¶The prime factor in securing industrial well-being is the high average of citizenship found in the community. The best laws that the wit of man can devise would not make a community of thriftless and idle men prosperous. No scheme of legislation or of social reform will ever work good to the community unless it recognizes as fundamental the fact that each man’s own individual qualities must be the prime factors in his success. Work in combination may help and the State can do a good deal in its own sphere, but in the long run each man must owe his success in life to whatever of hardihood, of resolution, of common-sense, and of capacity for lofty endeavor he has within his own soul. It is a good thing to act in combination for the common good, but it is a very unhealthy thing to let ourselves think for one moment that anything can ever supply the want of our own individual watchfulness and exertion. ¶Yet given this high average of individual ability and invention, we must ever keep in mind that it may be nullified by bad legislation, and that it can be given a chance to develop under the most favorable conditions by good legislation. Probably the most important aid which can be contributed by the National Government to the material well-being of the country is to insure its financial stability. An honest currency is the strongest symbol and expression of honest business life. ¶The business world must exist largely on credit, and to credit confidence is essential. Any tampering with the currency, no matter with what purpose, if fraught with the suspicion of dishonesty in result, is fatal in its effects on business prosperity. Very ignorant and primitive communities are continually obliged to learn the elementary truth that the repudiation of debts is in the end ruinous to the debtors as a class; and when communities have moved somewhat higher in the scale of civilization they also learn that anything in the nature of a debased currency works similar damage. A financial system of assured honesty is the first essential.