which has for its end the maintenance of individual powers at
highest efficiency for the longest life and provision for a more efficient
posterity with more efficient instruments of production.

It is prudential use of wealth to gather into the farm, not only such
machinery in the shape of buildings, fences and roadways as will make the
future labor more effective, but all possible fertility that will make the
future owners of the farm a larger welfare in possession. All wealth put
into the form of productive capital is prudentially consumed. All
so-called permanent improvements which look to the better satisfaction of
future wants fulfil the condition of prudent foresight. All public
improvements are really such, when this far-seeing provision for future
wants and abilities of society is made. Such methods are the genuine
economic saving in which the community should be encouraged. A saving
which merely stores against a future personal want contributes less to
general welfare, and does not stimulate the natural growth of wants in the
individual, which is the chief source of increasing power. The one who
saves that he may have better tools with which to do more for his future
satisfaction, not only adds to his physical abilities to meet his daily
wants, but adds the strongest stimulant to energy in his work. The supply
of ordinary wants being provided for, new wants arise.

In the spirit of prudential consumption such wants are encouraged as give
greater and greater abilities. Thus the ideal of life is constantly
raised, and the struggle is not for existence but for higher enjoyment and
more genuine welfare. The wealth which comes in this accumulation of
capital for larger accomplishment aids true philanthropy. The whole world
gets more of welfare with every addition made by farmers to their working
capital. In the same way all increase of capital in machinery, tools,
warehouses, ships and other means of transport contribute to a
philanthropy that makes society richer.

Such saving is entirely opposed to the miserly spirit which hides wealth
because of mere love of possession or fear of future want. It is the true
way of both spending and having, since it expends earnings for that which
continues to aid in bringing larger returns to meet increasing want. That
social system is most prudent for the world which accumulates productive
capital without reducing any part of society to poverty. Prudence,
however, requires tha