§ 3. Spenders and savers. The uniform preference for present over future would lead a Robinson Crusoe to use up and wear out his wealth, and to apply all his labor to present enjoyment, even on the penalty of future misery. On the other hand, the excessive preference for the future over the present would condemn him to the miser's fate of misery and starvation in the midst of wealth. Evidently somewhere between these two extremes he must settle upon some rule of life and habit of choice that involves a ratio of exchange of present and future uses. The world is made up of peo ple each with his habit of choice, not absolutely fixed, slowly changing with years, with education and with circumstances, and occasionally broken into by impulse. Members of fam ilies and of groups show some likeness in their habits of choice. Each one having separate control over incomes through the institution of private property, is able to maintain his own standards. It is a matter of degree, ranging from those who spend all they can get hold of, to those who save nearly all. Thus at any time the community is made up of those who are spending more than their incomes, those who are spending just up to their incomes (the large class of con servative abstainers), and those who are spending less than their incomes (the cumulative abstainers). This psycholog ical difference between abstainers and prodigals varies from one person to another, depending on natural temperament, on habit bred of family and community customs and train ing, and on states of health and on moods affecting the appe tites, the imagination, the conscience, and the will.
§ 4. No common standard of abstinence. It must not be thought that any two men's savings in terms of dollars ex press the comparative degrees of abstinence, sacrifice, suffer ing, deprivation, etc., of the two men. A poor man denies himself many simple comforts for years to pay $1000 for a little home ; a rich man may be able to buy $100,000 of bonds with a fraction of the profits of a rising business or of a grow ing income from investments while increasing his living ex penses in all directions. It is absurd to suggest that the latter has abstained a hundred times as much as the former in a subjective sense.
It might seem that it would be easier for a well-fed, well clothed, well-housed man to exercise abstinence than for a hungry, ill-clad man with no roof over his head. But neither saving nor prodigality is regularly related to any particular state of fortune or is found exclusively among either rich or poor. A poor peasant living on the most meager fare may possess in high degree the quality of abstinence which is entirely lacking in the rich spendthrift. A man well on in life with a simple standard of living can easily save a large share of an increasing income.
Abstinence is a resultant of the opposing forces of de sire in the one man's will. Both of the poor man's desires dependent on a dollar may be very strong (we have no psychic standard unit) but the desire for present enjoyment be the stronger; whereas both the rich man's desires that are dependent on a thousand dollars may be very weak, yet the desire for the present good be the weaker. Natural differ
ences in temperament combine with education, habit, and the imitation of prevailing standards to make desires mild or intense. Saving may result when a vivid imagination aids in making the future desire stronger than present strong im or it may result when very simple tastes fixed by habit are combined with equally habitual and unreasoning frugality. The magnitude of 10 minus 8 i greater than that of 100 minus 99. Two men's powers o abstinence can not be numerically compared, but the obje ive results ap pearing in the amounts saved can be com red.
§ 5. Saving without and with the use of money. Ab stinence of the conservative sort shows its results in keeping in repair and providing for the replacement of fertile soil, ditches, fences, houses, tools, and equipment of every kind in the owner's possession. Much of this does not need to take the money form, but much of it does, as in payment of wages and purchase of materials to keep up repairs, and in the laying aside of a depreciation fund, or the provision of insur ance to replace the agents when destroyed. It calls for posi tive effort on the part of the owner to resist treating gross usance and receipts of his fields, tools and other equipment as a disposable income, in order to enjoy a more bountiful present at the expense of the future. In many ways one may "borrow from the future" without borrowing from any per son (unless it be one's self).
Abstinence of the cumulative sort likewise can and does in large measure take the form of saving in kind rather than in money. One has but to dispose of his labor and wealth so as to use in each period less than the full net income of the period and to put the surplus into durable forms yield ing future incomes. The pressure of present desire is so great, and so many unexpected present needs crowd upon men, that few find it possible or think it possible to save much in this way, and fewer still find it easy.
When incomes are received in money, saving usually takes that form. Every clear dollar of money income (after pro viding for the maintenance of the principal) is disposable either as present enjoyment or as savings to constitute a new capital. This may be done by buying labor and materials to build new agents, "adding barn to barn," or it may be by buying other durative direct agents, as a house to live in where one has been paying rent, or it may be by buying dura tive indirect agents, as a horse and plow which one has had to hire for use in his own fields. Or the money may be used to purchase a factory, or to hire laborers and to buy materials to create a new industry.