The Relation of Thrift to Nation Building

It is just as important that productive agents should be doing the right things as that they should be doing whatever they happen to be doing with the utmost speed and facility. To misdirect our productive power, causing it to produce things of little importance, is quite as great a loss, and quite as great a hindrance to our prosperity, as to allow it to do things in a wasteful and slip-shod manner. To direct it wisely, so that it is always producing the things of greatest permanent value, is to increase and perpetuate our national prosperity. Important as this problem is, it has not yet attracted much of the attention of business managers. They are generally more intent upon the volume of the output than upon the character of the things produced. One of the most important things we can possibly do with our productive power is to make it add to itself, so that it may grow from year to year. This can only be done by setting a part of it at work producing producers' goods, instead of keeping it all at work producing consumers' goods. If very little of it is directed toward the making of tools, machinery, buildings, fences, irrigation ditches, and other forms of productive equipment, our means of production will increase very slowly or not at all. If our means of production does not increase, our productive power cannot. If, however, a large enough share of our productive power is engaged in producing producers' goods, we shall, of course, find ourselves in possession of more producers' goods, larger and better equipment of all kinds, and that, consequently, our productive power is increasing from year to year, and from decade to decade. If, for example, 50 per cent of our productive power is engaged in making tools, machinery, and equipment, these things will obviously increase more rapidly than if only 10 per cent of our productive power is so engaged while 90 per cent is producing things for immediate consumption

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