1. Political security and domestic order are essential to the development of saving. As saving results from a comparison of the future with the present, any lack of certainty regarding the future decreases the appeal it makes. Men employ roughly the theory of probabilities in this matter, and count a utility only half as much when there is but one chance in two of enjoying it. In countries where there are constant revolutions and border wars, as in Africa and South America, and in lands where brigandage is common, as in Italy, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, the motive for saving is cut in two. Oppressive and irregular taxation kills the motives of providence, and decreases the appeal made by the future. While the miserable subjects of the state live from hand to mouth, the very sources of the public revenue disappear. Improvidence grows upon such a people into a prevailing national custom; ambition is wanting; industry is the sport of chance; economic order and economic prosperity are impossible.

Political insecurity discourages saving.

Influence of private property on saving.

2. Social institutions that give a motive to the individual are essential to saving. Among these institutions the most important are the family and, closely connected with it, the institution of private property which, in its ideal manifestation, places the responsibility for economic welfare on the individual or the family. Through it the state says to men: "Save if you will; the wealth and its fruits shall be yours. But if you spend and consume all you can, you alone will suffer the consequences." It is true that the institution of private property never is found in an ideal form. Dishonest public officials weaken and defeat its benefits. Every propertyless family marks a failure in its purpose. Private property is a favorite object of attack by social reformers, but it never can be safely abolished in a civilized state until some other incentive is provided, equally effective to make men subordinate present desires to future welfare. Unless the mass of men can be greatly changed, property creates the only motive that can induce saving regularly and on a large scale. It diffuses responsibility for present consumption. It multiplies the motives for abstinence and thus increases the welfare of all economic society)

3. Opportunity for the investment of small savings favors a spirit of abstinence. The institution of small property, peasant proprietorship, worked powerfully in this direction in many parts of Europe, and the same effects have resulted in America from the wide diffusion of property in land. If the decline in the number of small independent farmers has somewhat weakened this influence in America, in other ways other agencies are effectively performing the same functions. Savings-banks, penny banks, building and loan associations, penny-provident funds, and other convenient means of investing small sums, encourage men to reduce their tobacco bills, their candy bills, their saloon bills, and to lay aside for the winter's coal, for the children's education, for houses, for business investments, or for old age. Probably no one thing has given a greater stimulus to saving than has the development of insurance and the endowment policies in connection with it. While the great modern corporations have destroyed many of the small business enterprises into which so much of the saving of the past was put, at the same time the increase of negotiable paper, of loans, and of stock in joint-stock companies, has opened up other large fields for investors.

Safe and paying investments encourage saving.

4. Variations in the rate of discount of the future react upon the spirit of saving in various ways. This very general proposition requires more detailed discussion. In general, a high rate of interest gives a large motive to save, for as the discount on the future is large, so is the reward for, waiting. But this favoring motive may be offset by other unfavorable conditions, and is, in fact, wherever the high rate continues. In countries backward economically, where war, brigandage, and political oppression prevail, the rate of interest is frequently ten and twelve per cent, on the best secured loans. A high interest rate does not of itself insure a high degree of cumulative abstinence; it is only one of several factors. But in a new and favored country like America, a high rate of interest is a strong stimulus to saving. Again, interest may fall while saving continues at the same or a greater pace. Ordinarily a fall from six per cent, to five, giving men a smaller motive for abstinence, would be expected to cause less saving, yet this is not always the case. Custom and example help to fix a habit of saving in individuals and cause them to continue saving at a lower rate of interest. With the growth of wealth, the prevailing ideas as to the amount needed for a competence change, impelling to greater saving. The tendency, however, of a fall in the rate of interest is to weaken, and that of a rise of the rate, other things being equal, is to strengthen the motive to save. But the influence of the interest rate on saving is relative to the character of men.

Changing interest rate in relation to saving.

Saving permits improvement of agents.