I inquired of the proprietor how he accounted for the immense consumption of these articles, without which the world had been getting on comfortably for so many thousand years.
"Why," said he, "we have been fortunate enough to create a new want. Perhaps we did not really create the want, but only discovered that an unsatisfied one existed. It is all the same in either case. Any great convenience, or luxury, heretofore unknown to the public, when fairly set before them is sure to come into general use. It has been so, in my experience, with many things that were not thought of twenty years ago. I have been as much puzzled to account for the unlimited consumption of cuffs and collars as you are to know why so much more clothing is used now than before sewing-machines came into operation. But the increased cheapness of a thing, whether old or new, and the convenience of getting it, are the great stimulants to enlarged consumption,--and as these conditions are present, so will be the latter."
"But when you began this business, did you expect to sell so many?" I inquired.
"We did not," he replied, "and are ourselves surprised at the quantity we sell. Besides, there are several other factories, which produce greater numbers than we do. But when I reflect on the extent to which the business has already gone, I find the facts to be only in keeping with results in other cases. I have thought and read much on the very subject which so greatly interests you. Some years ago I was puzzled to account for the immensely increased circulation of newspapers,--rising, in some instances, from one thousand up to forty thousand. I knew that our population had not grown at one tenth that rate, yet the circulation went on extending. One day I asked a country postmaster how _he_ accounted for it 'Why,' he replied, 'the question is easily answered;--where a man formerly took only one paper, he now takes seven. Cheap postage, and the establishment of news-agents all over the country, enable the people to get papers at less cost and with only half the trouble of twenty years ago. The power of production is complete, and the machinery of distribution has kept pace with it. The people don't actually need the papers any more now than they did then, but the convenience of having them brought to their doors induces them to buy six or seven where they formerly bought only one. That's the way it happens.'"