It is enough to look round in any neighbourhood, and see how much is spent and how little is saved; what a large proportion of earnings goes to the beershop, and how little to the savings bank or the benefit society.
"Prosperous times" are very often the least prosperous of all times.

In prosperous times, mills are working full time; men, women, and children are paid high wages; warehouses are emptied and filled; goods are manufactured and exported; wherries full of produce pass along the streets; immense luggage trains run along the railways, and heavily-laden ships leave our shores daily for foreign ports, full of the products of our industry.

Everybody seems to be becoming richer and more prosperous.

But we do not think of whether men and women are becoming wiser, better trained, less self-indulgent, more religiously disposed, or living for any higher purpose than the satisfaction of the animal appetite.
If this apparent prosperity be closely examined, it will be found that expenditure is increasing in all directions.

There are demands for higher wages; and the higher wages, when obtained, are spent as soon as earned.