t this capital saving be adjusted to the abilities of
the community in which it is to be used. The building of an enormous
factory, where skill has yet to be developed and where a market is
wanting, would be the height of imprudence. Such waste is sometimes seen
under the false stimulant of a bounty or a restrictive tariff. Just so,
great public improvements upon rivers, harbors and highways are a part of
economy and prudent investment of wealth only when a community is able to
use them to advantage. The test of prudence in capital saving is in its
nice adjustment to the abilities of the users.

_Prudent adjustment of capital._--A still further adjustment is required by
prudence between the capital put into fixed forms and the circulating
capital needed for best use of the more lasting machinery. A farmer is
said to be stock poor when he overloads his farm or crowds his farm
buildings with growing stock. Having all his capital in stock, he is
unable to handle it to advantage, and must readjust his capital in live
stock to his capital in the farm and machinery by selling some of his
stock and adding to the value of his farm. On the other hand, many a
farmer is land poor, where the bulk of his capital is invested in land,
while he cannot command circulating capital in stock and wages sufficient
to make the land useful. He needs, in the spirit of prudence, to sell some
of his land for the sake of current funds to invest in live stock and in
labor. The same principle applies to all investments of capital. A
railroad may so exhaust the funds of the community in building it that it
cannot be fairly manned for work. Sometimes a whole nation invests so
largely in permanent forms of capital as to bring distress and poverty
from want of means to use the great machine.

Prudence also requires a further adjustment between the amount of labor
directly producing wealth and that employed in what may be called the arts
of consumption, contributing directly to personal comfort and enjoyment.
The neatness of a farmer's yard, outbuildings, fences and machinery is a
part of his welfare. It also indicates a certain thrift, which enhances
the value of the farm. But it is a proper sign of such thrift when it
grows naturally out of the productive energy employed upon the crops and
the stock. The wealth used in maintaining this neatness is not wasted, but
it will not reproduce itself. It must be supplied from other sources in
direct production.