y
antidote is to restore the capital, a movement that would doubtless
occur anyway in time but which could be greatly accelerated through a
general adoption of habits of thrift and saving throughout a
community.

This then, though small, is something definite that we can contribute
to the material advancement of mankind and, like the duty in this
connection to our nation, to our families and ourselves, it consists
in creating capital; that is, earning as much as we can and, in any
event, even if our earnings are fixed, managing the income thriftily,
and carrying forward as large a net result as possible.

We turn now from the mass of mankind, on the whole so singularly
neglectful of these responsibilities, to the few in number who
constitute the creators of capital, to whom are due so much of the
comforts, the conveniences, and the material advantages that go to
make civilized life possible. Now these few are found in every rank in
life. They may be rich or poor, professional or business men, employer
or employee, old or young, male or female. The characteristic is their
habit of thrift, of definitely adopting money-making as an aim, of
spending less than they earn. It is astonishing what a small
percentage of mankind they are. The Income Tax returns in the United
States for 1916 showed that out of a population of 104,000,000 people
those with taxable incomes aggregated only 336,652, about one in three
hundred. But whatever be the rank of the individual practicing this
thrift he is headed in the right direction and he tends to reach the
point of relative competence, of independence in his pecuniary
affairs.

Preeminent in the class of the thrifty we think of the man of affairs;
the business enterprise indeed is supposed to be the money-maker, _par
excellence_. Money-making is in fact considered as its _raison d'etre_;
it is as a money-maker that the business man is contemned by some and
envied by many.

Now money-making and money values occupy a special place in business
enterprise, due to the fact that on economic principles such money
value becomes the best test--perhaps the only true test--of the
workableness and success of business efforts. In the complicated
activities of the world's work, where each man, each undertaking, each
business unit, respectively, is striving primarily for its own
advantage, how is it, among all this pulling and pushing, this
competition, that the social income is distributed so near