Costliness

“ The costliness of these consists in the work bestowed upon them, and they can be made at home for half or less than half the price asked for them in the shops. By working them herself play is given to the ingenuity [Pg 301] of her fancy, and she may have the pleasure of knowing that she has something different from what every one else can buy. ”

“ Why should a poor, half-starved, half-stupefied, barking seal command exactly the same price, for instance, as the incalculable treasures of the World’s Fancy Fair? On what mercantile principles does an enterprise, whose cost is reckoned by hundreds of thousands, rely for its success upon the identical sum as that which is calculated to pay for the weekly hire of a small back room? Why, in short, should neither the quality nor the cost of the entertainment offered affect in the slightest degree the price demanded or the readiness with which it is paid! ”

“ Imagine her, with her fatherless, hungry children by her side, plying the needle late into the night, for the pitiful sum of seventy-five cents a week, as I once did. Imagine her, with this discouraging price of her eye-sight and strength, creeping forth with her little child by the hand, peeping cautiously through the glass windows of stores, to decide unobtrusively upon fabrics and labeled prices, or vainly trying to read human feeling enough in their owners’ faces to insure her from contemptuous insult at the smallness and cheapness of her contemplated purchase. ”

“ True labour, or spending of life, is either of the body, in fatigue or pain, of the temper or heart (as in perseverance of search for things,—patience in waiting for them,—fortitude or degradation in suffering for them, and the like) , or of the intellect. All these kinds of labour are supposed to be included in the general term, and the quantity of labour is then expressed by the time it lasts. So that a unit of labour is "an hour's work" or a day's work, as we may determine. [82]
Cost, like value, is both intrinsic and effectual. Intrinsic cost is that of getting the thing in the right way ”

“ When you want something that costs a lot of money you go and look at it and wonder which you want most, that particular luxury or the tree. I know a girl who had two in her yard only a little bigger than this, and she went to Europe on them. ”

“ My dear boy, don’t you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. ”

“ Money! Her lips curled scornfully—out here, in her own home, among these simple people, the brutal power of money was master just as in New York, among a people crazed by the passion for luxury and display. ”

“ If luxuries were limited, people lived in comfortable houses, sat around their big wood-fires, kept up at small cost, and had all the necessities of life,--warm clothing, even if spun and woven and dyed at home, linen in abundance, fresh meat at most seasons of the year, with the unstinted products of the farm at all seasons, and even tea and coffee, wines and spirits, at moderate cost ”

“ The cost of living is measurable by a standard adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of a little manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates for the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit—not the profession—leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. ”

“ In our material life we draw our resources from every land. Clothing, spices, fruits, toys, household furniture,—we lay contributions on the whole world for the most frugal meal, for the humblest dwelling. ”

“ Cost is the one impressive feature. Woodwork, furniture, rugs, everything to the inkstand are massive and—oppressive. Everything is admirably calculated to make work more burdensome; commercial and financial life more sombre. ”

“ The most costly and tempting wares are displayed in the shops in clothing, food, and all the necessities of life, as well as fantastic luxuries and superfluities in the greatest profusion—“things that nobody wants made to give to people who have no use for them”—yet, necessities or not, removed only by the thickness of the plate glass from the famished eyes of penury and want. ”

“ Not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong! We hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard of living. ”

“ I have happily been compelled to give the most inflexible attention to the price of everything. I like those books on garden design which tell you how easily you can get leaden figures and magnificent chased vases of bronze if you wish, but perhaps you would prefer carved stone. You have only to go to a well-known importer with a cheque-book and a consciousness of a workable bank balance, and the thing is done. ”

“ The cost of an article, however, is the measure of conscious effort and sacrifice necessary to gain its possession—the exertion of labor, the discomfort of abstinence, and the forfeiture of time and resources essential to its production or acquisition. Prices are paid out of income; but income is conditioned only indirectly upon the backache and brain-fag of labor, and the time consuming and capital-wearing processes of industry—these latter constitute real costs. ”

“ When prices fall owing to improvements in manufacture, business revives, the masses of the people are at work, those who toil find themselves possessed of more of the comforts, of the conveniences, and even of the luxuries of life than before. ”

“ Spending naught, I am laying by money for the time when I shall have to travel at my own expense and to provide myself necessaries, and, maybe, to keep myself for a while until I can procure employment. ”

“ Scenes of pinching poverty occur within a few blocks of the most wanton luxury and extravagance. One lady spends fifty thousand dollars—enough to satisfy all the hungry—on one evening’s entertainment. ”

“ Give large salaries to efficient servants, large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen; let the iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be easily met: and to increase expense in any other direction is madness. ”

“ All the idleness and luxury, thus created, helped to augment the price of the necessaries of life; and the inevitable consequences of unproductive expenditure ensued, in a continued diminution of the resources of those persons who earned their living. ”

“ Check among ourselves, in every possible way consistent with our present position, expensive habits of every kind, and even desires for costly gratifications. Encourage habits of simplicity and economy, and in every way prepare for entering into a state of comparative seclusion and frugality. ”

“ Farewell too, to art; and science even will flag for want of nourishment. As luxury is to be banished in our earthly paradise, all carriages will be put down, and all the hands employed in connection with them, will be thrown upon the market. ”

“ But the standard of comfort will be higher still a hundred years hence. Workmen will earn a greater share of the commodities of life, and whether their pay be higher, computed as money, or lower, makes no difference to the question of cheapness. If wages are low commodities will be low-priced: that is all. ”

“ From which it might be supposed that all skilled and unskilled artisans and farm-laborers, with their wives and children, live upon air—need no food, no clothing, no furniture, no houses, and are therefore unaffected by enhanced prices of commodities. ”

“ It may be urged, that it is indispensable for most persons to give more time to earn a livelihood, and to prepare food, raiment, and dwellings, than to any other object. But it may be asked, how much of the time, devoted to these objects, is employed in preparing varieties of food, not necessary, but rather injurious, and how much is spent for those parts of dress and furniture not indispensable, and merely ornamental? ”

“ The actual cost of a journey to the place fixed for the meeting, when a kingdom has become large, is too great to be borne by a man who owns but a few acres. Further, there is the indirect cost entailed by loss of time, which, to one who personally labors or superintends labor, is serious. ”

“ Because business must figure in these losses as part of the cost of doing business, the price of their products or services must increase accordingly to all the people who avail themselves of these goods or services. ”

“ Even without the latter of these adjuncts our instruments would have been far more costly and fragile. Possessing all these gifts of nature, we economise incalculably our time—to us more precious than money! ”

“ Premising that a real is, roundly speaking, twopence halfpenny of our money, a list of some of the viands and liquids to be had and their cost will be interesting—only the reader is requested not to open the book previous to bolting his food at the hurry-up and grab-all refreshment-room at Amiens, or when he is about to confront scalding soup and monumental sandwiches at some of our British buffets. ”

“ The high cost of living is everybody’s problem. This book presents the reason and stimulating thoughts upon the solution. It treats the problem from the producer’s, the middleman’s and the consumer’s viewpoints. ”

“ The consumption of expensive goods is meritorious, and the goods which contain an appreciable element of cost in excess of what goes to give them serviceability for their ostensible mechanical purpose are honorific. ”

“ In this principle, that the great mass of the people will read as they buy, lies the secret of the enormous success of the weekly sheets of that great epoch of cheapness which began about twenty years ago. ”

“ We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. ”

“ Prices have risen absolutely, and they go on rising daily, quite irrespective, too, of any increased demands on comfort by the people at large. True, all classes now display a somewhat greater inclination towards expensive habits than of old. ”

“ This is to be noted: that a scheme of things which has for its only excuse the production of money and material comfort has in practice worked out as a scheme which deprives the greater number of money and plunges them into the acutest material discomfort. ”

“ It may be claimed that the workman who receives an increase of wages, and whose cost of living is correspondingly increased, is no better off at the end of the year, yet economy brings to him larger apparent accumulations, and he is thereby encouraged to practice frugality. ”

“ Otherwise the being ferried over in company of gaily dressed people going to or coming from market with fruit, garden produce and all sorts of merchandise for sale or bought, has its compensations; rocked by the eddying stream which glides swiftly between its steep banks, our dominating sensation is one of joy in the splendour of unstinted light, of freedom from the petty torments of everyday routine,—and let worry take care of itself! ”

“ As a general rule we may be sure that we shall spend our money for what we most earnestly crave. If it be luxury and display then it will melt into costly viands and soft clothing, handsome dwellings and rich furniture. ”

“ The prizes of life are not laid upon easily accessible shelves but are placed out of reach to be labored for, like the views one gets of the valley here only after paying the price in an exceedingly toilsome journey. ”

“ The present high cost of living raises questions in the theory of the economic aspect of life that have compelled the attention of the public. The theory of money, interest, savings, foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's economy is carried a step further and is popularly more extended. ”

“ But servants and horses, and choice wines and rare fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may take the fancy, irrespective of the price, run away with money, even though there be but one child. ”

“ Well, cost of production is—what we put in the pool, plus the cost of making the prints I got in Los. We pull out the profits according to what we put in—sabe? I guess that suits everybody, doesn't it? ”