Happy-go-lucky Americanism always has been speculative, but seldom a security investor. Here and there is the home owner. Overtopping him by a vast majority has been the renting wage-worker, the spender, the taker of chances and the come-easy-go-easy type of citizen. In a land of abundance, frugality and thrift have held their places only spasmodically and among the minority.

Swiftly the screen of circumstances is being shifted. In the space of twelve months hundreds of thousands of Americans have become security holders, many little realizing the significance of their changing attitude. They have become Liberty Bond holders, buyers of Thrift Stamps. Many have not known, do not yet know that that which they do for their country in its crucial hour is certain to create a new instinct that of a fixed habit of saving and sound investment.

A banker once said, "If I could place to the credit of each man and woman in the community a savings deposit of one dollar I could make thrifty thousands where there have been only thousands of spenders, and I could build the greatest bank per population in the land."

The theory carries out. The men or women with a few dollars in Liberty Bonds or Thrift Stamps will add to those dollars. They will regret when an unnecessary dollar must be drawn from their incomes or their bank deposits. With thousands the thrift instinct has been aroused for the first time: More years of war or sudden peace will not affect the personal equation in the preachment of frugality. At first it will be only gradually realized, the evolution of type being brought about, but nevertheless surely the foundation has been laid for a greater and saner, a better and more secure America after the war. St. Paul Pioneer Press.