ble "dirt-diseases" and poverty. Rats, weeds,
extravagance, general shiftlessness are still doing business at the
old stand, unmolested.

But it is working in on us that something must be done. Now is the
time to set in force certain agencies to make good these losses in so
far as they can be repaired. Now is the time, when the excitement of
the war is still on us, when the frenzy is still in our blood, for the
time of reaction is surely to be reckoned with by and by. Now we are
sustained by the blare of the bands and the flourish of flags, but in
the cold, gray dawn of the morning after, we shall count our dead with
disillusioned eyes and wonder what was the use of all this bloodshed
and waste. Trade conditions are largely a matter of the condition of
the spirit, and ours will be drooping and drab when the tumult and
the shouting have died and the reign of reason has come back.

Personal thrift comes naturally to our minds when we begin to think of
the lessons that we should take to heart. Up to the time of the war
and since, we have been a prodigal people, confusing extravagance with
generosity, thrift with meanness. The Indians in the old days killed
off the buffalo for the sport of killing, and left the carcases to
rot, never thinking of a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the
North Country kill the caribou for the sake of their tongues, which
are considered a real "company dish," letting the remainder of the
animal go to waste.

This is a startling thought, and comes to one over and over again. You
will think of it when you order your twenty-five cents' worth of
cooked ham and see what you get! You will think of it again when you
come home and find that the butcher delivered your twenty-five cents'
worth of cooked ham in your absence, and, finding the door locked,
passed it through the keyhole. And yet the prodigality of the Indian
and the caribou-killer are infantile compared with the big
extravagances that go on without much comment. Economy is a broad term
used to express the many ways in which other people might save money.
Members of Parliament have been known to tell many ways in which women
might economize; their tender hearts are cut to the quick as they
notice the fancy footwear and expensive millinery worn by women. Great
economy meetings have been held in London, to which the Cabinet
Ministers rode in expensive cars, and where they drank champagne,
enjoining women to abjure the use of veils an