He was, I suppose, well over sixty, as hale, as active and as much interested in the progress of the world as any man of thirty, and a most valuable citizen. His children had both grown up healthy, capable and industrious; both were skilled workers, regularly employed and in receipt of good wages. But supposing—and his trade was one reputed unhealthy—that the father had died, leaving a widow and young children unprovided for? We may note that his risk of doing so was lessened by his being better fed and better clothed than his more sparing neighbour. Still, death is liable to seize even the best nourished and the most fitly clothed; he might have died long before his children had completed their excellent education or become capable of self support. Even in that case, however, would these orphans, in whom a foundation had been laid of good health and good teaching, have been really worse off than if, with a poorer endowment of personal advantages, they had inherited the money pittance—so sadly inadequate at best—that their father might have scraped together in his few years of life? For how miserably small is the provision that _can_, even with the utmost exercise of parsimony, be made out of a family income of two pounds a week! In their inevitably inadequate efforts to make such provision, workers too often deny themselves the absolute essentials of healthy living. To abstain from buying new shoes in order to save the price for one’s old age, and then to die of pneumonia, induced by want of sound shoes, is but a doubtful form of thrift, both for oneself and one’s nation. The interests of the nation, especially, are certainly better served by the maintenance among working class families of the highest attainable standard of life than by the accumulation of very small individual provision for possible orphans or possible old age. Even two pounds a week will not suffice (except in remote country districts—where no man earns so much) to provide really very good food, clothing and housing for four persons; and the working class family does not often consist of no more than four. The present cost of thrift, as thrift is generally understood, is too heavy and the future return too light; and the wise man is not he who saves his money, but he who spends it to the best advantage.