community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means
of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a
good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
Accordingly, both of these methods are in vogue as far down the
scale as it remains possible; and in the lower strata in which
the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part
delegated to the wife and children of the household. Lower still,
where any degree of leisure, even ostensible, has become
impracticable for the wife, the conspicuous consumption of goods
remains and is carried on by the wife and children. The man of
the household also can do something in this direction, and
indeed, he commonly does; but with a still lower descent into the
levels of indigence -- along the margin of the slums -- the man,
and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume
valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually
the sole exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class
of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all
customary conspicuous consumption. The last items of this
category of consumption are not given up except under stress of
the direst necessity. Very much of squalor and discomfort will be
endured before the last trinket or the last pretense of pecuniary
decency is put away. There is no class and no country that has
yielded so abjectly before the pressure of physical want as to
deny themselves all gratification of this higher or spiritual
need.

From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure
and consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for
the purposes of reputability lies in the element of waste that is
common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort,