Intemperate habits are formed, and, once formed, the habit of intemperance continues.

Increased wages, instead of being saved, are for the most part spent in drink.
Thus, when a population is thoughtless and improvident, no kind of material prosperity will benefit them.

Unless they exercise forethought and economy, they will alternately be in a state of "hunger and burst." When trade falls off, as it usually does after exceptional prosperity, they will not be comforted by the thought of what they _might_ have saved, had it ever occurred to them that the "prosperous times" might not have proved permanent.
During prosperous times, Saint Monday is regularly observed.

The Bank Holiday is repeated weekly.

"Where are all the workmen ?" said a master to his foreman on going the rounds among his builders,--this work must be pushed on and covered in while the fine weather lasts." "Why, sir," said the foreman, "this is Monday; and they have not spent all their money yet." Dean Boyd, preaching at Exeter on behalf of the Devonshire hospitals, expressed his belief that the annual loss to the workpeople engaged in the woollen manufacture, the cotton trade, the bricklaying and building trade, by Idle Monday, amounted to over seven millions sterling.