Samuel Johnson on consumer demand, status, and positional goods

Abstract

Samuel Johnson's ideas on consumer behaviour reflect his interest in the psychology of pleasure, in a society where middling groups were seeking to assert and enhance their standing. ‘[D]esires which arise from the comparison of our condition with that of others’, and desire for novel items of consumption are central elements in Johnson's thought. Advertising, sales of complementary goods, and the activity of collecting, provide examples and special cases. Johnson was aware of some key aspects of the concept of a positional good. ‘Owning a private island’ is identified as an important example of a positional good for Johnson.

Keywords:

• Samuel Johnson
• consumer demand
• status
• positional goods
• islands

Notes

*I wish to thank the following for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper or on related preliminary work: Maxine Berg, Stephen Broadberry, Keith Cowling, Nicholas Crafts, Francesco Galassi, Isobel Grundy, Aydin Hayri, Ben Knight, Dennis Leech, Andrew Oswald, Stephen Rosevear, Jeffery Round, Bryan Sadler, Carl Slevin, Michael Waterson and Donald Winch. I also greatly appreciate the advice and comments of the anonymous referees. A version of the paper was first submitted to this journal when I was a lecturer in economics at the University of Warwick. I am grateful to the Department of Economics for support and encouragement. All errors are mine.

Dictionary Johnson, S. (1978) [1773]. A Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, with an Introduction by J. L. Clifford. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. First edition published in 1755.

EPS Smith, A. (1980). Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce, with Dugald Stewart's Account of Adam Smith, edited by I. S. Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fable Mandeville, B. (1988) [1729, 1732]. The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, edited by F. B. Kaye. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (photographic reproduction of 1924 Oxford University Press edition). First edition published in 1714.

Journey Johnson, S. (1984) [1775]. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, edited by P. Levi, together with Tour, in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, The Penguin English Library.

Letters Johnson, S. (1992) [1773 – 6]. The Letters of Samuel Johnson, volume II, edited by B. Redford. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Life Boswell, J. (1998) [1791]. Life of Johnson, edited by R. W. Chapman, introduced by P. Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford World's Classics.

LJA, LJB Smith, A. (1978) [1762-3, 1766]. Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (photographic reproduction of 1978 Oxford University Press edition). LJA denotes Report of 1762 – 3 and LJB the Report dated 1766.

LRBL Smith, A. (1983) [1963]. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by J. C. Bryce. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rasselas Johnson, S. (1984) [1759]. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. In D. Greene (ed.), Samuel Johnson (The Oxford Authors), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

TMS Smith, A. (1982) [1759]. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (photographic reproduction of 1976 Oxford University Press edition).

Tour Boswell, J. (1984) [1786]. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (3rd edition), edited by P. Levi together with Journey, in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, The Penguin English Library.

Tour* Boswell, J. (1963) [1773]. Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., edited by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett. London: Heinemann in collaboration with Yale University.

WN Smith, A. (1976) [1776]. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (photographic reproduction of 1976 Oxford University Press edition).

YW The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. The volume number is indicated by a Roman numeral. The abbreviations, Rambler, Idler and Adventurer omit the definite article.

Abbreviated book titles such as Life and Journey are used throughout and are listed at the end of the paper. Clyde Dankert has pointed to parts of Johnson's writing that suggest Veblen's notion of ‘conspicuous consumption’ (1970: 65). On Adam Smith and Veblen see EPS: 174, 184.

Among the publications by literary scholars that were consulted, the book by Isobel Grundy has been a strong influence on the present paper (Grundy 1986).

Johnson had no formal medical training, but his description and analysis of the insanity of the fictional astronomer in Rasselas was of some importance in the development of psychiatric ideas (Wiltshire 1991: 165 – 94). Johnson also had strong interests in science (Schwartz 1971). Six case studies of the impact of medical knowledge and experience on the economic analysis of medically trained political economists are discussed in Peter Groenewegen (ed. 2001).

Hudson recognizes that ‘Johnson clearly tended towards the conservative branch of middle-class opinion’ and became a ‘social conservative’ in the 1760s (2002: 33, 46). He notes a change in Johnson's attitudes towards the emerging middle class at the end of the 1750s (2002: 46).

Adam Smith joined the Club in 1775 but he and Johnson did not get on well together (Campbell and Skinner 1982: 154 – 7). Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet (1999) analyse novelty and ingenuity as sources of pleasure from consumption in the thought of Smith and Reynolds.

I am grateful to Amiya Bhushan Sharma for permission to refer to, and quote from her PhD thesis (Sharma 1983).

Terence Hutchison devotes a long footnote to Johnson and explains why his opinions on wages and unemployment are ‘of some interest’ (1988: 402 – 3). William Cunningham, in his entry on Samuel Johnson in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, states that ‘he may be regarded on the whole as putting forth the views of the ordinary educated Englishmen of the time preceding the publication of The Wealth of Nations’ (1917: 485).

The link between accurate description and analysis has been identified as a major theme of Journey (Schwartz 1971: 74).

Of course, it is Mandeville's concern in Remark (G.) to argue that good results may flow from bad causes. On Mandeville's economics see De Marchi (2001), and on Mandeville's influence on Johnson see Winch (1996: 59 – 60) and Sharma (1983: 216 – 27).

It has rightly been remarked that ‘we are very lucky that while Johnson was observing Scotland, Boswell was observing Johnson’ (Levi 1984: 13). The fuller exposition of Johnson's opinions on economic matters is sometimes that of Boswell. However, Boswell in Tour and Life does not emphasize Johnson's long and close friendships with medical practitioners (Wiltshire 1991: 1), nor does he provide a full record of Johnson's connections with the business world (Mathias 1979: 296). Moreover, Boswell exaggerated Johnson's identifying with the aristocracy (Hudson 2002: 43).

Strictly, Boswell's question was broader. He was concerned with ‘how little they [the army officers] got for it [their service], even of fame.’ Johnson's reply focuses on monetary value and remuneration.

Samuel Hollander interprets the ‘paradox’ as a statement of fact for Smith and not a problem to be solved (1975: 317).

Weintraub (1978) notes the affinity of Keynes's notion of ‘animal spirits’ with Johnson's view of the sanguine state of mind which induces the undertaking of projects involving great effort for uncertain future returns. Johnson discusses the optimism of youth in Rambler No. 196 (1969 [1752], YW V: 257 – 61) and Rambler No. 127 (1969 [1751], YW IV: 313). His normative theory (embedded in advice to avoid affectation) is that ‘Everything future is to be estimated by a wise man, in proportion to the probability of attaining it, and its value when attained’ (Rambler No. 20, (1969) [1750], YW III: 114), but his positive characterization of our behaviour under uncertainty is that it is optimistic for much of our lives.

I thank Donald Winch for some observations on Smith and Johnson in his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

The importance of Locke as a source of quotations for Dictionary, many of them relating to economics, has been demonstrated by Middendorf (1960: 71) and by Wimsatt, Jr. (1968 [1948]:96). Adam Smith's 1755 review of Dictionary criticizes the lack of emphasis on grammatical taxonomy but makes no criticism or mention of the meanings Johnson provides for economics terms (EPS: 232 – 41). Johnson's views on pure diction led to his concentrating on pre-Restoration authors in illustrative quotations in Dictionary (Womersley 2003: xvi, xxxiii).

The principle that ‘a thing is valued according to its rarity’ also provides Johnson with an economics joke. Having remarked on several occasions to Boswell about the paucity of trees in Scotland relative to England, when he loses his great walking stick on Mull (Tour: 356), he fears it has been stolen and will not be returned: ‘Consider, sir, the value of such a piece of timber here!’. However Johnson did have serious and well-considered views on forestry as Sharma shows (1983: 183 – 7).

A longer passage including this statement by Johnson is also quoted by John Craig who suggests that it contains the idea of supply and demand and long-run equilibrium (1998: 12). John Middendorf refers to ‘his [Johnson's] belief in the law of supply and demand as developed by men like Petty and Locke’ (1960: 80). Karen Iverson Vaughn shows that Locke's theory of price is not accurately described as early supply and demand theory (1980: 25 – 31). See also Patrick Hyde Kelly (1991: 79 – 86). On Petty and others see Tony Aspromourgos (1996: 157 – 60).

Comparison with others also gives rise to avarice, vanity, ambition, envy, and love of fame, the last being the main topic discussed in Rambler No. 49.

Here and elsewhere by ‘wants’ Johnson almost certainly means ‘deficiencies’ or ‘lacks’. See Green (1984: xxxii).

Barbon distinguishes between natural wares ‘which are sold as Nature Produceth them’ and artificial wares ‘which by Art are Changed into another Form than Nature gave them’ (1690: 2). All Barbon page references are to the e-version at http://www.ecn.bris.ac.uk/het/barbon/trade.txt

Adam Ferguson remarked in similar vein that ‘No measure of fortune, or degree of skill, is found to diminish the supposed necessities of human life; refinement and plenty foster new desires, while they furnish the means, or practise the methods, to gratify them’ (1995 [1767]: 205). Some interesting comparisons of Johnson's Journey (1775) with Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) are made by Rogers (1995: 218 – 9).

Rambler No. 80 states that it is the ‘insatiable demand of new gratifications, which seems particularly to characterize the nature of man’ (1969 [1750], YW IV: 56).

Pathological cases can arise, like that of Bob Cornice, imprisoned for debt because the ‘charms of novelty’ and the suggestion of others led to endless expenditures on home decoration (Adventurer No. 53, (1963) [1753], YW II: 369 – 70). Consumption desires can become personally damaging if unregulated (Middendorf 1965: 55, Wiltshire 1991: 144).

Maxine Berg (2002) describes the product and related process innovation that led to the creation of new, distinctive, domestically produced goods, alternatives to earlier imported luxuries and appealing to wider markets.

Johnson may have read about the division of labour in the work of Petty or Mandeville. On Petty and the division of labour see Aspromourgos (1996: 36 – 41). Specialisation for Mandeville reflects variety of desires (De Marchi 2001: 86), as it does for Johnson.

The following quotation from Rambler No. 183 heads Isobel Grundy's chapter on ‘Competition’ (1986: 102 – 19). The modern economics literature on happiness finds relative standing to be important. (See Andrew Clark and Andrew Oswald 1996 and Richard Easterlin 1973; 1995; 2001). Note also the importance of the pursuit of happiness as a theme in Johnson's work (Bate 1984: 301, 337 – 40; Potkay: 61 – 75). Easterlin prefaces this 2001 paper with a quotation from Johnson (2001: 405).

See Hudson (2002: 34 – 5) on the negative impact of articles by Chesterfield concerning the Dictionary. Advertising constituted more than 17 per cent of the total expenses (paper, printing and advertising) of 1500 copies of the collected Idler published in 1760 (Kernan 1987: 68). A rough estimate of the advertising/sales ratio is around 5% in this instance.

This is also quoted in part by Bate who demonstrates the importance of envy as a theme in Johnson's writing (1961: 103-10; 1984: 308 – 10). See also Grundy on ‘pleasure in defeat of rivals’ (1986: 110).

Johnson gave Hester Maria (Queeney) Thrale a gift of a curio cabinet for natural specimens (Hyde 1977: 49, 51, 290).

See Brewer, J. (1997: 615 – 61) on eighteenth-century views concerning the shaping and refinement of nature by human improvers. See also the entry on ‘gardening’ in The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia (Rogers 1996: 154).

This statement on the supply of suitable islands was not, of course, made by Johnson. Improvements in transport and other technologies, since Johnson's time, have increased the proportion of the world's islands that can be considered by wealthy individuals for purchase as a positional good (see also Hirsch 1977: 34).

Samuel Johnson, Tobias Smollett and David Hume were the only three literary men to be admitted to Oliver Goldsmith's allegorical ‘stagecoach of fame’ (Potkay 2000: 114). Such admittance, it may be remarked, is also a positional good.

Smollett's Matt Bramble thought Loch Lomond could compete with Arcadia, in all but climate (1993, [1771]: 255). Dr Tobias Smollett was born nearby at Dalquhurn, in the parish of Cardross in the Vale of Leven in 1721. His cousin, Commissary Smollett, lived at Cameron House on Loch Lomond and was visited by Johnson and Boswell. Johnson advised Commissary Smollett on a memorial inscription for a monument to Dr Tobias Smollett who had died in 1771 (Tour: 387 – 8). It has been suggested that Johnson had read Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Rogers 1996: 374).

Boswell was struck by the beauty of Inch Kenneth (Fleeman 1985: 234). The previous year Boswell records (21 March 1772) that he had thought about buying St Kilda (Boswell 1960:45-6). His editors, William Wimsatt, Jr. and Frederick Pottle, suggest that the island's ‘remoteness and mystery’ symbolised the purpose of their projected journey.

The following may be mentioned in support: the unconventional nature of his household and his sympathetic treatment of those who lived there, his understanding of poverty and attitudes to the poor, his dependence on London whose citizens' behaviour provided much of his subject matter, his criticism of country retirement, and his personal moderation in consumption (Rogers 1993: 52 – 7; Wiltshire 1997: 209). Smith also was moderate in personal consumption (De Marchi 1999a: 30).