The disadvantages of durability

There are certain industries which thrive on fragility; lack of durability and liability to breakage are cardinal to their prosperity; readers of Arnold Bennett will remember the play he makes in one book of the huge enjoyment of a pottery town audience, when, at a theatre, crockery smashing was in evidence; but apart from porcelain whose fragility sustains an industry by replacement. large numbers of manufactured articles are meant to enjoy only a transient and brief existence. In only one instance can engineering products be compared with those articles intended for early obsolescence, upon which, if current report be true, certain prosperous businesses are founded; this is in the case of spares whose cost is in many cases ominously high. It is not so much that the original device was ill-made, as that wear having taken place the customer is exploited because he is defenceless.