Again, we are told by leaders of the world of mass-production that thrift is out of date. One of the greatest manufacturers in the country recently wrote that “use” not “saving” should govern our ideas with respect to our national and other resources. In another remarkable pronouncement, this man, who is an idol of a large part of the people, said that no boy had ever succeeded or would succeed who saved money when he was young. Another leader writes that “one reason for America’s prosperity and one reason, in my opinion, why that prosperity will continue, is that we have committed ourselves to a standard of living far beyond our wildest pre-war dreams.... We cannot make good except by producing more wealth, and always a little ahead of us is advertising with its alluring images of still other good things that work will buy. Americans have passed out of the period where they care about petty economies. They want convenience. They want[Pg 45] action. They want comfort and style. It is impossible to call Americans back to petty thrift, and I personally am glad of it.... I live now in New York where everybody expects to be overcharged and where nobody counts the dimes, much less the pennies.... We have ceased to count our pennies in America, and I certainly hope we never return to the days of the most graceless of all virtues, a niggardly and penny-pinching thrift.” One wonders just what spiritual joy there should be in being overcharged. Also, most of us have still to count the dimes. The other day I wanted a mere bite of luncheon in a hurry. Going into the only business men’s restaurant in sight, I paid one dime to have my hat checked, another to the boy who insisted on handing me a towel in the washroom, and another for the cover charge; and I wondered what, over the old days, was the advantage in paying at the rate of a hundred hard-earned dollars a year for an ordinary snack of lunch without getting anything to eat. There are other factors at work to make thrift appear hopeless and so to destroy the average man’s peace of mind as he contemplates old age or possible long incapacity from illness. One is the fact that savings do not seem to go anywhere when made from a modest income. Although the cost of living has easily tripled in thirty years, the income from most sound investments has not gone up at all. When one saves a thousand dollars and contemplates the $50 or even $60 a year that that will bring in income, and thinks how many fifties or sixties it will take to support him and his family, he wonders whether it is worth while to pinch for so meager a result. Moreover, owing to advancing costs and the changing scale of living, there is no telling what the[Pg 46] cost of living may be not merely in one’s old age but even ten years hence.