He then dwelt at some length on the wider habits
ot thrift. The British people as a whole were not wasting their savings. This year War Saving Certificates had been selling at- the rate of a million a week, and each week there were 10,000 new buyers. Altogether about £370,000,000 was now invested in these certificates. He recommended that workpeople and customers should . be encouraged everywhere to participate in the ownershiP of industrial companies. He pointed out that we had much to learn from the United States, where there was .a continuous process of combining the Owning and the earning classes. Industrial ownership there was spreading from the few to the many. There was, in fact, a great social revolution without violence. He recognized the same tendency here, but it was necessary to accelerate it and he appealed to every employer to multiply the facilities by which wage earners and people with small .sums of money might become shareholders. There had been much abuse of the luxury flaunted by rich people in London, but this vulgarity was confined to relatively 'few and the money thus wasted represented no appreciable reservoir of spending power. The greatest mischief done by the vulgar rich was, that they were the chief propagandists of revolutionary doctrines.
