re inclined to make
light of thrift, and to class both industry and thrift among the merely
"economic virtues." To this school must belong the settlement worker
who spoke of thrift as "ordinarily rather demoralizing." [1] But
another objection to thrift which has been made by settlement workers
is that it was only good for the working classes "until their employers
discovered that there was a margin to their employees' wages."

Is it true that industry and thrift are merely economic virtues? We
instinctively feel that they are something more. One has only to think
of a lazy man to get an impression of something essentially
contemptible and {109} cowardly. On the other hand the man that loves
work and throws himself into it with energy is winning more than
material rewards. The thriftless and the extravagant, whether rich or
poor, are often mean and self-indulgent, lacking the first quality of
the unselfish in lacking self-control. In teaching industry and
thrift, therefore,--though these virtues, like others, have an unlovely
side,--we may feel that we are dealing with two of the elements out of
which not only character but all the social virtues are built.

Nor will the pessimistic theory that the worker must spend as much as
possible on indifferent food and housing in order to keep up the rate
of wages, bear the light of common sense. It is true that the man who
merely hoards for the sake of hoarding, developing no new and higher
wants, no clearly defined aims, will still be almost as helpless as the
most thriftless. But no one is more helpless against the encroachments
of employers than the man who lives from hand to mouth, whose
necessities press ever hard upon him, crippling him and crippling those
{110} with whom he competes in the open market. Then again, successful
cooperation is impossible to the thriftless. The lack of self-control,
the lack of power to defer their pleasures, unfits them for combined
effort and makes it more difficult for them to be loyal to their
fellow-workmen. Visitors can advocate thrift, therefore, for both
economic and moral reasons.

There is a use of the word "thrift" that may help us to realize its
best meaning. Gardeners call a plant of vigorous growth a "thrifty"
plant. Let us bear this in mind in our charitable work, and remember
that anything that hinders vigorous growth is essentially unthrifty.
Thrift means something more than the hoarding of small savings. In