154 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
endowed with ordinary passions and desires, the results would be 
chaotic and disastrous in the extreme. One effect, terrible to 
contemplate, would seem to be inevitable, viz., that the indis- 
criminate distribution of products among all men would destroy 
the major source of savings at present so largely devoted to the 
creation and maintenance of the powerful and costly auxiliary 
aids to human labour, and the slight individual gain per head in 
material satisfactions would only be of a very temporary character, 
for it would soon be lost by the new impulse to the improvident 
to rapidly increase their numbers. 
WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBABLE EFFECT UPON SocIAL WELL- 
BEING IF THE Masor Source oF SAVINGS WERE DESTROYED. 
In another place it has been indicated that the mere “ two 
hands,” or the unaided labour of man, would not only fail to 
produce the average comforts and luxuries now enjoyed by nearly 
all classes of men, but more calamitous still, they would fail to 
produce the prime necessaries of life in sufficient quantity to 
maintain the lives of the existing population. Defects in the 
existing scheme of civilisation, some of which seem to be 
ineradicable, may be truly charged yearly with the destruction 
of thousands of valuable lives ; but were the present major source 
of savings dissipated or destroyed by equality in share of earnings, 
either by lowering the powers of production or by slightly raising 
temporarily the average amount of satisfactions consumed or 
enjoyed, the new conditions (equality of earnings) would be a 
blight and a curse, for while the existing defects in distribution 
may be the cause of the misery and destruction of thousands of 
valuable lives, the eguality scheme would certainly entail the 
misery and destruction of millions now living in a state of 
comparative comfort. Many who fail to ponder over those root 
difficulties may exclaim—How can you explain this paradox ? 
Why should the fairer distribution of wealth (that according to 
actual individual needs, without regard to inequalities of natural 
powers, capacities or inheritance), raising the average comfort of 
the majority and lowering the superfluous and luxurious satisfac- 
tions of the minority, be productive of such disaster ? 
The answer is plain enough. The power to effect large savings, 
or to create the more costly auxiliaries of labour, depends mainly 
upon the existence of specially favourable conditions. 
(1.) The desire to accumulate or save can only become strong 
enough to be effective when the stronger desires for primary 
satisfactions are appeased. 
(2.) Savings or accumulations, therefore, can never be 
produced by labourers or others whose earnings do not exceed 
the supply necessary to satisfy the three primary wants. The 
majority of breadwinners are always in this “hand-to-mouth” 
