ther than exert himself to work with this in view, on the one
hand, and to abstain from unnecessary consumption, on the other hand,
the ordinary man will make to himself every excuse. He will contemn
money-making as a sordid aim, readily exaggerating itself into a vice;
he will dwell upon the obligations and other considerations of a
higher life, this being defined as something generous and noble, a
something compared with which money-making cannot be regarded as a
worthy object but must be included in the class of unpleasant
necessities, not to say indecencies, which ought to be relegated to
the background of life; he will summon up pictures of extreme poverty,
where any money received must be expended forthwith to meet urgent
needs, as justifying that which in his case is the gratification of
shiftless indulgence. Above all, this typical individual will not
accept and act upon the idea that his affairs, his small income and
expenditure, have any bearing upon the prosperity and progress of his
country. The most he will keep before him is that he should pay his
bills, and perhaps in some few cases, will extend the notion to the
future to include provision for the bills and possible emergencies
then to be met by himself and his family. Nor is this improvident
attitude confined to the young, to the professional and the other
non-business classes. In the business world we see it all around us;
among those who "work for a living," among clerks and employees and
among the so-called laboring classes it appears to be the normal
attitude. People who work for salaries or wages seem characteristically
to use up all their earnings in their current expenditure, to live up
to their incomes without any serious attempt to save. If they pride
themselves upon trying to keep out of debt, it is as much as they
expect of themselves, and among them the man who attempts to go beyond
this in his money affairs is certainly the exception.

One of the effects of a world-wide war is an enormously increased
demand for labor at high and advancing wages, a condition that we
might suppose would be greatly to the advantage of the laborer. But
that will depend upon his own attitude and policy. From England, and
from American towns here and there, we hear stories of the wage-earner
on whom increasing income has had the effect of lessening the effort
to work; who stops during the week when the higher wage scale has paid
him the amount he is accustomed to