SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 49 



This leads us to the grand truth of the science, which is that, cceteris 

 paribus, the better living others make, the more they help us to make 

 ours. Not the better living they get, but the better living they make. 

 It is not necessary to express in terms the difference between getting 

 and making a living. A pauper does not make his living, but he gets 

 it, notwithstanding. The same is true of people who beat their cred- 

 itors. We see the difference quite plainly here. Yet if we tried to 

 define it so that we should never have to revise our definition, we 

 should probably be led into one of those time-wasting and brain- 

 wasting quibbles which have been the bane of political economy. All 

 we need do is to emphasize the word " make," when we repeat, as we 

 can not too often repeat, that the better living others make, the more 

 they help us to make ours ; and the better living we make, the more 

 we help others to make theirs. 



There is another correlative truth, sometimes crossing and some- 

 times paralleling this one, that the more carefully human beings hus- 

 band their means, the more they help one another in acquiring means. 

 A careful study of the nature of capital helps us to appreciate this 

 truth. This is not the place to enter into that study. Suffice it here 

 to say generally that others help us most when they work and save. 

 They help us when they only work, and they help us when they 

 only save, but they help us most when they both work and save. And 

 we them in like manner. 



Hence it is easier to make a living in an industrious, frugal com- 

 munity than in a lazy, thriftless one. Hence, also, the profit to the 

 community of the labor of convicts, paupers, and other persons in state 

 custody. Hence the great advantage of having the world's work so 

 divided and ai'ranged that the weak as well as the strong can find 

 something to do. 



One other general truth, with many important special applications, 

 must be stated here. If those who do much work, and get and squan- 

 der the full reward of their labor, help us much in making a living ; 

 and if those who do much work, and, getting a good reward, save a 

 portion of it, help us still more ; those help us still more who, doing 

 much work, are content or forced by necessity to accept a small reward. 

 It always pays to hire a man, or trade with a man, who, considering 

 its real worth, puts a small value upon his labor, and is satisfied with a 

 small reward for it. Such a man may be too generous for his own 

 good, but not for the good of those who deal with him. For, of course, 

 the extreme limit of help in making a living which anybody could af- 

 ford us would be to make it for us out-and-out gratuitously. 



Undue help may cause us to relax our efforts, or to make reckless 

 use of our opportunities, so that in the end we may be worse off ; but 

 that does not make it any the less help. We may misuse any blessing 

 we enjoy. 



But we must remember all the time that the practical object of any 



VOL. XXXI. 4 



