Through self-denial a complete
revolution in national habits has begun. Out of colossal evil has come
some good.
It has taken a desperate disease to invoke a desperate remedy. The
average American, firm in his belief that he holds a monopoly on world
waste, has had, almost without his knowledge, a formidable rival in
England these past years. Whether the visiting Yankee tourist helped to
set the pace or not, the fact remains that when the war broke over
England she was as extravagant as she was unprepared.
The Englishman, like his American brother, though unlike the Scotch, is
not thrifty by instinct. He regards thrift as a vice. He prefers to let
the tax gatherer do his saving for him. He believes with his great
compatriot Gladstone that "it is more difficult to save a shilling than
to spend a million."
Contrasting the Englishman and the Frenchman in the matter of economy,
you find this interesting parallel: With the Frenchman the first
question that attends income is "How much can I _save_?" Saving is the
supreme thing. With the Briton, however, it becomes a matter of "How
much can I _spend_?" Saving is incidental.
To associate thrift with the British workingman is to conceive a
miracle. To be sure, he seldom had anything to save before the war. But
with the speeding-up of industry to meet the insatiate hunger for
munitions and the corresponding increase of from thirty to fifty per
cent, even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that
he never dreamed was possible.
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