636 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



housewife who saves all the bones for the soup, who never 

 strikes three or four matches when one will do, who cuts out 

 he;r material so as to make it go as far as possible, either adds 

 to accumulations or saves labour, one or the other, and yet 

 foregoes iione of her enjoyments, but rather increases them. 



2. By spending our money or our labour in producing 

 things whjcii will last rather than things which are quickly 

 consumed in the use; but even this may easily be overdone. 

 Howevqi', it represents judicious expenditure and not saving at 

 ail (in the strict sense), so it is rather outside the limits of our 

 subject, 



3. By doing- to a hmited extent what I may have appeared 

 to denounce — that is, by " snvivg money." 



Remember that the question now is — How we are to pro- 

 vide for the morrow, not how we are to add to accumulations. 

 The two things are quite different. The tendency of " sa^dng" 

 is always to check production and (under existing conditions) to 

 throw labourers out of employment, but if kept within due 

 limits, though it adds nothing to accumulations, but rather 

 diminishes them, it does good by ec|ualising fortune and 

 averting disaster. Its effect is like that of insurance of pro- 

 perty. There is more loss by fire and shipwreck since 

 insurance was introduced than there was before. Not only 

 because there are always scoundrels who will burn their 

 houses or wreck their vessels feloniously for the sake of the 

 insurance, but still more because people do not now make 

 nearly the same efforts to save burning houses and sinking 

 ships. When a man's all was in his house or his ship he 

 worked as for dear life to save it, and his neighbours in 

 sympathy and as a point of honour did their best to help him,- 

 even at the risk of their lives. They are not nearly so 

 strenuous now. Formerly when there was a fire everyone 

 rusjied to put it out. Now they ask first whether it is 

 insured, and, if it is, half of them go quietly back to their 

 business, and the others, though they may work well, give up 

 much sooner, and in no case make the same desperate 

 efforts,— -unless they are firemen, perhaps, with whom it is 

 a point of honour. 



For all that, insurance is an excellent thing. An arrange- 

 ment by which utter ruin to individuals is averted by 

 distributing the loss amongst people who are prepared as 

 a matter of business to accept it, is well worth some cost ; 

 and the benefit of " saving " is of much the same nature. It 

 reprQ6«nts no increase of accumulations, but the contrary, 



