rom the standpoint of the community nothing else than a rise in the
average standard of current consumption can stimulate industry. When
it is clearly grasped that a demand for commodities is the only demand
for the use of labour and of capital, and not merely determines in
what particular direction these requisites of production shall be
applied, the hope of the future of our industry is seen to rest
largely upon the confident belief that the working classes will use
their higher wages not to draw interest from investments (a
self-destructive policy) but to raise their standard of life by the
current satisfaction of all those wholesome desires of body and mind
which lie latent under an "economy of low wages." The satisfaction of
new good human desires, by endowing life with more hope and interest,
will render all intelligent exertion more effective, by distributing
demand over a larger variety of commodities will give a fuller
utilisation both of natural and human resources, and by redressing the
dislocated balance of production and consumption due to inequality of
purchasing power, will justify high wages by increased fulness and
regularity of work. But it must be clearly recognised that however
desirable "saving" may seem to be as a moral virtue of the working
classes, any large practice of saving undertaken before and in
preference to an elevation of current consumption, will necessarily
cancel the economic advantages just dwelt upon. Just as the wise
individual will see he cannot afford to "save" until he has made full
provision for the maintenance of his family in full physical
efficiency, so the wise working class will insist upon utilising
earlier accesses of wages in promoting the physical and intellectual
efficiency of themselves and their families before they endeavour to
"invest" any considerable portion of their increased wages. Mr. Gould
puts this point very plainly and convincingly: "Where economic gains
are small, savings mean a relatively low plane of social existence. A
parsimonious people are never progressive, neither are they, as a
rule, industrially efficient. It is the man with many wants--not
luxurious fancies, but real legitimate wants--who works hard to
satisfy his aspirations, and he it is who is worth hiring. Let
economists still teach the utility and the necessity of saving, but
let the sociologist as firmly insist that to so far practise economy
as to prevent in the nineteenth century a corr