Chapter LXVI: Section CCVIII

NATURE AND KINDS OF CONSUMPTION.--NOTIONAL CONSUMPTION.

By the notional consumption (_Meinungsconsumtion_), as Storch calls it, operated by a change of fashion, many goods lose their value, without as much as suffering the least change of form or leaving the merchant's shop. This kind of consumption, too, is exceedingly different in different nations. Thus, in Germany, for instance, fashions are much more persistent than in France.[208-1] In the most flourishing times of Holland, only noblemen and officers changed with the fashions, while the merchants and other people wore their clothes until they went to pieces.[208-2] In the East, fashions in clothing are very constant;[208-3] but the expensive custom there prevails, for a son, instead of moving into the house occupied by his father, to let it go to ruin, and to build a new one as a matter of preference. The same is true even in the case of royal castles. Hence, in Persia, most of the cities are half full of ruins, and are in time moved from one place to another.[208-4]

The national income of a country is, on the whole, much less affected by a change of fashion than the separate incomes of its people. The same whim which lowers the value of one commodity increases the value of another; and what has ceased to be in fashion among the rich, becomes accessible, properly speaking, to the poorer classes of the community for the first time.[208-5] The want of varying his enjoyments is so peculiar to man, and so intimately connected with his capacity for progress, that it cannot in itself be blamed. But if this want be immoderately yielded to, if the well-to-do should despise every article which has not the charm of complete novelty, the advantages of the whole pattern-system, by means of which the preparation of a large number of articles from the same model at a relatively small cost, would be lost. Besides, fashion, which makes production in large quantities, for the satisfaction of wants that are variable and free, possible, frequently means even a large saving in the cost of production.[208-6]

[Footnote 208-1: The consequences of this are very important
to the character of French and German industry.
(_Junghanns_, Fortschritte des Zollvereins, I, 28, 51, 58.)
Rapidly as the Parisian fashions in dress make their way
into the provinces, their fashions in the matter of the
table are very slow to do so. (_Rocquefort_, Hist. de la Vie
privée des Fr., I, 88 seq.)]

[Footnote 208-2: _Sir W. Temple._ Observations on the U.
Provinces, ch. 6.]

[Footnote 208-3: As most persons adorn themselves for the
sake of the opposite sex, this invariability is caused by
the oriental separation of two sexes. Our manufacturers
would largely increase their market, if they could succeed
in civilizing the East in this respect. In Persia, shawls
are frequently inherited through many generations, and even
persons of distinction buy clothes which had been worn
before. (_Polak_, Persien, I, 153.) In China, the Minister
of Ceremonies rigidly provided what clothes should be worn
by all classes and under severe penalties. (_Davis_, The
Chinese, I, 352 seq.)]

[Footnote 208-4: _Jaubert_, Voyage en Perse, 1821. While
cities like Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Almadin, Kufa, and even
Bagdad, were built from the ruins of Babylon.]

[Footnote 208-5: In Moscow, merchants close their accounts
at Easter. Then begins a new cycle of fashions, after which
all that remains is sold at mock-prices. (_Kohl_, Reise,
98.) In Paris, there are houses which buy up everything as
it begins to go out of fashion and then send it into the
provinces and to foreign parts. Thus, there are immense
amounts of old clothing shipped from France and England to
Ireland. Hence, the latter country can have no national
costume appropriate to the different classes; and the
traveler sees with regret, crowds of Irish going to work in
ragged frock-coats, short trowsers and old silk hats. In
Prussia, many of the peasantry, in the time of Frederick the
Great, wore the discarded uniforms of the soldiery.]

[Footnote 208-6: _Schäffle_, N. Oek. _Hermann_, Staatsw.
Untersuchungen, II, Aufl., 100.]