The relationship between the earnings of a woodcarver and a turner, the criminally low wages paid to the embroideress and the lacemaker are well known.
The ornamentor has to work twenty hours to achieve the income earned by a modern worker in eight.
Ornament generally increases the cost of an article ; nevertheless it happens that an ornamented object whose raw material cost the same and which demonstrably took three times as long to make is offered at half the price of a smooth object.
Omission of ornament results in a reduction in the manufacturing time and an increase in wages.
The Chinese carver works for sixteen hours, the American worker for eight.
If I pay as much for a smooth cigarette cast as for an ornamented one, the difference in the working time belongs to the worker.
And if there were no ornament at all - a situation that may perhaps come about in some thousands of years-man would only have to work four hours instead of eight, because half of the work done today is devoted to ornament.
Ornament is wasted labour power and hence wasted health.
It has always been so.