telephone bonds held by
savings banks and savings
departments of trust companies
$267,795,636

Savings bank deposits $1,022,342,583

Money is pouring into savings banks at the rate of $275,000 each
working day.

Comment on these figures is unnecessary. There is, of course, some
reduplication, but in these four public service enterprises there are in
Massachusetts almost twice as many direct owners as there are employees.
Two persons out of three have money in the savings bank--men, women, and
children. There is this additional fact: more than one quarter of the
stupendous sum of over a billion dollars of the savings of nearly two
and a half million savings depositors is invested in railroad, street
railway, and telephone securities.

With these examples in mind it would appear that our problem of economic
justice in Massachusetts, where we live and for which alone we can
legislate, is not quite so simple as assuming that we can take from one
class and give to another class. We are reaching and maintaining the
position in this Commonwealth where the property class and the employed
class are not separate, but identical. There is a relationship of
interdependence which makes their interests the same in the long run.
Most of us earn our livelihood through some form of employment. More and
more of our people are in possession of some part of the wages of
yesterday, and so are investors. This is the ideal economic condition.

The great aim of our Government is to protect the weak--to aid them to
become strong. Massachusetts is an industrial State. If her people
prosper, it must be by that means in some of its broad avenues. How can
our people be made strong? Only as they draw their strength from our
industries. How can they do that? Only by building up our industries and
making them strong. This is fundamental. It is the place to begin. These
are the instruments of all our achievement. When they fail, all fails.
When they prosper, all prosper. Workmen's compensation, hours and
conditions of labor are cold, consolations, if there be no employment.
And employment can be had only if some one finds it profitable. The
greater the profit, the greater the wages.

This is one of the economic lessons of the war. It should be remembered
now when taxes are to be laid, and in the period of readjustment. Taxes
must be measured by the ability to meet them out of surplus income.
Industry must expand o