Three Essentials To Enduring Prosperity

As food, clothing, and shelter were once the three essentials of the primitive community, so fuel, transportation, and the direction of credit have now become the three essentials of the modern city and nation. The groups that control the fuel, transportation, and credit facilities of a city control the people. To these three there might also be added the news function, as the control of the news is also a very important feature in modern life. Still New York could get on without any newspapers. But the people of New York would freeze or starve to death within a short time without fuel, transportation, and the credit necessary to get the commodities from their sources to New York City. These three forces must be absolutely free to act and react in accordance with narural law for the benefit of all groups and without showing partiality to capital or labor. As these three great factors of civilization are allowed to function naturally, we have prosperity; but when any one of them is gummed up (by capital in the form of trusts or by the wage workers in the form of unions) then there is depression and unemployment.

Let me say just a word about this direction of credit. Business men are not especially interested in the bank statistics that are published now from week to week. It is interesting to know the condition of loans and deposits, but as a rule they both go up and down together. Even the bank reserve itself must be kept within certain limits. The interesting figures would be those showing whether the banks are loaning their money for producing goods or for storing goods; whether the banks are loaning money to the farmer and the manufacturer or to the speculator and the merchant. The need for enduring prosperity is more long term investments in the form of better railroads, better highways, better homes, and more of all these things. Yet the bankers - owing to our laws supposing to protect the depositor - prefer commercial paper which is put out in the interests of the speculator and middleman. They refuse long term paper which is issued in the interests of those who are truly developing the country along permanent worth while lines. This is a great mistake.

Let us not make the mistake that although conditions are fundamentally sound we can make prosperity endure by mere thinking that everything is all right. The optimistic sales manager who simply says, "Think business is good and it will be good," is as far wrong as the pessimistic purchasing agent who thinks that the country is going to the bow-wows. Although the difficulty to-day is spiritual or psychological, something more is needed than simply a change in our thinking. There must be a change in our motives. The wage worker and the employer to-day, like that shrewd business man of Jerusalem to whom Jesus talked 2,000 years ago, need to be "born again." Both must change their point of view toward life and have new and better motives. Then we shall have more enduring prosperity. Moreover, the more enduring our prosperity, the more enduring will be our investments.