The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-04-09
For Good of
 the Community


 the possessor; 1t does none to anyone else. It is potentially hidden under bushel measure; opportunity smothered out by inactivity.
 1t requires no genius to invest ones money we'll. The best known means are the safest. The readiest and most handy are those that are strongest and furtherest removed from suspicion and doubt
 There are the postal savings the war savings stamps and the certificates of the United States treasury to be had at every postoffice in the land. No man has to carry the smallest sum of money to his home or about on his person subject to loss His postoffice is at his elbow
 No city man has to travel about looking for safe place to invest his dollar. He has the government forms of investment obtainable at the postoffice and the saw lngS bank is on many corners. There are brokers who can secure any manner of government security for him at nominal commission. There is no excuse for his dollars to be idle single day.
 The building and loan associations, whose record over the years is the best proof of their safety for the investor, offer 5, 6 and ' per cent according, to the class of investment desired One is as good as the other from the standpoint of security. All are liquid; can be converted into cash in case man wants the cash.
 M. B. Wellborn, governor of the Sixth district reserve bank, has issued circular letter about the idle dollar, in the course of which he says:
 An nactive dollar in any good bank
 will do vastly more business than the
 same dollar in the hands of an in-
 dividual. As matter of fact, money
 in the hands of individuals has no
 value until it is used. In the hands of
 the miser it tends to be destructive,
 for it invites to robbery and murder.
 Some of the most pitiable tales coming to the fore once in while are those about the loss of several hundreds of dollars saved out of mans sweat and taken from the trunk or mattress in which he has hoarded them A hard-working man at Pratt City few years ago was robbed of $3,0O0 that he had tucked away in his bed through the years.
 Dante pictured the lowest. regions of hades as lake filled with dark and viscid fluid in which floated aimlessly almost shapeless human trunks. These he said were those people who in life neither climbed nor fell, neither advanced nor re- ceded. Such was the writer's contempt for them that he placed them in the most ignominious recess of the Inferno.
 The man who fails to invest his dollars is cipher in his community. He is not helping himself and he is not helping any one else. He does not trust anyone and no one trusts him. He loses in the end through the idleness of his dollars, be- cause they produce nothing for the com- munity in which he lives
 He who thinks he is bettering his condi- tion by hiding out his hoardings, is doing the contrary, for we all live off the com munity and every dollar withheld from the advance of that community impedes the progress of every man and every in- stitution.
 The most inspiring thing in Birming- ham at this time is the building of homes of modest character by the people who have placed their weekly and monthly savings at interest in the banks, in war savings treasury certificates and build ing and loan associations
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