The caution has already been repeated more than once, that while
the regulating norm of consumption is in large part the
requirement of conspicuous waste, it must not be understood that
the motive on which the consumer acts in any given case is this
principle in its bald, unsophisticated form. Ordinarily his
motive is a wish to conform to established usage, to avoid
unfavorable notice and comment, to live up to the accepted canons
of decency in the kind, amount, and grade of goods consumed, as
well as in the decorous employment of his time and effort. In the
common run of cases this sense of prescriptive usage is present
in the motives of the consumer and exerts a direct constraining
force, especially as regards consumption carried on under the
eyes of observers. But a considerable element of prescriptive
expensiveness is observable also in consumption that does not in
any appreciable degree become known to outsiders -- as, for
instance, articles of underclothing, some articles of food,
kitchen utensils, and other household apparatus designed for
service rather than for evidence. In all such useful articles a
close scrutiny will discover certain features which add to the
cost and enhance the commercial value of the goods in question,
but do not proportionately increase the serviceability of these
articles for the material purposes which alone they ostensibly
are designed to serve.

Under the selective surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste
there grows up a code of accredited canons of consumption, the
effect of which is to hold the consumer up to a standard of
expensiveness and wastefulness in his consumption of goods and in
his employment of time and effort. This growth of prescriptive