A dollar spent today will purchase but fifty cents' worth compared to five years ago.

A dollar saved today will be worth a dollar in five years from today and will be earning interest all that time.

The co-operative bank should be educating the public to save to keep every mother comfortable in her declining years. Every mother should be properly cared for as she travels the sunset hill of life.

Emerson says, "That whoso supplies a real human need, however obscure his home, the world will make a path to his door."

And that is what I want every co-operative bank to do, and if you do it the co-operative banks will be the biggest institutions in every town and city in this commonwealth.

The Task That is Ours.

Extracts from PRESIDENT WALTER F. MCDOWELL's address at the Washington State League Meeting.

I have linked the building and loan association with the church and the school-a mighty triangle of which we form a humble but important part-a sacred trinity of American life. The church may or may not have our personal support. You and I have passed the portals of the schoolhouse never to return. But from the cradle to the grave all of us are everywhere and always confronted with the problem of thrift as represented by the building and loan association. But overtopping all of these, and for which they form a safe and sure foundation, stands the American home, rightly called the safeguard of American liberties. And you building and loan men, you home builders, you thrift encouragers, you preachers of financial independence for the masses, have an almost overwhelming responsibility in the supremacy and maintenance of the American home.

Our state and national organizations may well take for their motto, "Every American family in a home of its own." We must insistently press home the truth that a real home cannot be rented. No man, proud of his American citizenship, should place his family in a rented house, unless necessary, any more than he would dress his wife and children in rented clothes. A real home must have the glory of ownership. The theory upon which we work to make good the above motto, is that we maintain various local organizations, under strict but fair rules and regulations, to which the thrifty can intrust their idle dollars which, in large and small sums, will be loaned on first-class security to those who desire to provide themselves with homes. Savings and loan associations are doing this all over our land, making a nationwide effort that results in placing every year thousands of families in homes of their own.

To carry on this great home-building movement, we must continually teach the benefits of right-incurred debt. Debt is not

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a curse if properly handled, but on the other hand has been the financial making of many a prosperous business man of today. The building and loan association shows a man how to get in debt and at the same time it lays before him the road out. It is one of our ordinary duties, one that must be exercised with care and in keeping with the true spirit of helpfulness, to teach the blessings of debt. We can all join with Edgar E. Guest in his little poem:

DEBT.

"There's no truer friend than debt
Wisely made and fairly met,
Debt which marks a distant goal
Is a builder of the soul,
Debt which means some worthy end
Is a staunch and loyal friend.

Debt's a pledge that you will stand
Firmly by your native land,
Debt becomes your guarantee

Mark the citizen and he

Plans for the joys that are to be,
By his debts his worth is known-
There's the home he hopes to own,
Here's the patch of ground which he
Says that some day his will be.

There's a purpose running through
Every task he finds to do,
On his shoulders lies a care

That you will keep the faith and be Which he did not have to bear,

In your dealings fair and just,
One that all the world can trust.

And he toils from day to day

For the debts which he will pay.

Debts are proof that men believe

In your purpose to achieve,

And they eloquently speak

Of the better things you seek

Wisely made and fairly met,

There's no truer friend than debt."

Every time we can persuade a man to take on a home-purchasing debt, we have contributed to that man's financial integrity and his standing in the community. Every family so domiciled in its own home has taken, perhaps unconsciously, its place as a national defender. It becomes at once, by some unseen, unfathomed but unmistakable power, a foundation stone upon which is builded national glory. A man in his own home does not need to wrap the flag around him and dare the world to shoot. He has, through the unseen processes of spiritual attainment, become the essence of patriotism-the real guardian of national pride

and honor.

"Every family in a home of its own" should be the rallying cry of every community as voiced by chambers of commerce, social and business clubs, fraternal organizations and churches, and of course the saving and loan associations must lead the way. All of these other agencies may be brought to preach the doctrine, but we have the responsibility of leading and directing the influences that assist in the great result. We are organized for that purpose, and it is plainly our duty and privilege to work out this high ideal in the plain terms of business transactions.

We ought all of us, in my judgment, to feel a high degree of pride in the fact of our special privileges as builders of national security. We all hope for the brighter day when men will leave to barbarians the settlement of differences by means of

war which rarely settles anything. But as long as nations resort to that doubtful method of debate to settle national and international disputes, we can best preserve our own country from the aggressor without or the transgressor within by investing it with. the solidity, the patriotism, the majesty of a nation of homes.

Is the American home really the safeguard of American liberties? If we all have the inspiration of that conviction, and I think we all have, then we are bound together in an unbeatable union whose royal ambition shall be crowned with success in due time. Nothing can defeat men whose purpose is the public good. The fact that our movement is as yet comparatively small should not discourage us nor keep our eyes from the ultimate object we hope to attain. The sun blazes fiercely every day and at night leaves earth and sea about as he found them in the morning, but the gentle moon comes her unassuming way and governs the mighty tides of the oceans. So our movement, more modest in its attainments than the banks, is yet quietly bringing to fruition the doctrine of giving the American home a still higher and supremer place. Those of us who are giving our lives in this service ought to pursue our course with redoubled zeal. We are the messengers who bear the truth of home-ownership, thrift and decent living without which virtues the foundations of the republic would crumble away.

Ben Franklin's Thriftograms.

Save and have.

Every little makes a mickle.

Little strokes fell great oaks.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

God helps those that help themselves.

Spend one penny less than thy clear gains.

Look before or you'll find yourself behind.

The way to wealth is as short as the way to market.

He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner. Money can beget money, and its off-spring can beget more. It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance. Learning is to the studious and riches to the careful. Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Remember that money is of the prolific, generating nature. All things are cheap to the saving, dear to the wasteful. If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting. Beware of small expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. A penny saved is a twopence clear. A pin a day is a groat a year.

It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but expense is constant and certain.

Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.

Bubble-Chasers.

Will the time ever come when the bubble-chasers will wake

up or die out? For that is the only way to put an end to the lucrative industry of bubble-blowing, since it is a foregone conclusion that the blowers will blow 'em as long as the fools will chase 'em. The past few years have given no indication that the birthrate of the chasers has been decreasing or that their gullability has been waning. Some well-informed students of aberration even hint that they are exceeding the fixed rate of one a minute.

For the sake of the deluded victims as well as for the sake of the fair name of society in general something ought to be done to keep the ratio down. We don't know of any more effective antidote than the preaching and spreading of sound building-loan doctrine. We don't bel ve that bubble-blowing has a chance to thrive where building and loan associations are well established and understood.

More Homes-Will the People Respond?

Judge W. Meredith Yeatman, chairman of the Publicity Committee of the Hamilton County (Ohio) League of Building Associations, when interviewed as to the prospects of new construction in the spring, said:

"With the apparent settlement of all difficulties between the employers and the unions through the new Wage Board, an early start on new construction work is certain. Whether this will be confined to commercial construction or will also include the erection of homes, still remains a question of financing. The business construction will go ahead even as it has proceeded in a smaller way for the last few years. The money needed for this work will be forthcoming. The demands on the banks coming through their commercial depositors cannot be ignored.

"The financing of home constructions, however, is quite a different matter. In nearly every city in the country this is taken care of through the building associations, which are the depositories of the people's savings. To such funds we must look for home construction, and in Cincinnati, unfortunately, the treasuries of the building associations are empty. Only by replenishing this source of supply by inducing more people to deposit their savings with these institutions can we expect to meet the present conditions.

"In other cities where the associations are large and with practically unlimited funds at their disposal they vie with each other for the loan business of the builders of homes. Few cities are in the same condition as Cincinnati as regards funds for home financing, and it cannot be denied that the reason lies in a failure to give proper support to her great home financing institutions, the building associations."