These latter classes have long since left all question of material comfort behind in their accepted standards of living and in the continued advance of these standards.

For these classes who are often spoken of euphemistically as being "in easy circumstances," it is altogether a question of a standard of reputable expenditure, to be observed on pain of lost self-respect and of lost reputation at large.

As has been remarked in an earlier passage, wants of this kind are indefinitely extensible.

So that some doubt may well be entertained as to whether the higher productive efficiency spoken of will necessarily make the way of life easier, in view of this need of a higher standard of expenditure, even when due account is taken of the many economies which the new dispensation is expected to make practicable.
One of the effects to be looked for would apparently be an increased pressure on the part of aspiring men to get into some line of business enterprise; since it is only in business, as contrasted with the industrial occupations, that anyone can hope to find the relatively large income required for such an expensive manner of life as will bring any degree of content to aspirants for pecuniary good repute.

So it should follow that the number of businessmen and business concerns would increase up to the limit of what the traffic could support, and that the competition between these rival, and in a sense over-numerous, concerns would push the costs of competition to the like limit.