The whole round world is gradually becoming economically literate and
self-reliant, because sound ideas of economic foresight are everywhere
being spread. The U. S. Ambassador to Spain reports, for instance, that
the “mañana” spirit (“put it off until tomorrow”), which has been one
of the time-honored economic hindrances in Spain and Spanish-American
territory, is now disappearing.
The principle of saving is pre-human; it is a biologic inheritance
from our ancestry, for a squirrel, an ant and bee are models of saving
wisdom. A human being, with his greater brain capacity and richer
store of folk-lore and racial memory, should be the most invariably
forehanded of all the creatures of earth. He is not, however. Economic
literacy has not been present, and is not today present, in many,
many millions of people. They display a laxity and a blindness to the
hard facts of the struggle for existence which no one of many lower
creatures than man ever displays. The possession of a human brain has
not seemed to lift such humans up to the coordinative previsioning
level of adjustment to environment which is displayed even by some of
the very lowest order of living things. Even a jelly fish is a primeval
kind of savings bank.
But world-wide concentration on economic well-being, world-wide
inter-communication of ideas, and consequent increase in variety of
desires, are now beginning to tell, even in countries in the Orient
where religious and philosophic ideas have repressed the economic urge
toward accumulation. The deeper economic class-consciousness of labor
everywhere has been another vital factor, particularly in America,
where labor concentrates more on economic welfare than on political
action.
In America, however, the ordinary man’s concentration on his financial
welfare has as a rule been mainly toward _earning_ more and
_spending_ more, rather than on _saving more_. Individual for
individual, the French peasant is a far more _saving_ person than
the American farmer, for the typical American farmer usually puts his
profits into additional equipment, more land, more education for his
children, more comforts for his family. The result is that he is rather
habitually in an inflated financial condition, and has not the cash or
security accumulations of the French peasant.
The American workman, too, has been increasing his standards of living
as fast as his earning power has risen, and since 1925 has been drawing
close to inflation also, through the dubious device of the instalment
plan. At the same time, it is true that he has never had more money in
the savings bank nor more investments and insurance in force. He is
saving more, but by no means in sound proportion to his earning power.
In view, therefore, of the incontrovertible facts uncovered by
insurance companies, that the great majority of men at 65 years of age
are dependents, it seems that one of the great needs of the century in
America is that the idea and the precise methods of systematic saving
be spread broadcast and thus become more universally practiced. All
the more imperative does this need become in view of the additional
fact that we are rapidly lengthening the average span of life. In the
year 1500 the average man had an expectation of only 25 years to live.
This seems incredible, until you know how men lived in those days even
in London--in huts with earthen floors covered with filthy rushes;
eating bark, peas, and roots, and possessing neither cotton nor woolen
clothing, only ragged dirty leather, never removed, and mere straw
whisps tied to the body if poor. As late as 1880 the expectation of
life in America was 45 years. Today it has risen to 58, and is still
rising. Consequently we have more years of old age to provide for than
even our grandfathers and fathers. This is an extremely, important
consideration. So is the fact of our constantly rising standard
of living, which makes yesterday’s plenty seem scanty tomorrow;
yesterday’s adequate saving tomorrow’s inadequate provision. So also is
the increasing delay before young men and women become earners and can
marry; so also the increased demands of modern life for educating the
young--demands which drain the parental purse in a manner not known in
former generations.
Saving, as an economic science for the individual, is thus looming as
particularly important for every person, young or old, male or female.
The modern economic independence of woman has made saving woman’s
problem as well as man’s. The subject is one which should be studied
even by young people, and in fact should be taught in schools. It has
a far more potent relation to individual and marital happiness and
general social well-being than it is generally credited with in a land
where lavishness and free spending are the order of the day, and where
there prevails a timid fear of being regarded as “tight.”
In a significant manner this is illustrated by the fun poked at
President Coolidge for his thrift, which, derived from an older and
sterner Yankee standard, is now a somewhat neglected and half-despised
virtue.
To summarize, there are seven powerful modern reasons for training for
saving:
(1) The acquirement of personal dignity, welfare and
self-respect in an economic world.
(2) The ability to marry and start a family without
delay at the mating period.
(3) The ability to attain the special security and
satisfaction of an owned home.
(4) The ability to fund the adequate education of
children to enable them to meet the competition of
modern life.
(5) The ability to engage in business or other
enterprise which fits one’s faculties and
ambitions.
(6) The ability to provide for the exigencies of our
lengthened old age.
(7) The ability to bequeath, at death, to those
dependent on us.