Abstract
How to restrain desire for increased consumption in a nation caught somewhere between affluence and an awareness of limits: this perennial issue has once again emerged in public debate. Those struggling to make ends meet must face the possibility that economic growth is not inevitable and that, even if it were, it might not solve problems as readily as once assumed. But what is at stake transcends household budgets and raises basic social, political, and moral questions.1 The concern about the tension between discipline in production and abandon in consumption has troubled Americans from the beginning of our history.2 In the middle and late nineteenth century, conservative moralists set the terms of the debate over the relation between consumption and morality. They believed that moral exhortation and strong character, rather than changes in economic and social institutions, would solve the problems brought on by economic growth. Though rich and poor proved somewhat impervious to their admonitions, conservative moralists, through their control of publications,
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