_The Value of Goods as affected by the Existence of Castes._--One of the reasons why the market for jewels is thus elastic is the fact that they serve as badges of caste, as only something of large cost can do. If, therefore, all gems were to become much cheaper, two things would happen: (1) relatively poor people would buy some of them--partly in lieu of imitations and of cheaper real jewels; and (2) rich people would have to buy more and costlier ones than were formerly needed, in order to retain their positions in the social gradations. This principle affects the consumption of a wide range of articles, the possession of which seems, outwardly at least, to stamp the owners as belonging in a certain stratum of society. It increases the demand for fine clothing, furnishings, and equipage, multiplies social functions, and induces participation in all manner of costly diversions. The elasticity of the market for luxurious goods is, in general, greatly increased by the action of this motive. The cheapening of them causes them to be consumed by the lower classes and renders the use of greater quantities or higher qualities of them a social necessity for the higher classes.[1] [1] It is also true that an entire variety of gems or other things of this genus might, by mere cheapness, be branded as too common to be used by the very wealthy, except for new and inferior modes of adornment. We shall soon see that a reduction in the cost of any one article usually causes the use of it to trench on that of all manner of things which are on the margin of consumption and are not similarly cheapened. _Changes of Cost of Different Goods Never Uniform._--The cost of all articles is never reduced at the same time, and it is impossible that all of them should remain in the same order of desirability in the estimation of purchasers. Many things, however, are often cheapened at the same time, though in different degrees. Whatever furnishes a very common raw material at a lower cost than has prevailed, as did the invention of the Bessemer process of steel making, makes everything into which that material enters cheaper. By reducing the cost of railroads and engines, cars and steamships, the Bessemer process indirectly lowered the prices of goods that have to be carried, which means practically everything. A cheap motive power acts in the same way and lowers the costs of producing an unlimited number of goods. Even in the case of such general improvements as this the reductions of price are not uniform. Some goods are affected more than others. Cheap steel lessens the cost of bridges more than it does that of dwelling houses, and in the case of many improvements the effect is confined to a limited class of products, if not to a single one.