better wares. ”

“ Without reflection or analysis, we feel that what is inexpensive is unworthy. "A cheap coat makes a cheap man." "Cheap and nasty" is recognised to hold true in dress with even less mitigation than in other lines of consumption. On the ground both of taste and of serviceability, an inexpensive article of apparel is held to be inferior, under the maxim "cheap and nasty." We find things beautiful, as well as serviceable, somewhat in proportion as they are costly. ”

“ To look like nobody else is a sufficiently mortifying reflection; to be in danger of being mistaken for one of the rabble is worse. Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity. It is the perpetual setting up and disowning a certain standard of taste, elegance, and refinement, which has no other foundation or authority than that it is the prevailing distinction of the moment, which was yesterday ridiculous from its being new, and to-morrow will be odious from its being common. ”

“ Art pursues the realization of the beautiful, or the reproduction of certain forms. Luxury has only one aim—to seem. The object of art is essentially disinterested; that of luxury is egotistical. In the eye of luxury, the beautiful itself, the object of the passionate pursuit of the true artist charmed with perfection, is only something that glitters. Luxury pays for art as it pays for matter, and buys great works just as it spends money for jewels and fine goods. ”

“ She understood, all at once, the relentless tyranny which clothes might acquire—the jealousy, the extravagance, the feverish emulation, and the dislike which one woman might feel for another who wore a better gown. "Yet if I give my whole life to it there will always be someone who is richer, who is better dressed and more beautiful than I," she thought. "Though my individuality wins to-day, to-morrow I shall meet a woman beside whom I shall be utterly extinguished. ”

“ If we suppose that these distinctions are forgotten, and nobility itself only to be known by the sumptuous retinue which money alone may procure; and by a lavish expense, which the more recent fortunes can generally best sustain; luxury must then be allowed to corrupt the monarchical as much as the republican state, and to introduce a fatal dissolution of manners, under which men of every condition, although they are eager to acquire, or to display their wealth, have no remains of real ambition. They have neither the elevation of nobles, nor the fidelity of subjects ”

“ And is it “a wadded hem” or a padded room that should “finish off” these people who spread the madness of clothes far and wide till it becomes a positively dangerous and immoral infection? One wonders! For there is no more mischievous wickedness in society to-day than the flamboyant, exuberant, wilful extravagance of women’s dress. It has far exceeded the natural and pretty vanity of permissible charm, good taste and elegance. It has become a riotous waste,—an ugly disease of moral principle, ending at last in the disgrace and death of many a woman’s good name. ”

“ Fashion is not a mode of being beautiful or even of changing from one variety of beauty to another, or of changing to meet changing circumstances. It is a means of putting money into the pockets of dressmakers and manufacturers. These people are getting stronger and stronger, more and more arrogant. ”

“ In other days when clothes were expensive, women bought few clothes, but those clothes were meant to last, and they did last. A silk dress often outlived the natural life of its first wearer. The knowledge that the question of dress will not be one to be almost weekly settled tends to calm the nerves and consolidate the character. Clothes are very cheap now—therefore women buy many new dresses, and throw the shoddy things away when, as they soon do, they grow shabby. [37] Men are far more sensible. Every man knows the appeal of an old coat. ”

“ Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that one hears, often and often among their class, the bitter cry, "Gee, but it's hell to be poor!"—that one finds so often assigned by a girl as the cause of her downfall, the natural reason—"Wanted to dress like other girls"—"Wanted pretty clothes."
This habit of buying poor imitations does not end in the girl's life with her clothes. When she marries, she carries it into her home. Decoration, not furnishing, is the keynote of all she touches. ”

“ The matter of dress is the more important, because bound up with it is a whole grist of social and economic problems. It is part and parcel of the problem of the cost of living, of woman's wages, of wasteful industries, of the social evil itself. It is a woman's most direct weapon against industrial abuses, her all-powerful weapon as a consumer. ”

“ For it is not only the fashions that matter: it is the cost of women's clothes, the [Pg 96] intrinsic cost; it is their continual changes for no reason, changes which sometimes produce, and sometimes destroy, beauty; sometimes promote comfort, and often cause torture. But always by their drafts upon its wealth, women lead humanity nearer to poverty, envy, discontent, frivolity, starvation, prostitution,—to general social degradation. Nothing can mitigate these evils until woman is induced to view clothing as does the modern man, until, namely, she decides to wear a uniform. ”

“ She sewed in one of these fashionable dressmaking establishments—and the things she told me about what those women spend on their clothes—underclothes and furs and everything. Now there must be something wrong with a woman who can spend money on those things when she knows the agony of poverty right around her. ”

“ It is becoming a hard thing for our young men of fashion to afford the luxury of [379] marriage; and our young women learn that the aim of life is a rich husband, who can supply the gold for the wardrobe and the glitter of an establishment. ”

“ Quality not effect, is the standard to seek for. Machine-made passementerie on top of conspicuous but sleazy material is always shoddy. Cut and fit are the two items of greatest importance in women's clothes, as well as in men's. But fashion changes too rapidly to make value of material always wise expenditure for one of slender purse. Better usually have two dresses, each cut and made in the whim of the moment, than one which must be worn after the whim has become a freak. In men's clothes the opposite rule should be followed since good style in men's clothes is unchanging. ”

“ And the thrifty ones will no longer be thrifty, for their income will have been reduced till it balances their expenditure.
In short, thrift negates thrift. If every worker in England should heed the preachers of thrift and cut expenditure in half, the condition of there being more men to work than there is work to do would swiftly cut wages in half. ”

“ When, on the contrary, luxury is made an article of national lustre and felicity, we only think of it as an innocent consequence of the unequal distribution of wealth, and as a method by which different ranks are rendered mutually dependent, and mutually useful. The poor are made to practise arts, and the rich to reward them. The public itself is made a gainer by what seems to waste its stock, and it receives a perpetual increase of wealth, from the influence of those growing appetites, and delicate tastes, which seem to menace consumption and ruin. ”

“ DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country laborer to practice thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. ”

“ As the thrift of the worker is the root of our material prosperity, so is the thrift of the rich its flower and choicest fruit. What would America be, what would Europe be without the savings of the well-to-do, accumulated from generation to generation, and here now at our command and for our use manifested not only in railroads, ships, canals, banks and all the buildings and equipments of commerce and industry, but also in fine mansions, in elegant furniture, in beautiful lawns and gardens, in churches, cathedrals, hospitals, universities and museums? ”

“ If a consumer changes from paying away a part of his income in wages, to spending it that same day (not some subsequent and distant day) in things for his own consumption, and perseveres in this altered practice until production has had time to adapt itself to the alteration of demand, there will from that time be less food and other articles for the use of labourers, produced in the country, by exactly the value of the extra luxuries now demanded; and the labourers, as a class, will be worse off by the precise amount. ”

“ In opposition to these palpable absurdities, it was triumphantly established by political economists, that consumption never needs encouragement. All which is produced is already consumed, either for the purpose of reproduction or of enjoyment. The person who saves his income is no less a consumer than he who spends it: he consumes it in a different way; it supplies food and clothing to be consumed, tools and materials to be used, by productive labourers. Consumption, therefore, already takes place to the greatest extent which the amount of production admits of ”

“ Luxury, says one, is incompatible with the prosperity of a state. Luxury is the fountain of a nation’s welfare and happiness, says another. There may, in reality, be no difference in the sentiments of these two persons. The first may consider luxury as prejudicial to foreign trade, and as corrupting the morals of a people. The other may consider luxury as the means of providing employment for such as must live by their industry, and of promoting an equable circulation of wealth and subsistence, through all the classes of inhabitants. ”

“ The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses that of Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown in this simple republic. What shall the full fruitage be? I do not denounce the newly rich. For most part their money came under forms of law. The irresponsibilities of sudden wealth is in many cases steadied by that resolute good sense which seems to be an American heritage, and under-run by careless prodigality or by constant charity. Our great wealth has brought us profit and splendor. But the status itself is a menace. ”