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Show SPENDERS NO THRIFT The following address delivered by B. F. Irvine, the blind editor of the Portland, Oregon Journal, before be-fore the annual meeting of the California Cali-fornia State press association in San Francisco, Saturday, November 15, Is sent you at the request of the California state press association: It is doubtful if America has ever ev-er been confronted with conditions so precarious. There never was a pyschoiogy so extraordinary. Expenditures are terrific. The "rrple are on a mad financial spree, '"ormal business principles are dead. Thoughts' of thrift are forgotten. A man's hat at $20 has become a commonplace. com-monplace. Portland placed them on sale and the supply was exhausted. The dealers were plunged into wonderment won-derment and awe. They are now buying hats that will be sold at $2 5 and $30. Nothing is stable. New Y'ork man ufacturers and jobbers no longer quote prices of goods on future orders. or-ders. They tell you the price now and say that the price on the future orders will be controlled by the then market. Meanwhile, operatives in the factories demand higher and higher wages and operators grant them. Operators have found that any price asked will be paid, and the advanced wage is granted and added with increased profit to the price at which the goods go to the retailer. The public comes along and pays whatever is asked. And so the pyramiding goes on. People were excited during the war. in many ways they are crazy now. They never saw so much money spent before.1 never saw it spent so lavishly, lavish-ly, r-6Ct7.' il: uuii.e-su easily. All have forgotten that it was government money that we have been spending. It was the great sum? told off in billions that fed the shipyards, ship-yards, the munition factories, the machine works, the spruce camps, and all the other great works of production. In all the history of the world, money was never poured into industry with such prodigal hand. The spirit of those days has become be-come epidemic. Though the great supply source that the government maintained during hostilities is cut off, the spending goes on. It is without end or shape or limit. The ! ship workers $1200 automobile, and Milady's $2000 fur. the housemaid's $150 tailor suit, the stenographer's $200 coat, 'a woman's hand-bag at $250. a lady's gown displayed in a San Francisco shop window at the price of a house and lot. These arc parts of the long array of lavishness in this extravaganza of expenditure. People seem crazed with the notion no-tion that any extravagant thing, any prodigal purchase, any figure of wage, wa-ge, any measure of profit is obtainable. obtain-able. Do you realize what havoc habits nf untbrift pre working in America? Tn Portland in 191S. with an increase increa-se of 47 ooo in population, we built 2 (if! dwelling houses. We bought, 0300 automobiles. We spent something some-thing over half a million for houses: more than ten million for automobiles. automo-biles. The mortgage indebtednes ; placed on homes for the purchase of automobiles was $7,000,000. Listen Sixty-six out of every hun dred persons who die in the United States leave no estate whatever, and of the remr'ning thirty-four only nine leave estates larger than $5-000. $5-000. At the age of 05. ninety seven out. of evpry hundred persons in America Am-erica are partially or wholly dependent depend-ent upon relatives, friends or the public for their daily broad, for their clothing and for a roof under which to sleep. Ninety-eight per cent of the American people are living from day to day on their wages, and a loss of employment would mean pauperism pauper-ism for all but two per cent. Fi-uer than finoo.rmn American f-itviMes own tbo'r own homes. 2.-nno.rieo 2.-nno.rieo r( o.irryinir mor'eages. and 1 .en ,ii .Mm -..-.I r.-nters. Every seven y-vrs. oiv-' b, ir '. of tt-e pepir'a'ion of :'ie city of f York applies for Or.-, person in every tn Mho .;.; m cur hire cities is buried in a nnupers grave. Those figures are from Govern- ment statistics. They are a terruy-ing terruy-ing story of poverty. Surgeon General Gen-eral Gorgas, who made the Canal Zone habitable, said in a public address: ad-dress: "Physicians have located the great cause of general ill health in poverty. Poverty is here directly attributable at-tributable by an eminent authority to the great American habit of tin-thrift. tin-thrift. Poverty means dirt. Cleanliness is. a luxury. It demands- leisure, peace of mind, hot water, soap, bath tub and good plumbing. The very i-or fannot be clean, and filth and dirt mean ill health, consumption and a pauper's grave. Teach the people thrift. Teach them to lay aside a part of their savings. sav-ings. .Teach them to have a thought for tomorrow. Teach them to eschew es-chew $25 hats, $20 shoes and $200 coats off wages that cannot warrant these things. Teach them not to be spendthrifts and wasters for the ultimate lot of the spendthrift and the waster is to be at 65 years of age one of that 97 out of every 100, in part or in whole, dependent upon kindred, friends or the public for -the bread they eat, for the clothes they wear, for the roof under which they find shelter. Poverty Pov-erty is ignorance, and ignorance is poverty. They are twin calamities. They mean poverty handed down from father to son. Combined, they mean crime and criminality. Go to the penitentiaries and there study the inmates. There you will find the havoc that ignorance and poverty work upon mankind. Poverty peoples the pauper asylums, asy-lums, the poor houses, the insane asylums, as-ylums, the houses of correction, the reformatories and other places of public detention. More than 8,500,000 people, over ten years of age, in America cannot can-not read the daily newspaper. There is still with us astonishing 24.6 per cent of American drafted men in the late war who were illiterate. There is the climax in the terrifyng story of the illiterate young men between 21 and 31 all directly attributable to the destructive habit of non-thrift in America. Lack of thrift is the blight of the children. Statistics from the health bureau in the city of Portland, are that 5.000 out of 40.000 school children chil-dren go to school without having enough to eat. This is in a city wth a per capita wealth exceeded by but one or two cities in America. The facts are confirmed by statistics from health bureaus in other cities. A starved body produces a starved brain It destroys the power to struggle. It undermines the ability to think. It kills the power of initiative. It stunts lives and hurries on ill health The insufficiently nourished child has not the strength to resist disease. We have here from our lack of thrift in America thpse things: 1st. Ill health, wasting disease, and ja grave in the potter's field. ! 2nd. Stunted lives, inefficient men. lack of initiative, failure and a grow-i grow-i ing army of the submerged, which ! (Continued on last page; I. At Iv CP THRIFT" (continued from page one) more ami more increases ferniem and social unrest. 3rd. Increased numbers of peni-i tentiaries. pauper asylums, poor farms, far-ms, insane asylums, houses of cor- irection. reformatories and other pine-, es of publi detention. And to these we raav add the re-j port of Ihe Illinois Survey which declares de-clares that the chief cause of immorality immor-ality among women is poverty and its ! ally ignorance. That survey found j that 76 per cent of fallen girls had j not passed the grammar grade in schools because of poverty, and that there was a very low per cent of immorality im-morality among high school and college col-lege girls. Here we have directly traceable to the one great cause, viz: lack of i thrift, the chief danger that besets, America today. Lack of thrift with j its attendant products of poverty and 1 ignorance give an army of disappointed, dis-appointed, discouraged and depend-1 ent-men and women. If there is un-j-employment. they are, of necessity, first among the jobless. Their first thought is to find fault with the government gov-ernment and the country. They are fit and fertile subjects for the I W W the Bolshevist, the agitator and the demagogue. There is only one movement in America to encourage thrift. Tt is the Government's plan tor the sale of Thrift and War Savings Stamps and Treasury Savings Certificates. There is no nobler endeavor. It makes the citizen who owns War Savings Stamps Stam-ps or Certificates a, partner in the Government, makes him a part owner own-er in his country, it gives him a new interest in the flag. Thrift enables families to own their own homes. Russia joined Bol- I shevism because her people were land ! less. Germany resisted Bolshevism because her farm tenantry is at the vanishing point. Nobody ever heard of any threat of Sovietism among the thrifty people of Denmark. Hoi-, land, Belgium. Men never plot again st their own homes. They explode no bombs on their own hearthstones. The greatest antfidote against ', the , mad illusions and wild hallucinations which dreamers are seeking to import, im-port, from Europe and transplant in ?, America, is that thrift which wil) ' stimulate home ownership and lift the uneducated out of ignorance. |