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Show bririci ioack rrosoeritv BY CALVIN COOLIDGE & I . ' J ' : ' . "riMaiiiiniiiiiiriiiiBiMirti1(iMiOTIiBiirirri''1-t-i r-- - If all the money in the country d were divided equally 4 Pv NTC of the serious results that I m coiiio from the experience i tiroiijjh whleli oup' country ': has been passing for the 'J past two yeurs is loss of V y i faith. Because some have put tlielr trust In things m . which they have found do Y not always endure, they draw the hasty and unwarranted Y I conclusion that it is useless to have faith in anything. They jirapo.se to abandon all standards, seek only the easiest course, and live merely (or the present, on the theory that they may as well eat, drink, and he merry, for tomorrow they die. It cannot he denied that many people f liavo had uti experience which at first i thought seems to warrant such an attl- I tude. They had profitable employment t on which they believed they could rely for n permanent Income. That lias gone, nnd they are unable to secure work. They bad n bouse which ultimately they expected would be their own and would make a borne for themselves and their family. They have been unable to meet the payments due on It and have seen It taken from tbein. Others have found that Investments on which they relied for provision pro-vision for their old age have turned out to be of much less value than had been supposed. Some have met with losses uiruusn me ranure or nani;s in which they bad money deposited. It Is easy, in these circumstances, for the individual in-dividual to conclude that these disasters have arisen through no fault of his own, that it must he the fault of someone, and he Is Inclined to blame something he loosely calls society. Sometimes Some-times a feeling of injustice results in a threat of defiance against constituted authority. Among all these people, those who most strongly appeal to our sympathies, those who seem most warranted In their discouragement, are the ones who want work and cannot find It. liut even they should take the larger view of their situation. It is no new experience for a wage earner to be without employment. Such a condition has always been temporary. It will be temporary now. Surely the country will go back to work, back to production and consumption. consump-tion. The condition of the wage earner in America Amer-ica has- long been the despair of nil the rest of the world. Some hope should be derived from what has been and some confidence entertained that the same again shall be. But a new element has entered into the situation situa-tion of the unemployed. Heretofore, few have known anything about it, few have cared anything any-thing about it and nobody has done anything about It. Now the whole nation is aroused. There is scarcely a hamlet in the land where there Is not an organization and active public effort for the relief of the unemployed. They vwill be cared for in an unprecedented way. We have had a tremendous spiritual awakening concerning our duty to relieve human suffering. It is true some homes have been lost through default of payments. That risk is always incurred in-curred when property is bought on credit. But even in this field, where one home has been lost, an enormous number have been retained. Their owners now find themselves securely and comfortably com-fortably housed because they saved money and bought when they had an income, instead of spending all their money on rents and expensive living. If all those who have bought homes in the last twenty years could be assembled, it would be found, in spite of some failures, that, as a class, they were distinctly better off than their neighbors. The desire to build and own a home is one of the primal human Instincts. It is especially strong in women. Even the present age of hotel ho-tel apartments and flats- is not likely to eradicate eradi-cate so strong a natural longing. But those who have given up the effort in despair or disgust certainly must live somewhere if not in their own house then in the house of someone else. Their real position in the world is disclosed by supposing that everyone else followed their example. ex-ample. The whole race would be without shelter shel-ter in about a generation. Those who have come to the conclusion that they will do nothing to make themselves a home are injuring themselves most, but they are also injuring the whole community. Any such scheme of things as their actions presuppose could not be put into efteet. Nature and reason are both opposed to i' When we examine the complaints ct those who have lost through Investments we find that they fall into three classes: Some lost because they were plainly swindled. We are enacting more aud more laws and setting up more and more regulations and safeguards to prevent a recurrence of such abuses. The practice of swindling swin-dling is very old, and larceny has never been eradicated from any community where property was abundant. But because someone does wrong does not prove that we shall all abandon trying to do right. Others have used poor judgment in Investments. Invest-ments. Usually they have been tempted to take large risks by' the hope of making large gains. Some did not make great profits, while many more suffered heavy losses. Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance. They have no legitimate complaint com-plaint against anyone but themselves. Still others, using all the judgment possible for human beings and guided by the best financial finan-cial advice obtainable, have seen their investments invest-ments seriously impaired. But this simply means what everyone should know ; that even when surrounded by all the safeguards and all the in'tvrity which it is possible to secure, the ownership of property involves a risk. No law, no regulation, no government supervision, no skill in management, has ever been devised that could protect in-ested in-ested property from temporary fluctuation fluctua-tion and occasional loss. These are the hazards of our finite existence. Only omniscience can guard against them. But that does not excuse us from making mak-ing the most of what we have and doing the best we can. While no one can tell with certainty what will happen to any particular property prop-erty or what the market will do at any particular time, the best financial judgment expects ex-pects that, while further losses may accrue, sometime the general level of good standard properties will rise, so that some of the present losses will be reduced. Future prices at which property will sell are always uncertain. There is no one to be blamed for what is unavoidably un-avoidably true. The great fact of life is uncertainty. un-certainty. The only thing we can do is to recognize recog-nize the uncertainty and govern ourselves accordingly. ac-cordingly. It is true that a considerable number of people peo-ple have suffered through bank failures. In a time of declining prices the banks that have not been well managed always have difficulty. Some also that through no fault of their own have met losses have been compelled to close. But that does not mean a total loss to depositors. Sometimes the loss Is heavy, but sometimes payment pay-ment is made in full. In any case, funds are tied up and much inconvenience results. Our national banking system is as sound as generations of experience have been able to make it. Most of the states follow a similar system. The nature of investments is regulated by law, and most banks are carefully supervised, super-vised, rigidly controlled, and frequently examined exam-ined by government agents. While absolute safety has been impossible to secure, it is probable prob-able that the records of money deposited in properly prop-erly regulated banks in this country would show over a series of years that it has been in the safest place to keep funds. Banks are an absolute necessity for the transaction trans-action of business. If it were possible to conceive con-ceive of all of them being closed, starvation would face most of us inside of ten days. They exist to facilitate the process of exchange, which is the basis of all business. They are one of the main sources of credit, on which our economic eco-nomic welfare largely depends. It is apparent that if their source of currency were cut off by people taking money out of banks and hoarding it, locking it up, or hiding it away, our banking system soon would become deranged and the whole nation would begin to suffer losses. Loans would have to be called, mortgages canceled, prices would fall, wages decline, credit would fail, and a general panic would be producetl. If all the people attempted to draw their money from the banks, all commerce would be reduced to barter, and universal bankruptcy would prevail. pre-vail. While particular banks may become unsound, we can feel adequately certain that our banking bank-ing system as a whole will not become unsound. If it ever did, we should find that the money we had hidden away had become unsound also. It would not be possible to buy anything with it. All exchange would be at an end. Even payments pay-ments by the federal government would have to be suspended. While keeping money in banks involves some risk, because possession of property always involves risks, it is a risk that must be taken. Compared with the certain calamity ca-lamity that would result if the people drew all money out of banks, the risk can be considered as negligible. Those who are engaged in hoarding currency are prohab'.y no safer as a class than those who keep their funds in the banks. They are injuring themselves and everybody else. They are in the position of not taking their part of the risks of life and are trying to make themselves safe by letting others carry their risks for them. It might be a great personal comfort if we could lay all the blame for our misfortunes upon some source outside ourselves. That is why it is easy to convince some of us that we have not failed, but society has failed. Of course, it would follow that if society were to be blamed for our failures, that some society must be credited with our successes. If we want to look at it that way we shall have to admit that on the whole, society in this country has done very well by us. Our country, over its span of history, his-tory, has been considerable of a success. But while there is a relationship of all of us. "which we term society, that differs from each of us, just as a house differs from the individual individu-al bricks in it. yet people are n t bricks, and moral responsibility cannot he shifred to others. It must rest villi the iniliviiii'.cl. Tiie same society so-ciety produced Paul nr.'! .i'j ! :. Wa-hington :iml Arnold. Lincoln and Tweed. Edison and the gang leader. If we are to bo f:'e2 id rr.-.i:e our e-vn choices in life, we must take the risk of being responsible re-sponsible for the results. If we could lay the blame for present conditions in our own country or in the world on society at large, against whom is the blame to be assessed? It is impossible im-possible to point out any general moral lapse, any widespread dishonesty. We may say it was the result of greed and selfishness. But what body is to be specifically spe-cifically charged with that? Were the wage earners too greedy In getting all they could for their work? Were the managers of enterprise, big and little, too greedy in trying to operate at a profit? Were the farmers too greedy in their efforts to make more money by tilling more laud and enlarging their production? produc-tion? Even if we could convict society on a general charge of selfishness, we could not point to any element that consciously brought about a condition of falling prices, ,-vi' ' v'-v' Ji. f v'Y r '' how much would you get? unemployment, lack of confidence, business failures, fail-ures, and hard times. These were the last things that anybody wanted. The most we can say is that there has been a general lack of judgment so widespread as to involve practically the whole country. - We have found out that we were not so big as we thought we were. We were riding too high. We shall have to kedp nearer the ground. We may not feel so elated but we shall be much safer. Economic well-being is very important, but perhaps it Is not so important as we thought it was. If it is used as it ought to be, to minister to spiritual well-being, we cannot have too much of it. But if it is made a vehicle for stimulating greed and selfishness, idleness and ignorance, extravagance and waste, destructive alike to body and soul, it defeats itself and vanishes, until,' through adversity, we can learn to make a better use of prosperity. The development of the real character of men and women can go on in bad times as well as in good times. After all, that is the important thing. Neither the world at large nor our own most favored nation is going to discover some miraculous miracu-lous formula which, all at once, will remove the possibility of hardship, want and deprivation from the human race. With all the power of mass production, we are a long way from universal uni-versal luxury. But in the United States we have approached the line of universal convenience. conveni-ence. Our system has produced a distribution of wealth so that those having incomes of five thousand dollars or less, according to the latest available records, are said to receive 87 per cent of the total national income. If they were given, in addition, the entire income of all those who receive more, the increase would be only about seven hundred dollars. Great as our resources re-sources are, they have a distinct limitation. There is not wealth enough in our country to take care of our people without the ablest possible pos-sible management and the hardest kind of work on the part of all of us. There is no government in the world that can remove this burden from its Inhabitants. Under the pressure of events there are some who have become sullen and resentful. They are Inclined to refuse to make an effort to pay their taxes and their Interest. If they earn anything, they propose to spend it. They have lost faith in the standards by which they have lived. Such people have made a great mistake. They have been born into the wrong universe for them. They belong in some place where there are no risks to be faced, where a backbone would be considered excess baggage, where courage and perseverance, effort and self-denial, industry and thrift are not virtues in themselves, them-selves, to be cultivated for their own sakes. The absurdity of this position is revealed by considering what would result if everybody else adopted the same attitude. There is no power than can guarantee us economic eco-nomic security. We think we want relief from toil and worry, forgetful that all our real satisfactions satis-factions are in our achievements. If we will but make the effort to develop them, if we will apply ourselves faithfully to our tasks, we shall all find we have powers we did not know we possessed. We shall come nearest to achieving our own economic security by the practice of the old-fashioned, old-fashioned, homely virtues of industry and thrift; of buying a few things we can pay for, rather than many which leave us loaded with dangerous danger-ous debts we can never pay; of small savings securely invested at moderate returns, rather than spectacular financial performances. The best recipe for financial security is to live within our means. This is our ancient faith. We have found nothing better. If we should undertake to put into operation any scheme based on the assumption that the world owes all of us a living, we would soon find the world was bankrupt. If we try to adopt some plan that will eliminate the changes and risks of life, we are likely to find that reverses will come just the same. We shall be better off if we work on the old standard that we owe a duty to the world to earn our own living, and instead of supposing we can abolish reverses, preparing pre-paring to meet them. Under this homely, safe, and seascned system we shall probably find we have the best cliance of taking care of ourselves ::nd securing the greatest distribution of wealth. (World Copyright, 1932. by Calvin Coolidge, All Rights Reserved.) |