SOME ILLUSTRATIVE FACTS

future goods. If this is true, we should expect to findpoverty and riches associated respectively with a highand a low rate of interest, or with borrowing and lending,or with spending and saving, or with perishable anddurable instruments. That this characterization is in gen-eral correct is not likely to be denied.

It is true of course that the amount loaned to the pooris small because each individual loan is necessarily small,but the number of these loans is very great, and the de-sire of the poor to borrow, when such desire exists, is veryintense. The many conspicuous exceptions to these rulesare explainable on other grounds. It not infrequentlyhappens that the poor, instead of being borrowers, arelenders, but in this case either they have unusual fore-sight, self-control, regard for their children, and otherqualities tending in the same direction, or else theirincome stream has such a time shape as to encouragelending rather than borrowing. Reverse conditions applylikewise to the case of many wealthy men who are bor-rowers not lenders. In general, a rich man borrows notfrom lack of self-control and foresight, but because ofexceptional opportunities to invest advantageously, in-cluding opportunities to protect and extend investmentsalready made.

As a rule, however, the poor are more eager borrowersthan the rich, and are often obliged to patronize pawnshops and other agencies in which the rate of interest isinordinately high. The dwellings and other instrumentsof the poor are generally of a very unsubstantial charac-ter. Their clothes are selected of necessity more for cheap-ness than durability. Such uneconomical expendituresare often even unavoidable, and reflect a very high esti-mate on present as compared with future goods. The

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