There are evidences that a great change may be in prospect. Mass-production requires a steady and enormous flow of sales. On the one hand, the jaded buyers are showing signs of restiveness and of becoming tired of wasting their lives in buying, buying, buying, and paying, paying, paying. They have to be whipped into it by more and more expensive salesmanship. On the other hand, office and sales forces are getting tired of being speeded up as they compare their share in the high standard with that of the men above them, and have to be whipped by the most improved technical methods into greater and greater activity. And all for what? That mass-production shall not falter or fail. The overhead costs of distribution have become staggering. If the public begins to economize and does not buy, then we are told that mass-production will fall down and in the crash to follow no one will have money with which to buy anything. Better than that, we are told, is to buy what we do not really want or cannot afford. There is no rest from the effort to make money in ever larger and larger amounts. There is no prospect of comfortable retirement in old age. For many who never thought of it in the old days there is the ever-present spectre of illness or incapacity. As has been said, our prosperity can be maintained only by making people want more, and work more, all the time. Those, and they are many, who believe that our recent prosperity has been mainly caused by the phenomenal expansion of the automobile business tell us[Pg 59] that it will soon be necessary to find some other article which will similarly take the public fancy and create billions of sales—and billions of expense to men already tired of doing nothing but meeting new expenses. “The highest standard of living ever attained in the history of the world”? [Pg 61] CHAPTER III OUR DISSOLVING ETHICS [Pg 63] OUR DISSOLVING ETHICS I The scapegoat is one of the most venerable and widespread of human institutions. The victim may be literally a goat, as among the Children of Israel, or a rat or a monkey or other animal. Not infrequently it is a human being. For example, among some tribes in Africa all persons who during the year have committed incendiarism, witchcraft, theft, adultery, or other crimes, chip in about ten dollars each and buy a young girl, who is then dragged to the river and drowned for the sins of the town. The sense of guilt requires some sort of expiation, and this “cash and carry” system of expiating the sins of an entire community by attributing them to someone else has obvious advantages. It enables one to settle with one’s conscience and the social conventions with a minimum of personal inconvenience and mental anguish.