It is uneconomic for families of small income to save through buying less food than is needed to keep them in health; but it is likewise uneconomic to spend the income, when work is plentiful and wages good, for expensive foods having little nutriment and then, for lack of savings, to go badly underfed when work is slack and wages are small.
There is for each class of circumstances a golden mean of saving.

The saving habit may develop to irrational excess and become miserliness, but this happens rarely compared with the many cases where men in the period of their largest earnings spend up to the limit on a gay life and make no provision for any of the mischances of life--business reverses, loss of employment, accidents, temporary sickness, permanent invalidity, or unprovided old age.

Despite the development of late of new agencies and opportunities for saving there is need of doing more toward popular education in thrift.[3] Sec.3.

#Commercial bank deposits of an investment nature.# If a commercial bank pays no interest on demand deposits there is no motive for the depositor to keep a balance larger than he needs as current purchasing power.

When his bank account increases beyond that point, it becomes available for a more or less lasting investment to yield financial income.