The Manufacturing Power and the Inducement to Production andConsumptionIn society man is not merely productive owing to thecircumstance that he directly brings forth products or createspowers of production, but he also becomes productive by creatinginducements to production and to consumption, or to the formationof productive powers.
The artist by his works acts in the first place on theennobling and refinement of the human spirit and on the productivepower of society; but inasmuch as the enjoyment of art presupposesthe possession of those material means whereby it must bepurchased, the artist also offers inducements to materialproduction and to thrift.
Books and newspapers act on the mental and material productionby giving information; but their acquisition costs money, and sofar the enjoyment which they afford is also an inducement tomaterial production.
The education of youth ennobles society; but what greatexertions do parents make to obtain the means of giving theirchildren a good education!
What immense performances in both mental and materialproduction arise out of the endeavour to move in better society!
We can live as well in a house made of boards as in a villa, wecan protect ourselves for a few florins against rain and cold aswell as by means of the finest and most elegant clothing.Ornamentsand utensils of gold and silver add no more to comfort than thoseof iron and tin; but the distinction connected with the possessionof the former acts as an inducement to exertions of the body andthe mind, and to order and thrift; and to such inducements societyowes a large part of its productiveness.Even the man living on hisprivate property who merely occupies himself with preserving,increasing, and consuming his income, acts in manifold ways onmental and material production : firstly, by supporting through hisconsumption art and science, and artistic trades; next, bydischarging, as it were, the function of a preserver and augmenterof the material capital of society; finally, by inciting throughhis display all other classes of society to emulation.As a wholeschool is encouraged to exertions by the offer of prizes, althoughonly a few become winners of the principal prizes, so does thepossession of large property, and the appearance and displayconnected with it, act on civil society.This action of courseceases when the great property is the fruit of usurpation, ofextortion, or fraud, or where the possession of it and theenjoyment of its fruits cannot be openly displayed.
Manufacturing production yields either productive instrumentsor the means of satisfying the necessities of life and the means ofdisplay.The last two advantages are frequently combined.Thevarious ranks of society are everywhere distinguished by the mannerin which and where they live, and how they are furnished andclothed, by the costliness of their equipages and the quality,number, and external appearance of their servants.Where thecommercial production is on a low scale, this distinction is butslight, i.e.almost all people live badly and are poorly clothed,emulation is nowhere observable.It originates and increasesaccording to the ratio in which industries flourish.In flourishingmanufacturing countries almost everyone lives and dresses well,although in the quality of manufactured goods which are consumedthe most manifold degrees of difference take place.No one whofeels that he has any power in him to work is willing to appearoutwardly needy.Manufacturing industry, therefore, furthersproduction by the community by means of inducements whichagriculture, with its mean domestic manufacture, its productions ofraw materials and provisions, cannot offer.
There is of course an important difference between variousmodes of living, and everyone feels some inducement to eat anddrink well; but we do not dine in public; and a German proverb saysstrikingly, 'Man sieht mir auf den Kragen, nicht auf den Magen'
(One looks at my shirt collar, not at my stomach).If we areaccustomed from youth to rough and simple fare, we seldom wish forbetter.The consumption of provisions also is restricted to verynarrow limits where it is confined to articles produced in theimmediate neighbourhood.These limits are extended in countries oftemperate climate, in the first instance, by procuring the productsof tropical climates.But as respects the quantity and the qualityof these products, in the enjoyment of which the whole populationof a country can participate, they can only be procured (as we haveshown in a former chapter) by means of foreign commerce inmanufactured goods.