It is often said that the main object of our government should be to preserve our political institutions. This is too short-sighted a view. These institutions are not an ultimate object; they are only the means of promoting and protecting civilization, the which ought to be the principal and ultimate object of the State. This object is to be accomplished by encouraging the citizens in the voluntary production of life’s primal material necessities: food, clothing, and shelter; in the conservation of the accumulated treasures of the past, and by favoring the addition thereto of new contributions by this generation, so that the total may be passed on intact to posterity. Any government is a failure which neglects that duty; which if accomplished, and a proper attention given to education, virtue and morality will take care of themselves. In the play of “Major Barbara,” one of Bernard Shaw’s best and most instructive comedies, the distinguished author shows the difficulty, the almost impossibility of the reclamation by mere admonition of a man degraded by pauperism; but that good wages regularly paid will do the job. Now, our present voting system not only fails to encourage thrift, saving or accumulation of wealth, or to promote civilization, but has a contrary tendency, because it grants equality and power in government to the non-producer, to the shiftless, lazy and vicious consumers and wasters of property. In order to fairly realize the gross injustice of granting governmental powers to the thriftless classes, we must clearly visualize and properly estimate the results of the lives and labors of the thrifty and industrious. We must not fail to fully understand that frugality is the creator and preserver of the State. We have recently heard frequent appeals to save and help win the German war; because to save is to contribute to a fund out of which can be paid the expenses of the government. But the common fund of the nation’s wealth in peace as well as in war exists and is drawn upon by every member of the community, and it is just as true in peace as in war that the citizen who saves money is thus contributing to that common fund and thereby to the strength and well-being of the commonwealth, and this, whether he deposit his savings in a bank where it is loaned out to aid industry and create employment, or whether he invests it in commerce or manufactures, directly or indirectly, by the purchase of stocks or securities in industrial or commercial concerns. The mere fact of saving, that is to say of producing more than he consumes makes him at once a contributor to this general fund; and therefore any man who leaves behind him upon his death money or property which he accumulated in his lifetime has been a benefactor to the community, in the same sense as if he had contributed a great book or a valuable invention to the world, or had spent his life in benevolent work. To save or to make money and then to