were all at work, they would not be worth much; consequently the mere fact that they are idle does not of itself occasion much loss. Their criminality is of course another matter.

That which is commonly known as the leisure class, however, differs from the vagrant class in at least one important particular. It is made up in the main of men and women of more than average native capacity. The man, for example, who has been able to accumulate a fortune out of his own earnings, or by his own business foresight and capacity, is pretty certain to be a man of considerable productive capacity. If he chooses to use that capacity in productive enterprises, he can add materially to the wealth and prosperity of the whole community. If he chooses not to use it, the loss to the community is correspondingly great. These considerations present a problem of the very greatest magnitude. The greater the productive capacity of the individual, the more desirable it is, from the standpoint of national prosperity, that he shall use that capacity. On the other hand, the greater his capacity, the more likely he is to accumulate a fortune; and, consequently, if he is not controlled by high moral and religious motives, the more likely he is to retire from business and live in idleness. If he were a man of low productive capacity, it would not be so great a loss if he were to retire; but such a man will seldom be able to accumulate a sufficient fortune to be able to retire.

Lest there should remain some doubt as to whether it is a loss to society when a man of great capacity for usefulness stops working, let us consider the case of a great surgeon. The author has such a man in mind. He is so skillful and so capable that his services are sought by large numbers of people. He could have retired years ago and lived in elegant leisure on his accumulated wealth. Had he chosen to do so, some hundreds of people would have been deprived of the benefit of his skill. Had he been a man of mediocre ability, it would not have mattered much; but a man of mediocre

ability could not have accumulated enough to be able to stop working. The fact that this brilliant surgeon is so much needed is the very thing which would have made it possible, if he had been a man of perverted morals, to stop working; but that is the very reason why he should not stop. There seems to be no solution of the problem, except sound moral standards which will keep such men busy. If they lack such sound moral standards, even compulsion would not call forth their best efforts. That which has been said of our great surgeon may be repeated of any great man in any useful occupation.

The ineffectively employed. By the ineffectively employed are meant all those who, through lack of training, lack of opportunity, or sheer lack of initiative, are now doing less useful work than they might have been doing had they had the proper training, opportunity, and initiative. These include men who are doing unskilled work who might have been doing skilled work, men doing skilled manual work who might have been doing expert mental work, or men doing routine mental work who might have been doing work requiring inventiveness, originality, and enterprise. This is primarily an educational rather than a moral problem. The question of morals and religion enters into the problem to a certain extent, however. No matter how many and excellent are the schools and other educational opportunities, unless students are inspired with a high purpose to make use of the opportunities which are furnished, these opportunties alone will not solve the problem. Large numbers will remain unskilled, ignorant, and in a low state of productivity. The individual who remains less useful to the nation than he might be is not only doing himself an injury but is also injuring the nation. He who does less well than he can does ill.

Vice as waste of energy. One very good definition of a vice is that it is a habit which wastes or dissipates human energy. It should, perhaps, be distinguished from crime in that vice wastes one's own energy, whereas crime wastes not only

one's own but that of other people besides. No community which wastes in either way a large proportion of its energy can hope to prosper as much as a community which does not. The use of drugs which merely produce excitation or irritation of the nerves, overindulgence in any kind of excitement beyond what is necessary for recreation, or even excessive devotion to sport, may become a vice in this sense as truly as excessive eating or drinking. Crime and fraud seem to call for the use of the compulsory power of the state rather than for moral suasion.

Luxury. Luxurious consumption can be controlled by authority and compulsion to a certain extent, but not wholly ; that is to say, there are certain clear and undebatable forms of luxurious consumption, such as the use of alcohol and opium, which the government can safely prohibit, but much must be left to the discretion of the individual. There is a time-worn argument to the effect that luxurious expenditure gives employment to labor and thus benefits the poor. This is similar in principle to the theory that the destruction of property, say the burning of a building or the breaking of a window, gives employment to labor. The stupidity of this argument was never more clearly shown than by Frédéric Bastiat in his famous work entitled "Sophisms of Political Economy." He pictures a shopkeeper who is about to chastise a scapegrace son who has broken a pane of glass. Some sympathetic bystanders argue that the boy is really a public benefactor in that he has made work for the glazier, who will then have six francs, the cost of a new pane, to spend, and that the butcher, the baker, and others will share in the benefit.

Assuming that it becomes necessary to spend six francs in repairing the damage, if you mean to say that the accident brings in six francs to the glazier, and to that extent encourages his trade, I grant it fairly and frankly, and admit that you reason justly.

"The glazier arrives, does his work, pockets his money, rubs his hands, and blesses the scapegrace son. That is what we see.

"But if, by way of deduction, you come to conclude, as is too often done, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it makes money circulate, and

that encouragement to trade in general is the result, I am obliged to cry, halt! Your theory stops at what we see, and takes no account of what we don't see.

"We don't see that since our burgess has been obliged to spend his six francs on one thing, he can no longer spend them on another.

"We don't see that if he had not this pane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his shoes, which are down at the heels; or have placed a new book on his shelf. In short, he would have employed his six francs in a way in which he cannot employ them now. Let us see then how the account stands with trade in general. The pane being broken, the glazier's trade is benefited to the extent of six francs. That is what

we see.

"If the pane had not been broken, the shoemaker's or some other trade would have been encouraged to the extent of six francs. That is what we don't see. And if we take into account what we don't see, which is a negative fact, as well as what we do see, which is a positive fact, we shall discover that trade in general, or the aggregate of national industry, has no interest, one way or the other, whether windows are broken or not.

"Let us see, again, how the account stands with Jacques Bonhomme. On the last hypothesis, that of the pane being broken, he spends six francs, and gets neither more nor less than he had before, namely, the use and enjoyment of a pane of glass. On the other hypothesis, namely, that the accident had not happened, he would have expended six francs on shoes, and would have had the enjoyment both of the shoes and the pane of glass.

"Now as the good burgess, Jacques Bonhomme, constitutes a fraction of society at large, we are forced to conclude that society, taken in the aggregate, and after all accounts of labor and enjoyment have been squared, has lost the value of the pane which has been broken."

In one respect the argument against luxury is less strong than that against the breaking of a pane of glass, but in another respect it is stronger. When the shopkeeper in the story has to spend six francs on a pane of glass, he gets no satisfaction out of it and deprives himself of a pair of shoes which he needs. Had he spent the six francs on a luxury, he would presumably have got some enjoyment out of it, even though it had been followed by indigestion or a headache. To this extent it would have been better to have a luxury costing six francs than to have been compelled, through

the carelessness of an overexuberant son, to spend that amount on a pane of glass. On the other hand, when one compares the expenditure of money for a luxury with the investment of money in tools or other instruments of production, one does not get so favorable a picture. When one spends money for a luxury, one does, it is true, set labor to work, in a luxury-producing industry; but if one were to spend the same amount of money for tools, one would set an equal quantity of labor to work in a tool-producing industry. It is at least as desirable to give work to toolmakers as to luxury producers. In fact, it is much more desirable. The more men there are working in tool-making industries, the better supplied with tools the nation will be. The way they are set to work is by the purchase of tools; that is, by the investment of money in tools.

If you have a dollar to spend over and above what is necessary to maintain you in efficient comfort, you have your choice of spending it on some unnecessary article of consumption or of investing it in some productive enterprise. Whether it be a dollar or a hundred thousand dollars, the principle is the same. If you decide to invest your money in a productive enterprise, you tend, to the extent of your investment, to set labor to work erecting the buildings or manufacturing the machines which will be needed in production. The more people there are who are investing in this way, and the more they invest, the more productive enterprises we shall have. This not only sets labor to work preparing the buildings and machinery, but will continue to employ labor to run the enterprises. Again, as a result of this, more goods are produced and the nation is better fed, clothed, and supplied with all necessaries. It is therefore very much better that there should be a great many people investing their money productively than that they should merely spend their money for extravagant luxuries which are of no use to anyone except themselves. He who does less well with his money than he might do is