1 111.N., ART OF SAYING.
AWHOLLY incontrovertible proof that the poor can save is that very many of them do save, while one has only to visit their homes in order to learn that this accumulation is not mere miserly hoarding, money scraped together at the cost of all that makes life worth living. In practice one finds that the people who save get more value for their money out of the proportion that they spend than wasteful persons get from the whole sum. Those who habitually save ten per cent. of their wages are better fed and clothed, have more comfort- able homes and more rational amusement, and enjoy lives freer from care and anxiety than those who spend every penny as they receive it, while to compare their existence with that of persons always from two to ten weeks in arrears would be ridiculous.
The capital of the working classes is estimated at one thousand millions sterling, and this does not include their furniture, tools, stores of clothing, watches, bicycles, and small uninvested hoards. Still less does it include the intangible savings represented by the claims which a man's history and character give him upon more fortunately situated persons if he should fall into distress. Strictly speaking, most of the old folk living on outdoor relief are capitalists ; the sums granted them by the State would be totally insufficient if they were not possessed of furniture, clothing, and house linen, and if they had not valid and recognised claims on the services of neighbours and relatives earned by former kindness and exertion. It is unjust to regard these old people as utter paupers and failures. It is true that they have suffered a partial defeat, but in very many cases they have made a prolonged and heroic struggle, and deserve to march out with all the honours of war. If their children and grandchildren, with their much greater opportunities, do as much for them- selves and others, not only will they never break workhouse bread, but they ought to be beyond the need of old-age pensions. To prove the practical value of even the shabbiest furniture, I may state that there are large towns where an old person can obtain a decent unfurnished room for ls. 6d., and in some eases even ls., a week, while the lowest charge for a furnished room is 3s. 6d. or 4s. Therefore "a few sticks of furniture " actually mean to the owners as much as the interest of £200.
But although the aggregate savings of the working classes reach an inconceivably enormous total, and although a con- siderable proportion of the members save almost as much as in their circumstances can be held advisable, " all is not well." No one can learn the huge sums spent by the working classes on alcohol and other questionable modes of self-pleasing, no one can observe the daily and hourly waste in the homes of many of the industrious poor, no one can realise the vast mass of pauperism and its wide fringe of semi-dependent persons, without forming the opinion that habits of thrift need to be greatly strengthened and more generally practised, and that until this is done social conditions can never be satisfactory.
The great hindrances to saving are laziness and self- indulgence, mental apathy, narrowness of outlook, feeble or dangerous misconceptions as to the origin and functions of capital, untrained imagination, a low standard of life, ignorance of practical arithmetic and entire neglect of accounts, ignorance of housewifely arts, and the lack of a proper spirit of independence. Different causes need different cures ; but probably the most deep-seated reason for the general unwillingness to save is the general ignorance of the fact that saving is a beneficial act, not only to the person who saves, and to those immediately dependent on him, but to the world at large. To the uneducated spending is generosity, saving is meanness. The most untaught portion of the working classes seldom feel any resentment over the expenditure of the wealthy, even when it is ostentatious and wasteful ; what they really resent is that money should be saved. Broadly speaking, the men need sounder theoretical teaching and the women more practical instruction. The duty of saving must always rest principally on the woman. A man, unless earning exceptionally high wages, cannot possibly save money without his wife's active co-operation; while the wife, in order to save, needs nothing but her husband's passive consent. The greater part of his earnings inevitably pass through her hands, and unless she talks too much about the matter, she can "save on" even a careless and wasteful husband. In relation to thrift, practical arithmetic is one of the most valuable studies, especially for girls. If a boy left school unskilled in the art, in a large proportion of employments he would be compelled to acquire it; but a girl who leaves school ignorant of "figuring," and who is not engaged in commerce, may go on all her life not knowing how much her husband's wages amount to in a month or a year, how large a proportion the rent bears to the sum, nor the yearly aggregate spent on any one item of household expenditure. Every mistress should encourage her servants in the habit of keep- ing accounts, as it is one rarely practised unless acquired in early life. One young servant told me that her study of the previous year's accounts had led her to the conclusion that postage was her great extravagance, and that she had resolved to limit it to a shilling a month. Even this seemed a large proportion out of 25s.; but as her parents expected a letter every week, and she was engaged to be married, it could not well be done for less. She has been married for twelve years now ; her husband's wages have never exceeded 32s., but the home is kept with a care and exactness and a sense of pro- portion largely due to her account-book, which is used not only as a record of expenditure, but also as a work of reference.
The condition of the working-class home can never be really stable until young couples begin their married life, not merely free from debt, but with at least six months' bare maintenance in the savings-bank, and learn to reckon their income as being their average yearly earnings, not their highest weekly. When privileged, or obliged, to inquire into means, I frequently ask : "How much a year does your husband get ? " The wife can seldom or never tell me, although she usually has all the necessary figures at her command ; but the very question is instructive. Reckoned in this way, the amount available weekly may seem alarmingly small; but there is everything to be gained by facing facts. I have worked where there was a regular wage of a pound a week, and where there was a nominal wage of two or three times that amount. When the wives recognised that in the latter case the actual wage was from 32s. to 36s., they lived in considerable comfort; when they fondly clung to the belief that it was, or had ought to be by rights," 50s., general domestic conditions were in a far more unsatisfactory condi- tion than in the homes of superior dockyard and agricultural labourers. Other women fail to realise the amount and stability of their husband's earnings, and waste by living in a needlessly hand-to-mouth fashion. This is especially the case in regard to rent. For twenty or more years they will steadily pay 9s. a week for three rooms and a scullery in preference to paying a quarterly rent of £4 or £4 10s. for a five- or six-roomed house with a garden. Again, much is wasted for want of the "stitch in time" which, whether literally or with regard to health and morals, is too rarely taken. Only women of superior intellect or training will spend money either on repairs or prevention.
But if the daily duty of saving unavoidably falls chiefly on the wife, the responsibility of preventing savings from being squandered and of finding secure investments for them should certainly be the husband's. A local atmosphere unfavourable to saving often makes forms of investment desirable which, considered in the abstract, might not seem the most advantageous. There are many cases where the propriety of sinking money in life assurance, house property, and deferred annuities might be questionable if it were not for the constant danger that those who have saved the money, or in whose interest it has been saved, will be robbed of their property or wheedled out of it by graceless relatives and friends if it is not securely "locked up" and inaccessible. Considerable pressure is brought to bear upon a woman if she is known to possess even a small sum in the savings-bank, and sometimes for no reason but inborn wastefulness. In one instance that came under my notice a young married woman had £15, the remains of her girlhood's savings after providing herself with an ample trousseau. All the husband's savings had been exhausted in furnishing four rooms very neatly and suitably, and I hoped that this nest-egg would have been kept for the pro- verbial rainy day. Within four months she was so worked on by the reproaches of her "in-laws," and taunts as to her " having brought nothing to the home," that she spent £14 on an American organ, which neither she nor her husband could play. Less than three years afterwards her husband lost his
berth, and could find no work in the district, and she was obliged to borrow £12 to move to a distant town where he had been offered a situation, a debt which hampered them for eighteen months.
According as a man hath, it is his duty to save, and the more he saves the easier becomes the practice of the duty. The casual labourer who finds on Saturday that he has a shilling more than is needful for decent maintenance can pay it into a provident fund, or can at least keep it until the end of the following week, when, as sad experience must have led him to expect, he may have a shilling too little. The regularly employed labourer can join a sick-club, and the superior labourer a good Friendly Society, while it is open to the skilled artisan to provide against invalidism, unemployment, and old age without depriving himself or his family of any
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