When we come to the staff necessary for the maintenance of these large establishments we touch a problem of employment which must be examined more closely. It is not sufficient to state baldly that these people are employed, and that if the opening were not available for them they would be unemployed. The immediate result of their being discharged would no doubt in some cases be unemployment. That is just the mischief of uneconomic employment. If a large number were simultaneously dismissed there might be temporary unemployment on a large scale, as it would amount to dislocation, like the extinction of some dying industry. But the eventual readjustment would subsequently be by that much the stronger and better adapted to the real requirements of the community. To employ a man in useless and unremunerative work can be regarded in some aspects as worse than not employing him at all. It is not intended, however--and, indeed, it would be impossible--here to enter into a discussion on the whole problem of unemployment, but there is undoubtedly a very great economic waste that largely contributes to the gravity of the problem, arising from the fact that a large number of people are being forced to devote their labour and energy to work which is, so to speak, final and sterile. It is precisely the same with regard to the production of expensive luxuries. The employment of a large retinue is only another form of the possession and enjoyment of articles of excessive luxury. The employers and possessors have all disagreeable burdens and every sordid worry lifted from them, their smallest and their most extreme desires for pleasure met, their special appetites satisfied, their peculiar vanities titillated, and their artificial position safeguarded and maintained, without their giving more than a passing thought to the mass of people required to carry on this work. Plenty of examples might be quoted in contemporary as well as past history to show that after generations of the enjoyment of “the vile joys of tainting luxury” men deteriorate, both physically and mentally.