§ 9. But though the individual self-interest of the producer cannot be relied upon to favour progressive wages, except in certain industries and up to a certain point, the collective interest of consumers lends stronger support to "the economy of high wages." We have seen that the possession of an excessive proportion of "power to consume" by classes who, because their normal healthy wants are already fully satisfied, refuse to exert this power, and insist upon storing it in unneeded forms of capital, is directly responsible for the slack employment of capital and labour. If the operation of industrial forces throw an increased proportion of the "power to consume" into the hands of the working classes, who will use it not to postpone consumption but to raise their standard of material and intellectual comfort, a fuller and more regular employment of labour and capital must follow. If the stronger organisation of labour is able to raise wages, and the higher wages are used to demand more and better articles of consumption, a direct stimulus to the efficiency of capital and labour is thus applied. The true issue, however, must not be shirked. If the power of purchase now "saved" by the wealthier classes passed into the hands of the workers in higher money wages, and was not spent by them in raising their standard of comfort, but was "invested" in various forms of capital, no stimulus to industry would be afforded; the "savings" of one class would have fallen into the hands of another class, and their excess would operate to restrict industry precisely as it now operates. Though we would gladly see in the possession of the working classes an increased proportion of those forms of capital which are socially useful, this simple act of transfer, however brought about, would furnish no stimulus to the aggregate industry. From the standpoint of the community nothing else than a rise in the average standard of current consumption can stimulate industry. When it is clearly grasped that a demand for commodities is the only demand for the use of labour and of capital, and not merely determines in what particular direction these requisites of production shall be applied, the hope of the future of our industry is seen to rest largely upon the confident belief that the working classes will use their higher wages not to draw interest from investments (a self-destructive policy) but to raise their standard of life by the current satisfaction of all those wholesome desires of body and mind which lie latent under an "economy of low wages." The satisfaction of new good human desires, by endowing life with more hope and interest, will render all intelligent exertion more effective, by distributing demand over a larger variety of commodities will give a fuller utilisation both of natural and human resources, and by redressing the dislocated balance of production and consumption due to inequality of purchasing power, will justify high wages by increased fulness and regularity of work. But it must be clearly recognised that however desirable "saving" may seem to be as a moral virtue of the working classes, any large practice of saving undertaken before and in preference to an elevation of current consumption, will necessarily cancel the economic advantages just dwelt upon. Just as the wise individual will see he cannot afford to "save" until he has made full provision for the maintenance of his family in full physical efficiency, so the wise working class will insist upon utilising earlier accesses of wages in promoting the physical and intellectual efficiency of themselves and their families before they endeavour to "invest" any considerable portion of their increased wages. Mr. Gould puts this point very plainly and convincingly: "Where economic gains are small, savings mean a relatively low plane of social existence. A parsimonious people are never progressive, neither are they, as a rule, industrially efficient. It is the man with many wants--not luxurious fancies, but real legitimate wants--who works hard to satisfy his aspirations, and he it is who is worth hiring. Let economists still teach the utility and the necessity of saving, but let the sociologist as firmly insist that to so far practise economy as to prevent in the nineteenth century a corresponding advance in civilisation of the working with the other classes is morally inequitable and industrially bad policy. I am not sorry that the American does not save more. Neither am I sure but that if many working-class communities I have visited on the Continent were socially more ambitious, there would not be less danger from Radical theories.