' But do they reflect _why_ things are so cheap? Do they
know how much wealth has been sacrificed, how many families ruined, to
produce this boasted result? Do they not know enough of the machinery
of society, to suppose that the stunning effect of crash after crash,
may eventually be felt by those on whom they depend for support?
Luxuries are cheaper now than necessaries were a few years since; yet
it is a lamentable fact, that it costs more to live now than it did
formerly. When silk was nine shillings per yard, seven or eight yards
sufficed for a dress; now it is four or five shillings, sixteen or
twenty yards will hardly satisfy the mantuamaker.
If this extravagance were confined to the wealthiest classes, it would
be productive of more good than evil. But if the rich have a new dress
every fortnight, people of moderate fortune will have one every month.
In this way, finery becomes the standard of respectability; and a
man's cloth is of more consequence than his character.
Men of fixed salaries spend every cent of their income, and then
leave their children to depend on the precarious charity and reluctant
friendship of a world they have wasted their substance to please.
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