Chapter XXIII. Wealth Used By Individuals.
_Wealth to be consumed for welfare._--The only economic motive for the accumulation of wealth is its use in promotion of welfare. While the old maxim says, "A penny saved is worth two gained," every one recognizes the penny as absolutely worthless except in view of some utility to be gained in spending it. So with every form of wealth. All economic value disappears when the thought of use is wanting. Such use, whether practically instantaneous, like the destruction of the gunpowder projecting the bullet, or extended through hundreds of years, as in the wearing out of a castle, or a bridge, is properly called consumption of wealth.
A majority of the great problems concerning social welfare are connected with the use of wealth, and therefore fall under the discussion of consumption. Indeed, so long as there is little accumulated wealth, as in the savage state, social problems have little significance. The statement of the Apostle Paul, "The love of money is the root of all evil," while not confined in application to wealth already accumulated, has its most important bearing in the fact that wealth accumulated is itself a power to be used or abused by whoever controls it. The saying of Emerson, "The best political economy is care and culture of men," applies most strictly to the uses of wealth and the methods of its consumption. The great question of today in every civilized land is, How can the accumulations of power in the shape of wealth made by this generation be used to establish a continuous welfare, not only for this generation, but for its successors? The wants of society today include not only a reasonable provision for life and health and wisdom and virtue during the life of those who are now active, but an equal provision for the same wants increased with each succeeding generation. In all thought of consuming wealth, we must remember that power in this form is rightly used only when power in some other form results. Thus wealth is consumed, according to natural laws, either for reproducing itself in more advantageous form or for sustaining human power in form of health or wisdom or virtue.
We have social welfare as the result of wealth consumed, or used up. Society is interested in all the wealth accumulated, and the methods of its accumulation and its fair distribution are a part of social machinery; yet these have their chief significance in the final consumption. It is not what we have, but what we do with it, that makes society interested in our possessions. It is not what society has, but how it uses it, that settles the chief questions of welfare or illfare. Not only gunpowder, but every conceivable power in material wealth, has blessing or bane in the use to which it is put. So the welfare of a community cannot be judged by the amount and kind of wealth produced or by the methods in production or by the distribution of ownership. These may be significant in showing the trend of social customs as to individual control, but the last inquiry will still have to be, What welfare comes to the entire community when all this wealth is used? Moreover, no analysis of qualities in any substance called wealth can measure the welfare involved in its use. Its relation to the individual using it and his relation to the whole community, with a careful analysis of wants met and character developed, must be considered. The final question is, How many and what kind of wants are satisfied?