| Show THE REAL BENEFACTOR The benefactor of the working classes is the man who saves his money instead of spending it By the term saves we mean that the owner invests his money or places it in a bank where others invest it in some industry Money that is saved is the fund from which wages are paid If there were no saving no selfdenial by those who possess pos-sess the means of acquiring wealth there would be no wages paid to others not so fortunate It is a common and very natural error for working men to condemn a stingy n capitalist and to praise a rich spendthrift on the supposition that the latter makes times good by squandering his money putting put-ting it into circulation they call itwhile the former is supposed to be a sort of cause of hard times by not spending money Now the fact is the exact reverse of this supposition The man who saves is the benefactor the man who spends is the one who injures the wage earner and society in general Money saved or invested in almost any form is really at work and at work in wagepaying If we analyze closely the value of almost any ordinary commodity that is bought ana almost any article offered for sale we shall find that their value consists con-sists almost wholly in the labor that has been expended in their production Money Jnvested in almost any kind of enterprise en-terprise is paying wages money in a bank is paying wages for the bank lends it out anew and somebody is paying wages with it in some shape or other This money paid to the workers will of course be spent by them and therein lies the principal difference differ-ence between the service rendered them by the spendthrift and tho one who saves The question is simply who shall spend shall enjoy the money By the spendthrift method it is he that spends and enjoys tho money by the method of the saver it is paid in wages to the working classes and they spend it But some one will say Does not the spendthrift furnish employment by consuming consum-ing articles that are made by workingmen True he does and that is the end of it he has consumed used upon himself just that amount of the good things of this world that the man who invests his means has made it possible for poor people to consume In both cases the money is spent and probably prob-ably the same amount of employment given to the people who make the articles consumed con-sumed What the laborers spend will furnish fur-nish as much labor to others though of a different kind perhaps as what the spendthrift spend-thrift spends But here is the difference the man who saves his money and pays I I wages in some kind of enterprise not only permits tho laborers to spend I I as much money upon themselves as the spendthrift does upon himself him-self but ho receives a profit from this employment em-ployment or labor and has his original sum with profits added to invest again in the i same way The spendthrift uses up the wealth The saver permits his laborers to spend the wealth upon themselves and I also creates as much moro each time to be used again in the same way The former decreases the worlds wealth the latter increases it From this follows another conclusion that is quits a stumbling block to some peo pIe As the foregoing brief analysis contains con-tains a solution of it we state this conclusion conclu-sion without further elaboration Every dollar expended by a man upon himself is a direct loss to the working classes and a diminution of the wealth of the world Every act of selfdenial by which money is saved is a benefit to the jvorkJng people and an addition to the worlds wealth |
