Bisbee daily review., 1910-10-11
PRoFiiGAcY VERSUS PRUDENCE


 PRoFlicAcY
 veRsus PRUDENCE
 Inside of ones income Is found the
 degree of happiness that depends up on temporal welfare. Tho hnd car.
 rier who saves few doilars 2 month is more contented than the hish-roller
 who goes in debt a few hundred or a few thousand a year. But con demning the profisate extravagance of the period is habit aimost as old as the world. It is quite as old at least as civilization. Col George Harvey who edits a magazine "for the conservation of common sense" !" observes that while Rome fell be- cause of profigacy prudence builded England. We Americans. according to Col Harvey. inherit the blood of the i Angles and not that of the Latins. While we spend great deal we are English in thrift rather than Roman in unthrift-
 He continues:
 Good roads constitute investment, nio dissipation. The telephone is not a worthless toy. The motor car is more than a mere vehicle of pleas lure. Both are savers of time and do- CTS of labor. Each, too, serves a highly desirable purpose in facilitiat. ing that intercourse among indiv;du- als which tends to strengthen a com munity by gratifying gregarious in- stincts.
 Public extravigance? Yes. Gov ernments in recent years have dis played woful disregard of pecuniary responsibility. But is this tendency, however lamentable. more than a phase of rapid growth? And if it be true that the people are becoming so fully awakened to conditions that, in some sections they regard even the tariff, which is only a tax, as a moral issue, is there not evidence that the phase is passing? The pres ent national administration is bend ing its best energies to effect econ omies. The chief battle cry of the opposition is retrenchment What can this mean if not recognition of the tide of prodigality? Are not such symptoms favorable and full of pleas ing expectancy"
 Agitation is the mother of en- nghtenment as truly as necessity is the mother of invention. A good deal is being done by the daily press and the periodicals in the way of en- tightening the individual as to the importance of personal thrift We are not yet such patrons of savings banks as some of the Europeans, not ably the French. The majority of Americans pay too little attention per haps to the opportunities of com pound interest, and rely too much upon speculation-not merely gamb- ling in stocks or real estate, but al So upon increased profits in busi- ness or increased earnings as an em- ployee. The ideal of modest inde- pendence under ones own fig tree is not yet common enough to be the dynamics of a national habit of put ting away small savings, but sta tistics show the upgrowth of a wid- ening recognition of the importance of personal and family thrift. And only pessimists will see the interre- lation of thrift in the home to thrift in governing country. Ameri- ca, a country sparcely and newly set tied and having boundless resources, has manifested moro of the get-rfch- quick sentiment among all classes than countries older and less rich in undeveioped or partly developed i wealth The profigacy of our gov ernment has been the profiigacy of
 youth and abounding vitality. We
 are reaching, there is sufficient reason Ito believe, the age of greater discre-
 tion. The conditions fostered by the continued power of one political party