Thorstein Veblen:
MR. CUMMINGS'S STRICTURES ON "THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS." (in Notes)
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 8, No. 1. (Dec., 1899), pp. 106-117.
Review to: John Cummings. The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Journal of 
Political Economy, Vol. 7, No. 4. (Sep., 1899), pp. 425-455.
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In the last issue of this Journal is a paper of some length by Mr. John 
Cummings, criticising a book lately published for me under the title, The Theory 
of the Leisure Class. The paper is notable for its earnestness no less than for 
its graceful and cogent discussion. It is needless for me here to express my 
high appreciation of the attention which the volume has received at Mr. 
Cummings's hands. But circumstances have made it necessary for me to take this 
means of calling attention to certain passages in Mr. Cummings's discussion, 
where the criticism is directed rather against the apparent than against the 
intended drift of the argument set forth in the volume.
As editor of the Journal it should have been my place, and my privilege, to 
forestall what I might conceive to be misdirected criticism by making the 
necessary suggestions to Mr. Cummings before his paper appeared in print; and, 
but for the untoward chance that the issue in which the paper appears was 
printed during my absence, this [107] would have been done. As it is, I am 
constrained to offer my explanations in the ungracious form of a reply to his 
criticism. There is the more excuse for so doing, since what has proved to be 
obscure to so acute a critic as Mr. Cummings may be expected to other at least 
as great difficulties to others who may have the patience to read the book. Had 
I had the good fortune to say what I intended, and no more, my critic would, I 
believe, have been saved a good share of the corrections which he is good enough 
to offer, as well as much of the annoyance which he is at pains to conceal. 
Indeed, to such an extent does this appear to be true that the greater portion 
and the weightier of Mr. Cumming's criticisms appears to proceed on 
misapprehension that might have been obviated by a more facile use of language.
But to speak first of a point on which the difference between the book and its 
critic is apparently not of this verbal complexion. Mr. Cummings (p. 426)(1*) 
gravely distrusts any "attempt to read modern psychology into primitive 
conditions," together with attempts at "a psychological reconstruction of 
primitive society." To the first count I plead guilty, only if "modern" 
psychology is taken to mean the latest views of psychological science known to 
me, as contrasted with older theories. Whether this constitutes an offense is, 
of course, not within my competency to inquire. As to the second count, I plead 
that any theory of culture, late or early, must have recourse to a psychological 
analysis, since all culture is substantially a psychological phenomenon. In any 
modern discussion of culture, and of cultural development, where this recourse 
is not had openly it is had covertly.
Mr. Cummings's criticism is directed to three main heads: (1) The theory of 
waste (pp. 427-434); (2) the relation of the leisure class to cultural change 
(pp. 436-439); (3) the justification of leisure-class incomes (pp. 439-453). On 
the first of these heads the difference between the book and its critic seems to 
be apparent only, due to a misconception caused by want of explicitness in the 
argument. As to the second, the difference between Mr. Cummings's views and mine 
is, I believe, less by half than appears from Mr. Cummings's strictures. Under 
the third head, running through some fourteen pages, Mr. Cummings develops a 
point of doctrine with which the book does not concern itself.
Exception is taken (p. 427) to my attempted definition of waste. It should be 
said that the definition in question aims to promulgate no [108] novel doctrine; 
the aim being to state discursively what is the content of a judgment concerning 
waste or futility. The definition may be unfortunate, but its ineptitude does 
not eliminate the concept of waste from men's habits of thought, nor does it 
eliminate the word from everyday speech. Men do currently pass opinions on this 
and that as being wasteful or not wasteful, and there is much evidence that they 
have long been in the habit of doing so. Sumptuary legislation and the much 
preaching of the moralists of all ages against lavish habits of life is evidence 
to this effect. There is also a good deal of a consensus as to what manner of 
things are wasteful. The brute fact that the word is current shows that. Without 
something of a passable consensus on that head the word would not be 
intelligible; that is to say, we should have no such word. As Mr. Cummings 
earnestly contends (p. 428), it is always the individual that passes an opinion 
of this kind - as must manifestly be conceded with respect to all opinions. But 
the consensus that prevails shows that the opinions of individuals on matters 
touching "the generically human" passably coincide - which, I gather, Mr. 
Cummings is (p. 428) unwilling to admit. If it were in place to offer 
instruction here, I should suggest that some reason for this coincidence of 
views is to be found in a community of descent, traditions, and circumstances, 
past and present, among men living in any given community, and in a less degree 
among men in all communities. It is because men's notions of the generically 
human, of what is the legitimate end of life, does not differ incalculably from 
man to man that men are able to live in communities and to hold common 
interests.
It is the use of the word "impersonal," in the sense of non-invidious or non-
emulative, that seems particularly to have proved misleading. And this, 
probably, has provoked Mr. Cummings (p. 429) unguardedly to deny the practical 
possibility of waste. This result of my escapade, I need not say. I deeply 
regret. Fine like is true for the word "invidious" though on this term the 
critic's quarrel is with the current use of the word, not with any misuse of it 
at my hands. My critic's discussion at this point also carries the implication 
that any item of consumption which is in any degree useful, as, e.g., "costly 
church edifices," cannot at the same time be in any degree wasteful. This seems 
an unwarranted application of the logical expedient of "exclusion." As bearing 
on this massage (p. 429), it may be added that even if "the labor expended on 
the church edifice .... be considered in [109] any sense wasteful," that need 
not imply that the edifice or its consumption according to the accepted method 
is disallowed by economic theory. It is, for all I can see, competent for an 
economist to inquire how far such an edifice and the employment of time and 
effort involved in its use may the industrially unproductive, or even 
industrially disserviceable, if such should be the outcome of the inquiry. Such 
an endeavor, I believe, need bring no obloquy upon the economist, nor need he 
thereby invade the moralist's peculiar domain, nor need it flutter the keepers 
of the idols of the tribe. The economic bearing of any institution is not its 
only bearing, not its weightiest. The ends of human culture are manifold and 
multiform and it is but the meaner of them, if any, that are fairly comprised in 
that petty side of life into which it is the economist's lot to inquire. An 
electrician might, without blame, speak of the waste of energy that is 
inseparable from the use of storage batteries. Indeed, if he is discussing the 
efficiency of this means of utilizing a source of power, he could not avoid a 
detailed inquiry into this feature of their use. But his endeavor to determine 
the magnitude of the unavoidable or of the ordinary waste involved would not 
commit him to a condemnation of the batteries, nor would it make him an object 
of suspicion in the eyes of his fellow electricians.
The like critical use of exclusion, applied to alternatives which it had not 
occurred to me to conceive of as exclusive alternatives, recurs in Mr. 
Cummings's observations on the conservatism of the leisure class (e.g., pp. 
437-438), and on the differentiation of employments between the pecuniary and 
the Industrial occupations (pp. 443-453). It is on the strength of such a 
needless application of exclusion that Mr. Cummings is able to say (p. 432): "In 
Dr. Veblen's philosophy, all our judgments are based on invidiousness." This 
should be so amended as to read: "Some of our judgments are in part based on 
invidiousness." It will be seen that such an amendment would materially affect 
Mr. Cummings's further development of the theme, particularly as regards his 
strictures on the views advanced in the book. Similarly the reductio ad absurdum 
on page 434, where the view that elegance of diction and orthography serve an 
invidious purpose is taken logically to contain the further position that speech 
can serve no purpose but an invidious one, and that the origin and sole use of 
language lies in the invidious distinction which it lends the user. This resort 
to excluded middle is in touch with the rhyme of a modern poet, who sings:
[110]
I'd rather have fingers than toes;
I'd rather have ears than a nose;
etc.(2*)
overlooking the possibility of combining these several features in a single 
organism.
These pages (428-435) are a source of comfort and of despair to me. Of comfort 
in that I find in them a cogent exposition of views which I had attempted to set 
forth; of despair in showing how my attempted exposition has proved 
unintelligible even to a reader who had already beforehand reached an articulate 
recognition of very much of what I attempted to say. For, if I am not mistaken, 
Mr. Cummings's views, on the subject of waste, as set forth fragmentarily in 
these pages passably coincide with those intended to be expressed in the volume 
which he criticises.
Much the same is true for what Mr. Cummings has to say (pp. 436-439) on the 
conservative effect of the institution of a leisure class. The point at which 
his development of theory on this head chiefly differs from that of the book - 
as I had conceived it - is his insistence that this conservative effect is, 
always and in the nature of things, of a salutary kind. On this I had, perhaps 
weakly, reserved decision, as I am still compelled to do. Similarly as regards 
Mr. Cummings's conviction (p. 437) that "Theoretically there is but one right 
course of social evolution, while the number of wrong courses is infinite." For 
my part, I have not had the fortune to reach a conclusion, or to attempt one, on 
this point. I am at a loss to understand what such a thesis may mean to an 
evolutionist, and I believe it would get the asset of fewer men today than at 
any previous time. But the main drift of Mr. Cummings's development I gladly 
assent to. In particular, I am at one with him in his view (p. 437) - which 
reads like a summary restatement of the argument of the book - that "whatever 
is, is clearly, at one and the same time, both right and wrong." This 
proposition Mr. Cummings has, by an unfortunate oversight, placed in contrast 
with a partial statement of the same view as expressed in the book.
Attention may be called to a further point of detail in this connection. Mr. 
Cummings (p. 442) takes exception to the view that man's environment changes 
with the growth of culture. He finds that the environment is "relatively fixed;" 
that "climate and soil make up pretty much all there is at the basis of that 
environment, and these [111] change but little." All this is no doubt true if 
environment be taken to mean climate and topography; but for the purpose of my 
inquiry - an inquiry as to why and how the habits of life and of thought of the 
individual come to be modified - for this purpose customs, conventions, and 
methods of industry are no less effective elements in the environment than 
climate and topography, and these vary incontinently.
Mr. Cummings also (pp. 440-444, 449-452) offers a theory as to the equity of the 
existing distribution of property and of the incomes that accrue to the various 
classes in the community. This discussion is directed to a point not touched 
upon in my inquiry. But since my critic has been led to read into my argument 
return implications on this head which he finds it necessary to refute, it is 
not improbable that others may read the argument in the same sense and feel the 
same need of refutation. It may therefore be in place to point out why I have 
not entered upon a discussion of this topic. The reason is that the whole 
question of such a justification is beside the point. The argument of the book 
deals with the causal, not with the moral competence of the phenomena which it 
takes up. The former is a question for the economist, the latter for the 
moralist. The manner in which Mr. Cummings has misread the argument - as I 
conceive it - may be illustrated by citing several specific propositions which 
are mistakenly conceived to bear upon the argument. He says (p. 440): "The 
accumulation at one end is conceived to be at the expense of the other end in 
the sense that the other end would have more if it had its just deserts." This 
should read: "is not conceived to be at the expense of the other end in the 
sense," etc. In particular, there is in the volume no reference, express or by 
implication, to "just deserts." Similarly, unless I am mistaken, it contains no 
suggestion that a "confiscation" (p. 449) of the products of the "productive 
laborers" takes place. It does not raise the question as to whether the captain 
of industry on the one hand or the laborer on the other hand "earn" (pp. 440, 
441) their respective incomes. Mr. Cummings (pp. 440-452) assumes the validity 
of the natural-rights dogma that property rests on production. This relation 
between production and property rights is a moral, not a causal relation, if it 
is assumed to subsist at all. As regards Mr. Cummings's advocacy of the claims 
of the captain of industry to his income, on this ground, it proceeds on the 
bold though ancient metaphor by force of which bargaining is conceived to 
produce goods. And as regards the claims of the laborer to a property right 
[112] in his product, an exhaustive analysis would probably show that they rest 
on similarly inconclusive grounds. I am therefore unable, in view of well-known 
facts, to go with Mr. Cummings in his view (p. 453) that a person who does not 
produce wealth cannot acquire it except by a miracle. One might cite the trite 
case of the man with the nutshells and the peppercorn, when the miraculous 
element is, at the best, held to be apparent only.
In a smaller connection (p. 448) Mr. Cummings, in a restatement of my argument, 
says: "it is a game of chance, not of skill, this game of ownership, and the 
risks assumed are devoid of economic significance." This should read: "in some 
part of chance, though chiefly of skill," and "the risks assumed are of the 
gravest economic significance." Also (p. 448): "since individual members of the 
wealthy leisure class resort to chicanery and fraud, therefore nobody else 
does." This is an instance of Mr. Cummings's use of exclusion. It should read: 
"individual members of the wealthy leisure class resort to chicanery and fraud, 
as do also many other persons." Again (p. 449): "The unscrupulous man is not, by 
virtue of his unscrupulousness, a member of any class." To this I beg to give a 
cordial assent; as also to the proposition (p. 453) that "labor alone [unaided 
by intelligence] does not produce." So, again, I accept, with a covetous 
acknowledgment of its aptness, Mr. Cummings proposition (p. 447) that, instead 
of its being the sole player in the game, the leisure class "is peculiar in that 
in playing this game of ownership in which all engage, its members have 
succeeded conspicuously." This statement contains the central position of the 
argument against which it is directed. The chief difference between the leisure 
and the industrial classes is conceived to be a larger endowment on the part of 
the former in respect of those aptitudes and propensities which make for 
pecuniary success.
In the pages which Mr. Cummings devotes to a defense of the captain of industry 
and his income the point of serious difference between his exposition and the 
argument of the book in his rejection of the distinction between "pecuniary" and 
"industrial" employments. He insists that there is no tenable distinction 
between the employment of the financier and that of the day laborer, both alike 
being "productive" and both alike owing their productivity and their income 
yielding character to the intelligence exercised. This does not run altogether 
on the same ground as the argument in the volume, and it seems a less conclusive 
objection to me than it appears to have [113] been to Mr. Cummings. It seems 
necessary to explain that the intended point of the argument concerning 
"pecuniary" and "industrial" employments was to indicate the different economic 
value of the aptitudes and habits of thought fostered by the one and the other 
class of employments. The question turns on a difference of kind, not on a 
difference of degree, in the intelligence and spiritual attitude called for by 
the different employments, in such a way that the one line of employment calls 
for more of one range of aptitudes while the other line of employments calls for 
more of another. It is the ethological bearing of employments that is chiefly in 
question, my endeavor being to point out how employments differ, for the purpose 
in hand, in respect of the training and the selective stress to which the 
character of these employments subjects the persons employed. "The distinction 
here made between classes of employments is by no means a hard and fast 
distinction between classes of persons." Few persons escape having some 
experience of both lines of employment, but the one or the other line of 
employment commonly is accountable for the greater portion of the serious 
occupation of any given person. So that while the disciplinary effect of either 
is seldom unmitigated in any concrete case, still the existing differentiation 
of occupations commonly confines the attention of any given person chiefly to 
the one or the other line of employment, and gives his training a bent in the 
one or the other direction. In the earlier phases of modern industry, where the 
owner was at the same time the foreman of the shop and the manager of the 
"business," as well as in those modern industries in which the division of labor 
is relatively slight, the distinction does not obtrude itself on the attention 
because the separation of employments is not marked. Probably on this account 
the distinction is, at least commonly, not made in the received discussions of 
economic theory, which have for the most part taken their shape under the 
traditions of a less highly developed differentiation of employments than the 
existing one. Still, even then the different, or divergent, disciplinary trend 
of the pecuniary and the industrial activities of any given individual must be 
held to have had its force, although the unblended effect of the one or the 
other may not be shown in any concrete case. It is to be added that in the 
somewhat numerous marginal cases, where these lines of employment cross and 
blend, as e.g., in retail shopkeeping, in newspaper work, in popular art, in 
preaching, in sleight-of-hand, etc., it is perhaps impossible for the nicest 
discrimination to draw a neat distinction between them.
[114] Since the distinction in question is not an accepted article of economic 
theory, it need occasion no surprise that my critic should fail to apprehend it 
or to admit it; but his failure to apprehend the distinction does not affect its 
reality. As I conceive it, the distinction at its clearest marks the difference 
between workmanship and bargaining. Both equally are economic activities, but 
both are not in the same sense industrial. The "industrial" activities, whose 
characteristic is workmanship, of course include the work of directing the 
processes of industry well as of contriving, the aims and ideals of industry - 
such work as that of the artist, the inventor, the designer, the engineer and 
the foreman. This range of employments has to do with adapting the material 
means of life, and the processes of valuation constantly involved in the work 
run on the availability of goods and on the material serviceability of the 
contrivances, materials, persons, or mechanical expedients employed. They have 
to do with relations of physical cause and effect. In the received scheme of 
economic theory these employments fall under the head of "Production". The 
"pecuniary" employments fall under the head of "Distribution." They have to do 
with the distribution of wealth - not necessarily with the distribution of goods 
to consumers. The processes of valuation involved in this work run on the 
exchange values of goods and on the vendibility of the items with which they are 
concerned, and on the necessities, solvency, cupidity, or gullibility of the 
persons whose actions may affect the transaction contemplated. These valuations 
look to the pecuniary serviceability of the persons and expedients employed. The 
objective point of the former range of valuations is material use, of the latter 
pecuniary gain. Indirectly this latter class of employments may have a very 
considerable effect in shaping industrial life, as witness, e.g., the 
industrial changes incident to the formation of trusts; and it is this indirect 
effect that has commonly received the attention of the economists. Similarly, of 
course, the "industrial" employments rarely if ever are without a pecuniary 
bearing.
It may be said by way of further characterization that the pecuniary 
employments, and the pecuniary institutions to which they give rise, rest on the 
institution of private property and affect the industrial process by grace of 
that institution; while the industrial employments, and the industrial 
differentiation to which they give rise, rest chiefly on the physical conditions 
of human life; but they have their pecuniary [115] bearing by virtue of the 
institution of ownership, since all pecuniary phenomena lie within the range of 
that institution. As J. S. Mill might be conceived to say - as, indeed, he has 
virtually said - the pecuniary employments are conditioned by human convention, 
the industrial by the unalterable laws of nature.
Either line of employment may be said to require and to foster a certain 
intelligence or sagacity in the persons so employed, but the intelligence so 
fostered is not the same in both cases. The sagacity characteristic of the 
pecuniary employments is a sagacity in judging what persons will do in the face 
of given pecuniary circumstances; the sagacity required by the industrial 
employments is chiefly a sagacity in judging what inanimate things will do under 
given mechanical conditions. When well developed, sagacity of the former 
complexion may be expected to make a shrewd salesman, investor or promoter; 
intelligence of the latter kind, a competent engineer or mechanician. With the 
former goes an interest in gain and in contests of shrewdness and personal 
advantage; with the latter goes an interest in workmanlike efficiency and in the 
play of inanimate forces. It is needless to add that men whose occupations are 
made up of the latter class of employments also commonly have something of the 
pecuniary aptitudes and find more or less frequent exercise for them; but it is 
also bootless to contend that there is no difference between the "pecuniary" and 
the "industrial" employments in respect of their disciplinary and selective 
effect upon the character of the persons employed. Neither should it be 
necessary to point out that the pecuniary employments, with the aptitudes and 
inclinations that give success in them, are, in their immediate bearing, in no 
degree serviceable to the community, since their aim is a competitive one. 
Whereas the latter commonly are serviceable in their immediate effects, except 
in so far as they are, commonly under the guidance of the pecuniary interest, 
led into work that is wasteful or disserviceable to the community.
I have permitted myself to speak at length and in this expository way on this 
point because Mr. Cummings's criticism has shown that the earlier discussion on 
this topic must have been lacking in clearness, while it has also raised the 
apprehension in my mind that the distinction between "pecuniary" and 
"industrial" aptitudes and employments may be more novel and more recondite than 
I had appreciated.
In conclusion Mr. Cummings speaks in terms of high appreciation of the "clever" 
use of terminological expedients which he finds in the [116] volume. There is, 
however, a suggestion that, with all its cleverness, this consummate diction is 
charged with some malign potency, somewhat after the manner of the evil eye. 
Sincere, and withal kindly, as may be the intention of these comments on the 
"consummate cleverness" shown in the choice of terms, I cannot but mistrust that 
they express the impulses of my critic's heart rather than the deliverances of a 
serene intelligence. I apprehend they will not commend themselves to thoughtful 
readers of the volume. For instance, so serious a person as Mr. D. Collin Wells 
would be able at the most to give but a very materially qualified assent to Mr. 
Cummings's eulogy. Mr. Wells (3*) expresses disappointment on precisely the 
point that stirs Mr. Cummings's admiration. Indeed, I catch, in Mr. Wells's 
observations on this matter, something of an inflection of sadness, such as 
argues a profound solicitude together with a baffled endeavor to find that the 
diction employed expresses any meaning whatever. In this bewilderment Mr. Wells, 
I regret to say, is not alone. The difficulty has been noted also by others, and 
to meet it is a good part of the purpose of what has been said above.
But, while he finds the terminology, clever, Mr. Cummings deprecates the resort 
to terms which, in their current use, convey an attitude of approval or 
disapproval on the part of those who use them. This, of course, comes to a 
deprecation of the use of everyday words in their everyday meaning. In their 
discourse and in their thinking, men constantly and necessarily take an attitude 
of approval or disapproval toward the institutional facts of which they speak, 
for it is through such everyday approval or disapproval that any feature of the 
institutional structure is upheld or altered. It is only to be regretted that a 
trained scientist should be unable to view these categories of popular thought 
in a dispassionate light, for these categories, with all the moral force with 
which they are charged, designate the motive force of cultural development, and 
to forego their use in a genetic handling of this development means avoidance of 
the substantial facts with which the discussion is concerned. A scientist 
inquiring into cultural growth, and an evolutionist particularly, must take 
account of this dynamic content of the categories of popular thought as the most 
important material with which he has to work. Many persons may find it difficult 
to divest themselves of the point of view of morality or policy, from which 
these categories are habitually employed, and to [117] take them up from the 
point of view of the scientific interest simply. But this difficulty does not 
set the scientific necessity aside. His inability to keep the cultural value and 
the moral content of these categories apart may reflect credit upon the state of 
such a person's sentiments, but it detracts from his scientific competence.
If the free use of unsophisticated vulgar concepts, with whatever content of 
prejudice and sentiment they may carry, is proscribed, the alternative is a 
resort to analogies and other figures of speech, such as have long afflicted 
economics and have given that science its reputed character of sterility. In 
extenuation of my fault, therefore, if such it must be, it should be said that 
if one would avoid paralogistic figures of speech in the analysis of 
institutions, one must resort to words and concepts that express the thoughts of 
the men whose habits of thought constitute the institutions in question.
THORSTEIN VEBLEN

NOTES:
1) Journal of Political Economy, September 1899.
2) GELETT BURGESS, The Purple Cow (San Francisco, 1898).
3) Yale Review, August 1899, p. 218.
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