The second principle of efficient spending is that when one has honestly decided that he needs a thing, he should buy the best he can get. If one buys at all, it pays to search the market for an article of high quality. Moreover, he is very apt not to find an article of high grade unless he does search the market rather carefully. The purchase of a cheap grade of goods, for any serious use, is very poor economy. Such goods soon give way, and the service they render, while they do last, is not satisfactory. To obtain a given amount of service, one will spend more money on articles of cheap grade than upon those that are better. The obtaining of the same amount of pleasure and satisfaction from the use of a cheap thing and a good one is an impossibility. It is a fallacy to suppose that the market must be supplied with quantities of shoddy goods for the sake of people who have less money to spend. The very fact that one does have less money to spend is one of the chief reasons why he cannot afford to waste it on inferior things. If all except a really worthy and dependable grade of goods were removed from the market today, purchasers, both rich and poor, would be the gainers. The selection of a high grade of products calls for some ability and skill in making a choice. It calls for no more, however, than every person should possess. The average citizen should train himself to be something of a judge of materials. Such ability will be of real service almost constantly in the task of living. One of the first things he is apt to learn is the fact that the showiest articles are seldom the best. A certain camouflage of outward appearance is often put on a thing to hide its real defects. Quality does not have to be painted up to show it off. It proclaims itself. The purchaser must learn to see through the outward appearance and judge a thing on its merits. The third principle of efficient spending follows in logical order. It is that, having decided to buy a thing and having bought the best, one should use it until he has gotten from it the utmost service of which it is capable. A certain antiquated notion of economy was that when things were purchased they should be put away and saved. The more valuable an article was, the more scrupulously it was kept. Good clothes were bought and hung away to be eaten by the moths instead of rendering their owners the service for which they were intended. Valuable articles were always rusting out and rotting out in the name of economy.