6. _The larger moral problem involved in luxury is connected with distribution or the justice of the income, rather than with consumption or the spending of the income._ The individual effects of luxury broaden thus into the larger social effects. Most of the enemies of luxury condemn all expenditure of wealth above a very moderate sum, declaring that it is "unjust" for one man to have much while others are in poverty. This communistic doctrine pervades the teaching of many moral teachers, pagan and Christian. In many ways a public opinion can be developed to disapprove and condemn ostentation. Frivolous display becomes bad taste. Flaunting riches meet the public frown. The spending of income for dress and display has never been successfully forbidden by law. The Middle Ages are full of futile sumptuary laws which sprang from the envy of the nobles for the wealthy merchants. The growth of good taste may do what formal law found impossible. [Sidenote: Increasing social uses of wealth] The use of wealth in these days is taking more social directions. It turns from dress toward education, art, music, and travel; then ceases to be applied merely to self and family, and benefits the community. Nowhere and never before has this movement gone so far as in America. Andrew Carnegie, with his gifts of millions annually to public libraries; Peter Cooper, founder of the People's Institute; Ezra Cornell, the patron and prophet of the modern type of higher education--are citizens of a kind better known in this country than in any other. [Sidenote: Justice of the large income] [Sidenote: Legal repression of luxury inadvisable] The immorality of luxury rests in most minds on the conviction that it is unjust that any one should have so large an income to use. The question of luxury leads back to the question of distribution: Has the man honestly gained his wealth? If so, he may spend it with good judgment or poor, with good taste or bad, but, so long as he does not injure others in the spending of it, there is much vagueness and confusion in the talk of "justice" or "injustice." Each must in large measure be his own judge of the wisdom of expenditure. Luxury is not always a question of wealth. Every person of moderate income has relatively superfluous and expensive tastes. One spends more for music than many a millionaire does; another more for books. How many college students' budgets could pass the censorship of Hetty Green, reputed to be the richest woman in America? If expenditures were regulated by the public, few persons would be within the law. But whatever the goods that are bought, if income is unjustly acquired, if its distribution is by rules that do not give the best possible approach to social service, there may well be talk of injustice. There is need of better standards of taste and judgment in expenditure, but not of sumptuary laws. If there is any legal change, it should be rather in the law of property. CHAPTER 41