Spending money for foolish objects is never justified by saying that it makes work for milliners and dressmakers. For if there were no extravagant hats the milliners who build them would be engaged in more useful work, and the money spent on feathers would go into other channels. It is a question whether one man shall own a costly luxury or whether many persons shall have more of the necessities of life.

Of course if you buy a hat ten times more expensive than is necessary you are creating employment. But it is far better to create employment for useful purposes. It is far better for a country to spend money for wheat and iron ore and lumber than it is for the newest styles. What we want to do is to increase the necessities and comforts of life, not the foolish luxuries.

A so-called philosopher once said: "If the rich do not spend, the poor die of hunger.'" This fallacy was back of conditions that brought on the French Revolution. Saving is spending, but it is for the future rather than for the present. It causes the production of permanent goods usually rather than the mere satisfaction of transient and temporary pleasures. The trouble is that people confuse money with what is back of it. They see that spending increases trade, but fail to see that investing money increases trade just as much.

People talk as if the great thing were to make work, anything to make work for somebody. But work itself is a means, not an end. Work is a means to gratify legitimate wants, desires. The aim of mankind, materially speaking, is to expand the proper desires and gratify them. But you can't gratify desires unless there is capital for further production of goods, and there is no capital without saving. It is impossible to replace worn-out machines, to keep railroads efficient, to restore losses, without saving.

Just carry the idea that spending money is better than saving it to a logical conclusion. Suppose everybody spent money for pleasures. Then there would be no capital for the building of factories, railroads, mines and farms. There would be nothing to eat. Suppose on the other hand everybody saved money and put it into the bank or took pains that it went only into necessities and comforts. There would be no theaters, no fancy clothes, no candy, gum or luxuries of any kind. That would be a hard life indeed. But there would be plenty to eat and wear. At least we could live, and there would be more food for the poor. In the other case there would be nothing to live on at all. Both logical extremes are absurd, but they show the fallacy of the spending for luxury argument.

Perhaps you never stopped to realize that every time you deposit a dollar in a bank or invest it in some legitimate and useful enterprise you not only help some one to get and keep a job, but a useful job. Every dollar you bank or invest provides work for somebody.

May not a thorough grasp of this elementary but vital fact stimulate some incapable of being induced to economize by purely selfish arguments? The moment you deposit money in the savings-bank you become an employer. You attain a new dignity. You become a factor in the economic life of the country. You help to make the wheels of progress revolve. You are no longer a nonentity. You are somebody. You are an investor. Your income, moreover, is not confined to the labor of your hands or your head. Your money is working for you.

Of course banks lend their deposits out to business men to use. It is in this way that the smallest depositor becomes a capitalist, whether he realizes it or not.

Either through the savings-bank or by direct investment a very considerable part of the savings of the thrifty goes into railroads, manufacturing companies, or real-estate mortgages, thus becoming a great factor in commercial activity and the building of homes and cities. Under present conditions it is the possibility of accumulating money that lures men on to strenuous endeavor. It is this possibility that leads men to search out new inventions and discoveries, that makes for material progress. No other stimulus to labor and efficiency has ever been more powerful. We have no other tried means to serve as incentives to produce the masses of capital - the tools, the machines, the ships, the railways, the buildings - essential to modern life. We have no other tried means to bring this about, I say, except the effort needed to save money.

Then, too, the possibility of accumulating money makes for law and order. In Oriental despotisms and certain Spanish-American "republics" we find a few despots supported by the toil of a beggared populace. People as a whole have no opportunities to save money and there is a never ending cycle of riot and bloodshed with the countries hundreds of years behind the times, morally and politically. Whereas nations which have contributed most to the world's progress of the last four hundred years have been those in which there existed a strong, virile middle class able to accumulate property. "The propertied man is seldom an enemy of law and order," says Doctor Willford I. King. "He does not favor revolution, for he has something to lose. True, he may be too conservative, but history does not show that those nations have advanced most in which revolution has been most frequent. The nations most free from internal strife and bloodshed are those in which a large fraction of the people have possessed some considerable property."