The demand for luxury even in the transaction of ordinary business is adding tremendously to the overhead expense of doing it and so to the cost of goods or services. A railway station must be as magnificent as a Roman bath. Our shops must be housed in Renaissance palaces on expensive streets. We are told that expensive office furniture is the safest investment in the world. A “front,” whether of clothes, furnishing, building, or location, must always be put up so as to indicate wealth back of it all or the business may not be considered sound, profitable, and “up-to-date.” Salesmanship has become increasingly expensive. I was recently talking with a woman who has an excellent salary (forming, of course, part of the overhead of her department), in one of the supposedly less extravagant shops. She complained of the expense she was under because of the high standard of salesmanship demanded by her customers. Fifteen years ago, she said, if she had dared to appear in the costly clothes the house now makes her wear, she would have been promptly discharged. She has to go to the theaters, know the latest plays and books, and be able to chat with her customers, not about her goods, but socially by the half-hour. Her sales are splendid—with prices according. Fifteen years ago almost every physician, dentist, or oculist had his office in a room in his own home and rarely had an assistant. Now almost without exception they have to take an office in some apartment house at rents of from $1200 to $3000 a year, and employ at least one uniformed nurse in attendance—expenses which, of course, are borne by the patients. To a considerable extent this is the fault of the[Pg 41] patients themselves. There is an instinctive tendency to feel if a doctor still has his office in his home with only a maid to answer the bell that he is either not up-to-date in knowledge or is unsuccessful for some reason. I know of one very able medical man who has deliberately done so and who has tried to keep down his professional expense for the benefit of his patients, but several of these patients have more than hinted to him that they would prefer to have a more expensive car standing at their door when he makes his call! To an incredible degree we have most of us unthinkingly adopted the cost standard as the value standard. Some time ago a prosperous and practical inventor disclosed some of his adventures with popular psychology. He had invented a small article which, with fair sales, could make a large profit when retailed at ten cents. He sent out a number of street hawkers to sell the article, half of them with the thing priced at ten cents and the other half with a twenty-five-cent price. The latter sold immediately whereas few were sold at the lower price.