This article focuses on Frédéric Le Play's study of the consumption of wealth. The making of wealth has been studied as an activity in itself without reference to its end or object. It is true that in certain divisions of the subject, and especially at an early stage of the young student's career, moral considerations must be set aside, as likely to confuse the impartial discussion of financial and commercial relations. Le Play attempted for the first time to work out the technique of the detailed study of expenditure or the consumption of goods. His familiarity with managers of mines and iron foundries forced him to consider a subject whose importance is slowly coming to be recognised. He distinguished three main types of engagements; forced, voluntary and permanent, and momentanes which can be translated to temporary or casual. His conception of social reform was the reinstitution of social authority, alike in the family, in industry and in the state. With the desire of modern democracy for equality and liberty he had no sort of sympathy, and for the evils of modern industrialism he had no remedy to save the establishment on a firmer basis of patronage or a permanent relation of wise and protective tutelage between master and workman.
