Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1910. THE VIRTUE OF THRIFT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10110, 4 October 1910, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1910. THE VIRTUE OF THRIFT.

o The virtue of thrift, does' not seem to be greatly encouraged nowadays, but a writer in the "Spectator" shows that a wholly incontrovertible proof that the poor can save is that very many of them do save, while one has only to visit their homes in order to learn that this accumulation is not merely miserly hoarding, money scraped together at the cost of all that makes life worth living. In practice one finds that the people who save get more value for their money out of the proportion that they spend than wasteful persons who get the whole sum. Those who habitually save ten per cent, of their wages are better fed and clothed, have more comfortable houses and more rational amusement, and enjoy lives freer from care and anxiety than those who spend every 1 penny as they receive it, while to compare their existence with that of persons always from two to ten weeks in arrears would be ridicul-

ous. The groat hindrances to saving are laziness ancl self-indulgence, mental apathy, narrowness of outlook, feeble or dangerous misconceptions as to the origin and functions of capital, untrained imagination, a low standard of life, ignorance of practical arithmetic and entire neglect of accounts, ignorance of housewifely arts, and the lack of a proper spirit of independence. Different causes need different cures; but probably the most deep-seated reason for the general unwillingness j to save is the general ignorance of the fact that saving is a beneficial act, not only to the person who saves, and those immediately dependent on I him, but to the world at large. To the uneducated spending is generosity, saving is meanness. The most untaught portion of the working classes seldom feel any resentment over the, expenditure of the wealthy, even when it is ostentatious and wasteful; what they really resent is that money should be saved. Broadly speakiug, the men need sounder theoretical teaching and the women more practical instruction. The duty of saving must always rest principally 011 the woman. A man, unless earning exceptionally high wages, cannot possibly save money

without liis wife's active co-opera-tion ; while tlie wife, in order to save, needs nothing but her husband's passive consent. The greater part »of his earnings inevitably pass through her hands, and unless she talks too much about the matter, she can save on even a careless and wasteful husband.