6 THE OUTLOOK FOR CAPITAL

spent on some industrial or national purpose. When
it is put into industry it builds a factory or a ship or a
railway or a canal, or clears a wilderness for cultiva-
tion, or does one of the innumerable other things
which are necessary for the production and transport
of the goods which mankind enjoys. And*it is only
by this process of handing over buying power, instead
of using it for our own amusement and enjoyment,
to others who will use it for furthering production
that the tools and equipment of industry can be
multiplied.

Something can be done by banks and financiers
in supplying credit in the form of advances and
acceptances; but this method is only like oiling the
wheel of industry, the real driving power of which
has to be saved capital. Creating credits simply
means that a certain amount of buying power is
manufactured and handed over to those to whom the
credit is given. It does not set free any labour or
goods to be put into industry. That is only done
by the man who abstains from consumption and
saves money by restraining his desire to spend it on
himself, and puts it at the disposal of industry. The
man who saves money, who has always hitherto been
rather despised by his companions and resented by a
certain class of social reformer and many other un-
educated people as a capitalist bloodsucker, is thus,
in fact, the person who leaves the world richer than
he found it, having put his money, the product of
his own work, into increasing the world's output,
instead of spending it on such forms of enjoyment as
heavy lunches and cinema shows.