CONSCIENTIOUS MONEY-SPENDING.
‘Never treat money affairs with levity—money is character.’ It is to be feared that many neglect this wise caution, and do not put conscience into the spending of their money, whatever they may do as regards the making of it. Rich people think that it is good for trade to be free-handed with wealth, and do not always distinguish between productive and unproductive expenditure. They are frequently guilty of demoralising the poorer classes by careless almsgiving and the bad example of their thoughtless money-spending.
Of course, so far as they are influenced by religious considerations, the rich recognise the truth that all their possessions are held in trust, and only lent to them by a superior Power for the service of their fellow-beings. But the rich have difficulties as well as the poor, and one of these lies in determining how to distribute their expenditure in a way that shall prove beneficial to society. The question, ‘To whom or to what cause shall I contribute money?’ must be a very anxious one to conscientious men of wealth. ‘How are we to measure,’ we may suppose rich men to ask, ‘the relative utility of charities? And then political economists are down upon us if, by mistake, we help those who might have helped themselves. It is easy to talk against our extravagance; tell us rather how to spend our money advantageously—that is to say, for the greatest good of the greatest number.’ The fact is, riches must now be considered by all good men as a distinct profession, with responsibilities no less onerous than those of other professions. And this very difficult profession of wealth ought to be learned by studying social science and otherwise with as much care as the professions of divinity, law, and medicine are learned. When in this way the rich accept and prepare themselves for the duties of their high calling, it will cease to be a cause of complaint that, in the nature of things, money tends to fall into the hands of a few large capitalists.
Nor is the money-spending of the poor less careless than that of the rich. During the time of high wages, labouring people buy salmon and green peas when they are barely in season; and Professor Leone Levi computes that their annual drink-bill amounts to thirty-six millions. That is exactly the sum which the working-classes spend in rent; so, although better houses are the strongest and most imperative demands for the working-classes, those classes are spending, on the lowest estimate, a sum equal to what they are spending on rent.
Some two years ago, an eminent London physician went into Hyde Park and sat down upon a bench, and there sat down by him a pauper eighty years of age. The physician entered into conversation with him, and asked him what his trade was. The man said he was a carpenter.
‘A very good trade indeed. Well, how is it that you come at this time of life to be a pauper? Have you been addicted to drink?’
‘Not at all; I have only taken my three pints a day—never spent more than sixpence daily.’
The physician, taking out a pencil and a piece of paper, asked: ‘How long have you continued this practice of drinking three pints of ale a day?’
‘I am now eighty, and I have continued that practice, more or less, for sixty years.’
‘Very well,’ continued the physician, ‘I will just do the sum.’ He found that sixpence a day laid by for sixty years amounted, with compound interest, to three thousand two hundred and twenty-six pounds; and he said to the old carpenter: ‘My good man, instead of being a pauper, you might have been the possessor of three thousand two hundred and twenty-six pounds at this moment; in other words, you might have had one hundred and fifty pounds a year, or some three pounds a week, not by working an hour longer or doing anything differently, except by putting by the money that you have been spending day by day these sixty years on ale.’ The physician’s conclusion, however, should perhaps be modified by the consideration that if this man had ceased spending sixpence on beer, he might have required to spend a portion of that sixpence on an increased supply of food. But notwithstanding this, the physician’s argument is in the main a sound one.
It is not ‘ologies’ that the working-classes require to be taught so much, as the right use of money and the good things that can be purchased with it. It often astonishes the rich to see the wasteful expenditure of the poor; but an explanation will be found in the caution which Dr Johnson gives to men who fancy that poor girls must necessarily make the most economical wives. ‘A woman of fortune,’ he says, ‘being used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending, that she throws it away with great profusion.’ That was excellent advice also which Dr Johnson gave to Boswell, when the latter inherited his paternal estates. ‘You, dear sir, have now a new station, and have therefore new cares and new employments. Life, as Cowley seems to say, ought to resemble a well-ordered poem; of which one rule generally received is, that the exordium should be simple and should promise little. Begin your new course of life with the least show and the least expense possible; you may at pleasure increase both, but you cannot easily diminish them. Do not think your estate your own while any man can call upon you for money which you cannot pay; therefore begin with timorous parsimony. Let it be your first care not to be in any man’s debt.’
People beginning to keep house should be careful not to pitch their scale of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it, and they should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, ‘it is less dishonourable to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings.’
What an admirable manager of money was Mrs Carlyle! ‘There was,’ writes Mr Froude, ‘a discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together in London on three hundred pounds a year. Mrs Carlyle, who often laughed about it while it was going on, will answer the question. No one who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were poor or rich. There were no signs of extravagance, but also none of poverty. The drawing-room arrangements were exceptionally elegant. The furniture was simple, but solid and handsome; everything was scrupulously clean; everything good of its kind; and there was an air of ease, as of a household living within its means. Mrs Carlyle was well dressed always. Her admirable taste would make the most of inexpensive materials; but the materials themselves were of the very best. Carlyle himself generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, they were always generous and open-handed.’ All this was done on an income of not quite four hundred pounds. Of course Carlyle, as well as his wife, was imbued with Scotch thrift, showing itself in hatred of waste. If he saw a crust of bread on the roadway, he would stop to pick it up, and put it on a step or a railing. ‘Some poor creature might be glad of it, or at worst a dog or a sparrow. To destroy wholesome food is a sin.’
The thrifty wife of Benjamin Franklin felt it a gala day indeed when, by long accumulated small savings, she was able to surprise her husband one morning with a china cup and a silver spoon from which to take his breakfast. Franklin was shocked. ‘You see how luxury creeps into families in spite of principles,’ he said. When his meal was over, he went to the store and rolled home a wheelbarrow full of papers through the streets with his own hands, lest folk should get wind of the china cup and say he was above his business.
It is a great blessing to have been trained hardily. Those who have few wants are rich. Hundreds of middle-class people are heavily handicapped in the race of life because they find it hard to do without luxuries which they can ill afford to buy, but which they would never have missed if they had not been accustomed to them in childhood. This must become every year more apparent, because the classes that have hitherto had the monopoly of education have now to compete with the working-classes trained to privation for generations.
But although the creeping-in of luxury should be guarded against at the commencement of married life, people should learn how to grow rich gracefully. It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances and social enjoyment of our homes. These things refine manners and enlarge the heart. A gentleman told Dr Johnson that he had bought a suit of lace for his wife. The Doctor said: ‘Well, sir, you have done a good thing and a wise thing.’ ‘I have done a good thing,’ said the gentleman; ‘but I do not know that I have done a wise thing.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ continued the Doctor; ‘no money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people; and a wife is pleased that she is so dressed.’
We should be particular about money, but not penurious. The mistress of a well-ordered house takes broad and liberal views of things, and while cutting her coat according to her cloth, and as much as possible shielding her husband from the constant demand for money, which few masculine tempers can stand, she refrains from the wearying, petty economies which often enough are not worth the trouble and discomfort they entail. Economy is altogether different from penuriousness; for it is economy that can always best afford to be generous. Those who are careless about personal expenditure are often driven in the end to do very shabby things. Burns tells us that, ‘for the glorious privilege of being independent,’ we should ‘gather gear by every wile that’s justified by honour.’
‘Do not accustom yourself,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.’ Only the other day the writer was speaking to an officer in the army who was so far from considering the debt which he owed to his tailor as either an inconvenience or a calamity, that he seemed to be quite proud of it. ‘My tailor,’ said he, ‘never duns me for the money. When I have a pound or two which I don’t want, I send it to him, just as other people put it in a bank.’ It was no use telling him that five or ten per cent. on the amount of his bill was being charged every year, and that on a day when he least expected it, payment would be demanded. Had this officer never heard of the General Order which was issued by Sir Charles Napier, in taking leave of his command in India? Sir Charles strongly urged in that famous document that ‘honesty is inseparable from the character of a thorough-bred gentleman;’ and that ‘to drink unpaid-for champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be a cheat, and not a gentleman.’
Men who lived beyond their means might be officers by virtue of their commissions, but they were not gentlemen. The habit of being constantly in debt, the general held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings of a gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to fight; that, any bulldog could do. But did he hold his word inviolate? Did he pay his debts? He should be as ready to utter his valiant ‘No,’ or ‘I can’t afford it,’ to the invitations of pleasure and self-enjoyment, as to mount a breach amidst belching fire and the iron hail of machine-guns.
The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys received and expended by him. ‘I make a point,’ said he, ‘of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same. Formerly, I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them; but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, duns of a year or two’s standing. The fellow had speculated with my money and left my bills unpaid.’ Talking of debt, his remark was: ‘It makes a slave of a man. I have often known what it was to be in want of money, but I never got into debt.’ Washington was as particular as Wellington in matters of business detail, and he did not disdain to scrutinise the smallest outgoings of his household—determined as he was to live honestly within his means—even while holding the high office of President of the American Union.
To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard for mere wealth’s sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled and the miserly. ‘We must carry money in the head, not in the heart;’ that is to say, we must not make an idol of it, but regard it as a useful agent.
Some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related to the right use of money, such as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice, as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means intrusted to them. ‘So that,’ as it has been well said, ‘a right measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeathing, would almost argue a perfect man.’