Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/19

 be invested in industry; if he buys old ones he lets a holder out who wants cash, and he helps to provide that market for securities without which the present system of financing industry could not be maintained.

So much had to be said concerning the benefit that the investor unwittingly works for the rest of mankind, because many people still believe that there is something mean and unsocial about the act of saving and investing, that the nicest and most generous thing to do with money is to spend it, and that thereby they "give employment" and quicken the wheels of trade. Undoubtedly we give employment when we spend money, but no more than when we invest it, and when we invest we give employment in a way that increases the world's equipment for production and so goes on giving more and more employment, and increasing the stock of goods on which we live. It is certainly possible for any given man or woman to spend too little and save too much, from the point of view of his or her own benefit, but from that of the benefit of the community we are very far from the peak at which over-saving is in sight.

By investing then we are certain to benefit other people (though if we are careless about it the other people may be the last whom we