The whole round world is gradually becoming economically literate and self-reliant, because sound ideas of economic foresight are everywhere being spread. The U. S. Ambassador to Spain reports, for instance, that the “mañana” spirit (“put it off until tomorrow”), which has been one of the time-honored economic hindrances in Spain and Spanish-American territory, is now disappearing.
The principle of saving is pre-human; it is a biologic inheritance from our ancestry, for a squirrel, an ant and bee are models of saving wisdom. A human being, with his greater brain capacity and richer store of folk-lore and racial memory, should be the most invariably forehanded of all the creatures of earth. He is not, however. Economic literacy has not been present, and is not today present, in many, many millions of people. They display a laxity and a blindness to the hard facts of the struggle for existence which no one of many lower creatures than man ever displays. The possession of a human brain has not seemed to lift such humans up to the coordinative previsioning level of adjustment to environment which is displayed even by some of the very lowest order of living things. Even a jelly fish is a primeval kind of savings bank.
But world-wide concentration on economic well-being, world-wide inter-communication of ideas, and consequent increase in variety of desires, are now beginning to tell, even in countries in the Orient where religious and philosophic ideas have repressed the economic urge toward accumulation. The deeper economic class-consciousness of labor everywhere has been another vital factor, particularly in America, where labor concentrates more on economic welfare than on political action.
In America, however, the ordinary man’s concentration on his financial welfare has as a rule been mainly toward _earning_ more and _spending_ more, rather than on _saving more_. Individual for individual, the French peasant is a far more _saving_ person than the American farmer, for the typical American farmer usually puts his profits into additional equipment, more land, more education for his children, more comforts for his family. The result is that he is rather habitually in an inflated financial condition, and has not the cash or security accumulations of the French peasant.
The American workman, too, has been increasing his standards of living as fast as his earning power has risen, and since 1925 has been drawing close to inflation also, through the dubious device of the instalment plan. At the same time, it is true that he has never had more money in the savings bank nor more investments and insurance in force. He is saving more, but by no means in sound proportion to his earning power.
In view, therefore, of the incontrovertible facts uncovered by insurance companies, that the great majority of men at 65 years of age are dependents, it seems that one of the great needs of the century in America is that the idea and the precise methods of systematic saving be spread broadcast and thus become more universally practiced. All the more imperative does this need become in view of the additional fact that we are rapidly lengthening the average span of life. In the year 1500 the average man had an expectation of only 25 years to live. This seems incredible, until you know how men lived in those days even in London--in huts with earthen floors covered with filthy rushes; eating bark, peas, and roots, and possessing neither cotton nor woolen clothing, only ragged dirty leather, never removed, and mere straw whisps tied to the body if poor. As late as 1880 the expectation of life in America was 45 years. Today it has risen to 58, and is still rising. Consequently we have more years of old age to provide for than even our grandfathers and fathers. This is an extremely, important consideration. So is the fact of our constantly rising standard of living, which makes yesterday’s plenty seem scanty tomorrow; yesterday’s adequate saving tomorrow’s inadequate provision. So also is the increasing delay before young men and women become earners and can marry; so also the increased demands of modern life for educating the young--demands which drain the parental purse in a manner not known in former generations.
Saving, as an economic science for the individual, is thus looming as particularly important for every person, young or old, male or female. The modern economic independence of woman has made saving woman’s problem as well as man’s. The subject is one which should be studied even by young people, and in fact should be taught in schools. It has a far more potent relation to individual and marital happiness and general social well-being than it is generally credited with in a land where lavishness and free spending are the order of the day, and where there prevails a timid fear of being regarded as “tight.”
In a significant manner this is illustrated by the fun poked at President Coolidge for his thrift, which, derived from an older and sterner Yankee standard, is now a somewhat neglected and half-despised virtue.
To summarize, there are seven powerful modern reasons for training for saving:
(1) The acquirement of personal dignity, welfare and self-respect in an economic world.
(2) The ability to marry and start a family without delay at the mating period.
(3) The ability to attain the special security and satisfaction of an owned home.
(4) The ability to fund the adequate education of children to enable them to meet the competition of modern life.
(5) The ability to engage in business or other enterprise which fits one’s faculties and ambitions.
(6) The ability to provide for the exigencies of our lengthened old age.
(7) The ability to bequeath, at death, to those dependent on us.