The early ascendency of leisure as a means of reputability is
traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble
employments. Leisure is honorable and becomes imperative partly
because it shows exemption from ignoble labor. The archaic
differentiation into noble and ignoble classes is based on an
invidious distinction between employments as honorific or
debasing; and this traditional distinction grows into an
imperative canon of decency during the early quasi-peaceable
stage. Its ascendency is furthered by the fact that leisure is
still fully as effective an evidence of wealth as consumption.
Indeed, so effective is it in the relatively small and stable
human environment to which the individual is exposed at that
cultural stage, that, with the aid of the archaic tradition which
deprecates all productive labor, it gives rise to a large
impecunious leisure class, and it even tends to limit the
production of the community's industry to the subsistence
minimum. This extreme inhibition of industry is avoided because
slave labor, working under a compulsion more vigorous than that
of reputability, is forced to turn out a product in excess of the
subsistence minimum of the working class. The subsequent relative
decline in the use of conspicuous leisure as a basis of repute is
due partly to an increasing relative effectiveness of consumption
as an evidence of wealth; but in part it is traceable to another
force, alien, and in some degree antagonistic, to the usage of
conspicuous waste.

This alien factor is the instinct of workmanship. Other
circumstances permitting, that instinct disposes men to look with
favor upon productive efficiency and on whatever is of human use.