Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-12-11

happen tnefp VIII ne only a RtiHluius
to war preparations in this country,
II our armies hold the Hun, we shall
be nightly pleased and doubly anx-
ious to return the blow, II our men
fall by the hundreds. such wave
of wrath viii sweep the country as
will make us more determined to
pat an end to Faiserlsm forever.
BUSINESS AND THE WAR
NHARLEs w, MEARs, writing in
I Judicious Advertising, on the
topic Are Business Men a War
Time Menace@ gives expression to
the fear that over-economy may be-
come as great an evil as extrava-
gance. Personally" he says, sit
would be no surprise to me IL this
stop spending money cry Is part of the
Kalser's German-made plans to has
ten our defeat. Business activity sup
ports and keeps alive the home, the
church, the school, the State, the
Nation and the world" and to stifie
business would be to choke of the
supply of war revenues at their very
source, he believes.
There are two kinds of economy,
the writer points out-that which
means prosperity and success in the
war and that which means poverty
and defeat. and he continues, "the
only kind of economy we need Is of
throw away an uneaten potato or an
uneaten piece of bread, you are
wasting som mething that nature has
given you and that cannot be restor-
ed. We must not waste food products.
But money is quite a different thing.
You may spend your money for
whatever you like, whenever you
like, as you like, and it has not been
destroyed. 1t is intact. 1t has passed
on to other hands, and by those other
hands will be passed on to still other
hands. And it is precisely this pro-
cess of passing money from hand to
hand that puts lifeblood into busi-
ness. And business in turn is the
thing-and the only thing-that
gives employment to men and wom-
en-, and enables them to buy bread
and the other necessities OF life. Sit
tight on your nickels, squeeze your
pennies. get the tight-wad habit with
money and you are deadening the
world. You are withholding from
some one a chance to live, When you
butcher a COW YOU butcher the cows
milk supply and the milk supply of
her progeny to the end of the world.
When you pinch your dollars and re-
fuse to spend, you murder the power
of that money to buy, not only for
you, but for every other person to
whom that money might pass, were
you to give it start"
There is nothing new or phantastic
in these views. They are founded on
the fact that earning and spending
depend upon each other-that you
can safely spend as long as you can
earn. but that if all of us continue
to earn without spending much it will
not be long before we are not able to
,earn so much. In short, we spend be-
cause we are able to earn and we
are able TO earn because we spend.
The government, as the writer
says, can take care of itself. 1t will
be able to commander money and
materials wherever they are and the
higher the prosperity of the coun-
try the easier for the government to
acquire either or both of these. In
other words, over-economy is as bad
as reckless extravaganza. Taxation
on business is going to win this
war and to provide the revenues as
sessed against it business must be
kept as nearly normal as war condi-
tons will permit. The chronic money
hoarder is quite as bad as the spend
thrift