Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/12

viii of national production, general scale of living, and thrift.

I have in these papers made many references to classes of people, e.g. the capitalistic class, the wage-earning class, etc. These are not, of course, with any intention of making social distinctions, but rather of showing differences in economic interests. The wage-earner is a capitalist in so far as he owns property and he may cease to be a wage-earner at all. Oppositely, the property of a capitalist may vanish and he may be constrained to become a wage-earner.

I find no fault with any class of people for deliberately producing the bad situation that now exists among us. It simply developed because it had to. The correction will be similarly inevitable. I believe that all of our people are equally patriotic and are equally concerned in the national welfare. The desire of some for the maintenance of present evils is attributable to ignorance more than to anything else. Many persons who have tasted new luxuries feel that they have but acquired what is due them. With equal thoughtlessness they would vote a great bonus to the ex-soldiers. It is not to be expected that the millions of our people can work out for themselves the complicated economic conditions that have produced a phantasmagoria, or understand them, or foresee whither they are leading, i.e. to hard times that will be nature’s corrective. It is, however, the duty of everybody who thinks, to give attention to these subjects and out of their intelligence to promote clear thinking by others and thus contribute toward amelioration.


 * Oct. 1, 1923.