“False Conceptions of Welfare”
Between the
ages of sixteen and fifty, the great majority of Americans unceasingly strive
and hope to “better their position” by increasing their incomes, and thereby
raising themselves above the social and economic plane upon which they have
hitherto stood. Insofar as they are
successful in this aim, they obtain an increased satisfaction of their material
wants. Increased satisfaction is immediately
followed by a still larger increase, both numerically and intensively, of the
wants themselves. It becomes literally
true that “the more men have, the more they want.” In proof of this statement, all that is
necessary is to make a rapid survey of the chief ways in which material wants
call for satisfaction.
The man who
occupies a plain house of seven or eight rooms will expend a part of his larger
income for a better house. A better
house means, in the first place, a larger house. A larger house will, usually, be built of
more costly materials. In addition, it
will demand a greater quantity and a more expensive quality of equipment,
furniture, and utensils – woodwork, wall paper, carpets, chairs, beds, tables,
chinaware, etc. It means a larger outlay
for “help.” It implies a more “select”
neighborhood where land, and, consequently, rents are higher. The cost of the new house and furnishings may
be, let us say, $20,000, while the old one was built and equipped for $5,000;
yet, when the occupier’s income is still further and in a considerable degree
increased, there will emerge in his consciousness, or in that of his family,
the want of a still better house. This
will necessitate a considerably larger expenditure for all the items above
enumerated, as well as an additional outlay for several others that have
hitherto been unthought-of or disregarded.
When income
permits a change men are no longer content with plain and nourishing food. They must have more tender meats, more select
vegetables, richer and more varied desserts, older and more costly wines, and
complicated mixtures instead of plain beverages. The manner in which the food is served
becomes more formal, elaborate, and expensive; there must be many courses, more
and dearer chinaware, and much cut glass.
The same process appears in relation to clothing. After the demands of reasonable comfort have
been met, there will rise the desire for a greater number of suits, a more
frequent replacement to conform to the fashions, a better quality of materials,
and a more high-priced tailor. All these
and many other expansions of the clothing want become operative in the case of
men, and to a ten-fold degree in the case of women. Witness the single item of jewelry.
Intimately
connected with and dependent upon the standard of shelter, food, and clothing
is that class of wants that is somewhat inadequately called “social.” With increased expenditure for the former,
the last-named want inevitably becomes more complicated and more costly. Entertainments and “functions” become more
frequent and more elaborate; a notable increase takes place in the accessories
of entertaining, such as decorations, flowers, attendants, etc.; and there is a
considerable additional outlay for food and clothing. Finally, the desire for amusement and
recreation is also capable of indefinite expansion. The person of moderate means goes to the
theatre occasionally and occupies a cheap seat.
The rich or well-to-do person goes more frequently, rides to and from
the theater in a carriage, pays much more for a seat, and not infrequently buys
an elaborate luncheon after the performance.
The pleasure trips and vacations of the poor and the moderately situated
consist of trolley rides and a few days spent in some nearby town or country
district; those who are rich enough to afford it possess carriages and automobiles,
spend months at the seaside or in the mountains, take long ocean voyages, and
make extended sojourns in Europe.
In the case
of all but the few extremely rich, these five wants or classes of wants,
comprised under the head of shelter, food, clothing, “society,” and amusement,
can be expanded indefinitely and can absorb all of man’s income. No matter how much a person spends in meeting
these wants, he can still maintain, in accordance with the language and standards
of the day, that he has merely “bettered his social position.”
Now this
indefinite striving after indefinite amounts of material satisfaction is not an
accidental feature of modern existence.
It is but the natural outcome of the prevailing theory of life. “The old Christianity,” says Paulsen, who is
not medieval in his sympathies, “raised its eyes from the earth, which offered
nothing and promised nothing, to heaven and its supersensuous glory. The new age is looking for heaven upon earth;
it hopes to attain to the perfect civilization through science, and expects
that this will make life healthy, long, rich, beautiful, and happy.” (A System of Ethics,” pp. 139, 140). According to the dominant view, the loftiest
object that man can pursue is the scientific knowledge of nature – not, indeed,
for itself, but because of the abundance of material goods that it will put at
his disposal. Hence the practical
conclusion of the practical man is that he should seek to enjoy as much of
these goods as possible. “It is a
favorite principle of the ethical materialism of our days that a man is all the
happier the more wants he has, if he has at the same time sufficient means for
their satisfaction” (Lange’s “History of Materialism,” p. 239). Such is the prevailing conception of “wider
and fuller life.” Since life is merely,
or at any rate chiefly, an aggregate of sensations, more abundant life means
the multiplication of sensations, possessions, and pleasurable experiences.
This theory
of life is evidently false. Not the
number but the kind of wants that a man satisfies is the important thing. Reasonable human life is primarily
qualitative. It consists in thinking,
knowing, communing, loving, serving, and giving, rather than in having or
enjoying. When the demands of health and
moderate comfort have been supplied, additional sense-satisfactions contribute
little or nothing to the development of body, heart, or mind. They necessitate an expenditure of time,
energy, and resources that might be employed in building up the higher and
rational side of man. They exert a
damaging influence upon morals, mind, health, and happiness. Let us view the situation in some
detail.
First, as to
morals and character. The qualities that
are fostered through the activities of “society” are, in great part, undesirable
and ignoble. This assertion applies not
only to the doings of the most wealthy and exclusive “set,” but to all of those
more or less formal and pretentious “functions” whose participants regard
themselves as “in society,” though they may belong within the middle
class. Except in a very small proportion
of cases, the functions and gatherings of “society” do not make for true
culture or for intellectual improvement.
Their primary object is to entertain, but they have come to include so
many factitious elements in the matter of dress, decorations, feasting, and
other accessories, that one of their most common byproducts is a group of
unlovely and unchristian qualities. One
of the most marked of these qualities is the desire for social preeminence, the
passion for distinction, the wish to be thought at least as prominent as any
other person in one’s social set. Thus
the desire to excel, which is in itself laudable and useful, becomes, in the
case of a large number of society persons, an ambition to outdo one’s neighbors
in the splendor of gowns, the elaborateness of feasting, and not infrequently
in the ostentation and costliness of the entertainment generally. In the pursuit of this ambition are developed
the vices of envy, vanity, and snobbishness.
The realm of
the animal appetites presents another instance of the damaging effects of the
excessive pursuit of material satisfactions.
In the matter of food and drink the line between sufficiency and
gluttony is easily passed. Immoral
indulgence takes place under the name of a more thorough, more discriminating,
and more refined satisfaction of the desire for nourishment. Those who are guilty of this inordinate
indulgence often do not realize that they are acting the part of animals rather
than of rational beings, in whim the higher nature ought to exercise a
controlling influence. Again, violations
of the precept of chastity are apt to increase rather than diminish when the
personal expenditures of the individual pass beyond the limits of moderate and
reasonable comfort. Excessive
satisfaction of the other senses creates increased cravings in the sex
appetite. And these cravings are less
likely to be resisted, precisely because the persons who experience them have
become unaccustomed to deny the demands of the other appetites.
Another evil
effect is the weakening of the religious sense and of the altruistic
sense. It is a fact tof general
observation that after the stage of moderate income and plain living has been
passed, there follows in probably the majority of instances a decay of
religious fervor and of deep and vital faith.
The things of God are crowded out, “choked by the cares and riches and
pleasures of life.” Owing to the
essential selfishness of the process, inordinate satisfaction of material wants
also weakens the feelings of disinterestedness and generosity. Hence the rule is almost universally valid
that persons above the line of moderate comfort give a smaller proportion of
their income to charitable and religious causes than those who are at or
somewhat below that level.
Did men put
a true valuation upon material goods, they would increase the proportion of
their income given to these causes whenever an increase took place in the
income itself. For example, if the man
with an income of $2,000 per year contributed 3% of this sum, the man who
received $4,000 ought to give more than 3%.
The bulk of the extra thousand dollars goes, in most cases, to satisfy
less important material wants; consequently, a larger proportion of it ought to
be expended in meeting the higher want, that is, benevolence. What generally happens, however, is that the
proportion decreases. The explanation is
obvious; the receivers of the larger incomes become dominated by a false idea
of the relative values of things, holding the goods of the senses in higher
esteem than when their income was smaller.
Moreover,
there are certain of the higher comforts and conveniences whose net effect upon
human welfare is probably good, which involve no self-indulgence that is actually
immoral, and yet which are in a considerable degree injurious to
character. For example, the habit of
using parlor cars, electric bells, and street cars, in season and out of
season, makes us dependent upon them, and renders us less capable of that
measure of self-denial and of endurance which is indispensable to the highest
achievement. These and many other
contrivances of modern life are undoubtedly an obstacle to the development of
that invaluable ingredient of character which consists in the power to do
without. They contribute insensibly, yet
effectively, to a certain softness of mind, will, and body which is no
advantage in life’s many-sided struggle.
It does not follow that these conveniences ought not to be utilized at
all; it follows that they are not the unmixed blessing which they are commonly
assumed to be.
Nowhere are
the harmful effects of this materialistic conception of life that we are
considering more manifest than in the phenomena associated with the reduced
birth rate. The deliberate limitation of
offspring is as yet chiefly confined to the middle and upper classes, to the
persons whose elementary and reasonable wants are already fairly well
supplied. They wish to be in a position
to satisfy a large number of material wants in themselves and to ensure the
satisfaction of a still larger number in their children – if they have
any. They speak much of aiming at
quality rather than quantity in offspring.
They do not realize that the special qualities developed in the
artificially restricted family are almost entirely materialistic, while the
qualities that go to make up strong and virtuous characters are almost
inevitably neglected. In one word, the
theory of life-values, which impels men and women to decline the burdens of a
normal family, makes for enervating self-indulgence and perverted moral notions
in parents, a morally and physically enfeebled generation of children, a
diminishing population, and a decadent race.
So much for
some of the damaging results to morals and character. It seems inevitable that mental powers and
activities must likewise suffer. A
people devoted to the pursuit of material things, of ease, and of pleasure does
not seem to possess the best conditions for achievement in the higher and more
arduous fields of mental effort. Even
today an ever-increasing proportion of our college and university students
choose those courses of study that have a “practical” rather than a theoretical
or academic object and outcome. Whether
or not this training is as effective as the “liberal” branches in developing
the mental powers, those who select it will almost all devote their energies in
after life to the business of money-getting.
This means the exercise of the lower powers of the brain and
intellect. The products of their mental
activity will be material things and mechanical progress, rather than the
thoughts and ideas and knowledge that make for the intellectual, moral, or
spiritual improvement of the race. While
the proportion of our population that is educated has greatly increased, there
is reason to doubt that the proportion which reads serious, solid, and
uplifting literature is any greater today than it was fifty years ago. The great mass of the reading public is now
satisfied with the newspaper, the cheap magazine, and books of fiction, good,
bad, and indifferent. Half a century ago
the majority of those who read had access to only a few books, which were read
again and again. It is maintained by
some that the general quality of literature itself has deteriorated. Thus, Mr. Frederick Harrison, whose
Positivism would naturally dispose him in favor of the present age and spirit,
recently wrote: “As I look back over the
sixty years since I first began to read for myself, English literature has
never been so flat as it is now….In my student days, say, the mid 40’s and mid
50’s, our poets were Tennyson, the two Brownings, Fitzgerald, Rosseti – all at
their zenith. So were Dickens,
Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton, Kingsley, Disraeli.
The Brontes, Trollope, George-Eliot, Swinburne, Morris, were just coming
into line. Year after year Ruskin poured
out resounding fugues in every form of melodious art. Our historians were Carlyle, Grote, Milman,
Macaulay, Kinglake – then Froude and Newman.
Out philosophers were Mill, Buckle, Newman, Hamilton, Mansel. As I look back over these sixty years, it
seems to me as if English literature had been slowly sinking, as they say our
eastern counties are sinking, below the level of the sea….Railroads, telegrams,
telephones, motors, games, ‘week-ends,’ have made life one long scramble, which
wealth, luxury, and the ‘smart world’ have debauched. The result is six-penny magazines, four and
six penny novels, ‘short stories’ in every half-penny rag – print, print, print
– everywhere, and ‘not a drop to drink’ – sheets of picture advertisements, but
of literature not an ounce.” Among the
forces responsible for this decadence Mr. Harrison mentions “the increase of
material appliances, vulgarizing life and making it a scramble for good things”
(quoted in the Literary Digest, March 9, 1907).
The
indefinite pursuit of material satisfaction is, in considerable measure,
injurious to health. Rich are varied
food is not always more nourishing and healthful food. Usually it perverts the taste and
artificially stimulates the appetite to such an extent as to produce serious
aliments of the digestive organs. The
inordinate and feverish endeavor to increase income, the mad race for social
distinction, and the unceasing quest of new enjoyments, new ways of satisfying
tyrannical and jaded appetites, is disastrous to the nervous system. As a consequence of this twofold abuse of
their physical and mental faculties, a large section of the American people are
already confirmed dyspeptics or confirmed neurasthenics. The injurious physical effects of unchastity
and intemperance are too obvious to need extended comment.
Even the
claim that a larger volume of happiness will result from the development and
satisfaction of a larger volume of wants is unfounded. For the greater the number of wants that have
become active, the greater must be the pain or inconvenience suffered while
these wants are unsatisfied. The more
numerous the wants that clamor for satisfaction, the greater is the likelihood
of disappointment, the greater is the care and worry needed to meet them, and
the more numerous are the instances in which satisfaction leads inevitably to
satiety. The more frequent and the more
varied the satisfaction accorded to any want, the more must the stimulus or
satisfying object be increased in order to produce the former measure of
enjoyment. In a sense, we are all slaves
to the wants that we habitually satisfy; consequently, the greater the number
of indulged wants, the greater is the slavery.
Socrates thanked the gods because they had given him but a few wants;
both Epicurus and Diogenes sought happiness in freedom from wants. As the author of “The Simple Life” says: “The question of food and shelter has never
been sharper or more absorbing than since we are better nourished, clothed, and
housed than ever. It is not the woman of
one dress who asks most insistently how she shall be clothed. Hunger has never driven men to such baseness
as the superfluous needs, envy, avarice, and the thirst for pleasure.”
Not only the
rich but the middle classes experience increased discontent as a result of
yielding to the “higher-standard-of-living” fallacy. An effective illustration of this fact is
contained in an article by Annie Webster Noel in the New York Independent,
October 26, 1905. Following are some of
its most pertinent passages: “We married
in New York City on twelve a week….If our friends would only be happy our great
trouble would be removed. They do enjoy
staying with us. It is the plunge (into
a cheaper house and neighborhood) that is hard.
The fact is that our happiness without so many of the things being
striven for, is a slap in the face….We kept house on twelve dollars a week for
three months, on fourteen a week for six months. They we had twenty a week. We have come to the conclusion that twenty a
week is about where poverty commences.
Below that contentment is found in meeting living expenses. But above that new wants begin to take
shape. If one hasn’t a dollar, one stays
at home and is content. But whoever went
out to buy something for a dollar and did not see just what she wanted for
two?...We have reached the critical stage in our menage. We are spending a little more. We are mixing with more people of larger
means….Through a gradual increase in our income we have been reduced to
poverty.” In other words, the increase
of income brought into practical consideration new but purely material wants,
whose satisfaction or attempted satisfaction not only did not make for
improvement of mind or character, but left this woman and her husband less
contented than before.
The worst
effect of the failure to find increased happiness in the increased satisfaction
of material wants is the realization of this fact by the seekers. The disillusion and disappointment not
infrequently make them pessimists in their view of life as a whole. Having cherished for such a long time a false
conception of what constitutes true worth and rational living, they do not
readily return to saner views. In this
connection the work of Paulsen, already quoted, furnishes some significant
passages. After citing a document which
was placed in the steeple-knob of St. Margaret’s Church at Gotha in 1784, and
which glorifies the modern age, with its freedom, its arts, and its sciences,
and its useful knowledge – all pointing to greater material enjoyment- the
author makes this comment: “When we
compare the self-confidence of the dying eighteenth century, as expressed in
these lines, with the opinion which the dying nineteenth century has of itself,
we note with a strong contrast. Instead
of the proud consciousness of having reached a pinnacle, a feeling that are on
the decline: instead of joyful pride in
the successes achieved and joyful hope of new and greater things, a feeling of
disappointment and weariness, and a premonition of a coming catastrophe;…but
one fundamental note running through the awful confusion of voices: pessimism!
Indignation and disappointment; these seem to be the two strings to
which the emotional life of the present is attuned….What Rousseau hurled into
the face of his times as an unheard of paradox, namely, that culture and
civilization do not make men better and happier, Schopenhauer teaches as a
philosophical theorem: Civilization
increases our misery, civilization is the one great faux pas” (“A System of
Ethics,” pp. 147, 148)
This doleful
picture is truer of Europe than of America.
We have not yet adopted the philosophy of Schopenhauer. We are younger than the European peoples, and
have less experience; consequently, we have more enthusiasm, more illusions,
more hope, more faith in ourselves and in the satisfying qualities of the
material riches that we will secure from a land lavishly endowed by
nature. And yet the rapidly increasing
numbers of persons among us whose creed is pessimism, indicates that with the
coming of more years, more experience, and more mature knowledge, we, too,
shall be of the opinion that “culture” – so called – “and civilization” – so
called – “do not make men better and happier.”
It is
sometimes asserted that the indefinite pursuit of material goods is necessary
for the sake of beauty and refinement.
Undoubtedly these have a legitimate place in any complete theory of
right living, but their importance is only secondary. They ought not to be sought or obtained to the
detriment of the primary goods of life, such as health, mentality, virility,
good morals, contentment. Besides, much
of the so called refinement, that is so much prized and sought, is not
genuine. It is largely imitation,
effeminacy, artifice, vulgarity. True
refinement includes not merely elegance, polish, and delicacy – which often
appear in very artificial forms – but purity of mind, feelings, and tastes. In the endeavor to satisfy minutely one’s
material wants, the latter qualities are often weakened instead of being
developed. The search for beauty and
magnificence also leads frequently to grave perversions. Professor Veblen maintains that the
expenditures of the richer classes in America are governed by “the principle of
conspicuous waste.” This means that a
man or woman – especially the latter – must strive in the matter of dress,
entertainment, and equipage, to show that he or she is able to command the most
costly articles that money can buy, and then must treat them with such
recklessness as to indicate that they could be immediately replaced. And Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson tells us
in The Home that, “woman puts upon her body, without criticism or objection,
every excess, distortion, discord, and contradiction that can be sewed
together….the esthetic sense of woman has never interfered with her acceptance
of ugliness if ugliness were the fashion.”
This
superficial survey of a field that is so broad as to demand a volume for
adequate treatment, and so difficult as to be nearly incapable of definite
description, no doubt appears fragmentary, vague, and possibly
exaggerated. Nevertheless, the hope is
entertained that two or three points have been made more or less clear. First, that the theory of values and of life
which impels men to multiply and vary and develop and satisfy indefinitely
those wants that are grouped under the heads of shelter, food, clothing, social
intercourse, and amusement, is false, and makes, as a rule, for physical, mental,
and moral decadence. To those persons –
and their number is legion – who explicitly or implicitly adopt and pursue this
materialistic ideal, money is literally “everything.” Money does, indeed, “enslave” them. And it is difficult to say which class receives
the greater hurt – those who succeed to a considerable degree in realizing
their aim, or those who utterly fail.
Although the latter do not attain to that excessive satisfaction of
material wants which is demoralizing, their incessant striving for it prevents
them from adopting reasonable views of life, and their failure leaves them
discontented and pessimistic. In the
second place, ninety-nine out of every hundred persons are morally certain to
lead healthier, cleaner, nobler, more intellectual, and more useful lives if
they neither pass nor attempt to pass beyond the line of moderate comfort in
the matter of material satisfaction.
Lest this statement be accounted too vague, let us hazard the assertion
that the majority of families that expend more than $10,000 per year for the
material goods of life would be better off in mind and character if they had
kept below that figure. Because of this
general fact, reflecting and discriminating persons have but scant sympathy
with the ambitions of the mass of comfortably situated country people who come
to the city to “better their position,” or with the desire of the highest paid
sections of the laboring classes to increase their remuneration. Today, as of old, the power of the Wise Men
represents the highest practical wisdom:
“Give me neither poverty nor riches; give me only the necessaries of
life.” In this connection the hope may
be expressed that the foregoing pages will have shown the
“indefinite-satisfaction-of-indefinite-wants theory to be directly at variance
with the Christian conception of wealth and of life. Even the majority of Catholics seem to hold
to the Christian conceptions only theoretically and vaguely, not clearly and
practically.*
*In order to make more concrete the argument set forth
above, let us suggest that if one-fourth of the most costly houses in any large
city were to disappear, to be replaced by dwellings costing one-third as much,
and if the general standard of living of the occupants were reduced
accordingly, practically all of them would be better off, and their example of
same living would have a very beneficial effect on the rest of the community.
- Msgr. John
Ryan, “The Church and Socialism, pp. 180-197, The University Press, Washington,
D.C. As in J.F. Leibell, Readings in
Ethics, p. 259-269
