their own sense of personal responsibility; it is not satisfied to punish the criminal who, in the name of organization, undertakes to trespass upon the rights of others; it is striving to do something further than that, it wants to bring home to the business man, to the employee, to the wage-earner and to the wage payer, to the union man and to the non-union man, that business San Francisco is in partnership with working San Francisco and that the community of interest is such between the two that neither can succeed without the other; and those principles that are at stake in that issue are so sacred that government cannot continue if they be destroyed, and no man can successfully destroy in another that which he hopes to retain for himself. AMERICA'S GREATEST YEAR IN FOREIGN TRADE American exports for 1916 reached the unprecedented total of $5,481,000,000. According to a statement issued by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, of the Department of Commerce, this exceeds the total for 1915 by $1,926,000,000 and the total for 1913 by $2,997,000,000. The exports for December are announced as $521,000,000, which exceeds the previous high monthly total by $5,000,000. The December average for the five years previous was $263,000,000. Imports in 1916 aggregated 2,392 million dollars, also a record total. For 1915 the total was 1,779 million, and for 1912, the previous record year, 1,818 million. December mports were valued at 205 million dollars, indicating a continuation of the recovery which set in during September last following the sharp decline from the large total of 246 million for June. The December, 1915 total was 172 million and the December average from 1911 to 1915, inclusive, 153 million dollars. The year's export balance was 3,089 million dollars, as compared with 1,776 million for 1915 and 2,456 for the fiveyear period from 1910 to 1914. The December favorable trade balance was 316 million dollars, compared with 187 million for December, 1915, and 131 million for December, 1914. SAVING MONEY AUTOMATICALLY Several years ago a well-known efficiency expert, famous for his professional service to big business concerns, woke up to the folly of paying salaries and wages to his staff of workers every Saturday night. "Hereafter," he announced, "we will credit your pay instead of handing it out in an envelope, and you will treat your earnings just like a checking account at a bank, drawing whatever you may want at any time for expenses, and leaving the balance to accumulate as savings. In that way, I believe, you will practice thrift automatically." This plan not only met with no objections from employees, but has since been followed so successfully that a few of his people save half their earnings, and the average between five and ten per cent. Moreover, with accumulated surpluseach employee has his own surplus, of course, like an individual bank account they have bought thousands of dollars' worth of good securities. All from a simple change in the method of paying people— a bookkeeping device that made thrift automatic! This is an automatic age. In the United States especially the more nearly automatic you can make anything, the better results seem to be. Saving money certainly ought to be automatic. Every person feels that thrift is commendable; but with most people it involves a struggle every week to get something out of the remnants of wages, to make some sacrifice, or perhaps even to find a bank open on Saturday night when there is a chance to add something to the nest egg. All this work is entirely unnecessary if thrift can be organized so that it will take care of itself; and the possibilities of truly organized, automatic thrift are so great that everybody ought to help bring it about for himself and others. Just the other day, on a train, I was explaining this office saving plan of the efficiency expert's to a fellow-traveler. The brakeman was listening with wide-open eyes. *By special permission. "Say, I never knew such things were done!" he said, in astonishment. "Why, if I'd been able to leave my wages with the company like that for the last fifteen years-drawing only enough for expenses-I'd own stock in this road to-day! As it is, getting all that's coming to me every month in one lump, my folks and myself spend freely, and there's nothing left to save." One point impressed me strongly while I was abroad before the war in England and on the Continent. That was the universal thrift. People over there seemed to get along with simple pleasures and few luxuries, and are certainly not under the constant pressure to spend money exerted in the United States by our high development of advertising and salesmanship, the easy credit offered by installment concerns, and the competition in standards of living. The Briton and the European live on income. If a man over there has fifty thousand put by, money saved or inherited, he touches nothing but the interest. The American, on the contrary, lives on capital. He feels that he is worth all the money he happens to have, and spends pretty much accordingly. If he fell heir to fifty thousand dollars, it would be a temptation to live at the rate of fifty thousand a year for one year, anyway-that is the American way of living on capital instead of income. Coming back home, I began to study the possibilities for promoting thrift on a truly American scale, with the result that I think I have learned something and can make some practical suggestions. There has been a good deal of thrift-preaching in this country during the past five years, and that is all very well as far as it goes-it does good, certainly, in stimulating individuals to be saving. But what we seem to need most right now is easier ways to practice thrift. I soon discovered that this job of saving money needed organizing. It had to be made available and easy for the tens of thousands of people earning salaries and wages in factories, shops, stores, and offices. To make it practical one must make it automatic, so that there would be none of this weekly struggling between desire and conscience. If thrift could be put on a ball-bearing, self-lubricating, nonvibrating basis, it ought to be natural and effective, and in time almost universal. One common objection is that of the thrifty fellow who has already insured his life. "That looks like a good thing for others," he says; "but I'm already carrying all the insurance I can afford. Where do I come in?" And the answer is that probably he need not increase his insurance expense at all. Say he is drawing twenty dollars a week, and has been with the concern four years. His insurance costs him fifty dollars a year, which is five per cent of his wages. The only change for him is that the boss will now pay for ten dollars' worth of additional insurance yearly until he has served his fifth year, and then twenty dollars' worth for the next fiveyear period, and so on, steadily increasing, until the last period, from his sixtieth to his sixty-fifth year, just before he retires, the boss is paying for ninety dollars' worth of insurance for him a year, nearly double what he pays for himself, assuming that his wages in all that time have not increased. Of course he is sure to be earning more money, and the boss is paying on all the increase too. Another apparent difficulty that might strike one in considering the plan for the first time is that some employees may not want to participate. There need be no compulsion. If a man does not want to go in, he can stay out. But participation comes as soon as the plan is understood. A new employee comes to work after the plan is started, say. He is told that he can have five per cent of his wages taken out every pay day and put into a savings fund. Perhaps he is suspicious of the scheme, or doesn't care to save money, so he draws all that is coming to him. One day, after he has been there a month or two, the workers in his department hold an election for a local secretary to represent their interests in the savings fund association. He is asked to vote. “Why, I have no vote!" he says, in surprise. "I'm not in that thing, you know." "You have a vote just the same," he is told. "This fund is managed by the employees themselves—everybody has a vote." That gives him a new view-point on the proposition. It looks square. He investigates the details more fully, and when he has made up his own mind in his own way he usually comes in. When employees are ready to adopt such a plan, they form an association to control and manage the funds. Each department in the business elects its local secretary, who attends to clerical details, and these secretaries elect a general board of directors. All the money contributed by employees and employer goes into regular life insurance, on a special plan which is an amplification of the group insurance plan. (No physical examinations of employees are necessary.) By converting the fund into insurance it is removed from the risks of the employer's business. Each employee has his own contract with the insurance company, a policy carrying loan and surrender values and other benefits. His savings and his pension are safe, no matter what happens to the concern he works for, or how long he stays. with that concern, or what happens to him. Let's suppose that he goes to work at twenty and stays with the same employer until he is sixty-five. For the sake of convenience we will figure his wages at three dollars a day all that time. In reality, of course, he is going to be worth more with each year's experience, and will be promoted and get increased pay. Every dollar automatically adds to his savings and security. Every hour he works overtime contributes to the grand totals. The first week he draws his wages and lets ninety cents remain with the paymaster, or five per cent of $18, his life is at once insured for $2,217. At the end of his first five years he has paid in $234 and his employer $46.80. If he falls sick then and needs money, he can borrow $168 on his insurance. If he is discharged, or quits to work elsewhere, his insurance has a cash surrender value of $126-for five years he has had insurance protection, remember. And if he prefers to convert it into paid-up insurance he need pay no more to the insurance |