Look carefully to your expenditures. No matter what comes in, if more goes out, you will always be poor. The art is not in making money, but in keeping it; little expenses, like mice in a barn, when they are many, make great waste. Hair by hair heads get bald; straw by straw the thatch goes off the cottage; and drop by drop the rain comes in the chamber. A barrel is soon empty if the tap leaks but a drop a minute. When you mean to save, begin with your mouth; many thieves pass down the red lane. The ale-jug is a great waste. In all other things keep within compass. Never stretch your legs farther than the blankets will reach, or you will soon take cold. In clothes, choose suitable and lasting stuff, and not tawdry fineries. To be warm is the main thing; never mind looks. A fool may make money, but it needs a wise man to spend it. Remember, it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one going. If you give all to back and board, there is nothing left for the savings-bank. Fare hard and work hard when you are young, and you will have a chance to rest when you are old.
“A successful business man told me there were two things which he learned when he was eighteen, which were ever afterwards of great use to him—namely, ‘Never to lose anything, and never to forget anything.’ An old lawyer sent him with an important paper, with certain instructions what to do with it. ‘But,’ inquired the young man, ‘suppose I lose it; what shall I do then?’ ‘You must not lose it!’ ‘I don’t mean to,’ said the young man; ‘but suppose I should happen to?’ ‘But I say you must not happen to; I shall make no provision for any such occurrence; you must not lose it!’
“This put a new train of thought into the young man’s mind, and he found that if he was determined to do a thing, he could do it. He made such a provision against every contingency, that he never lost anything. He found this equally true about forgetting. If a certain matter of importance was to be remembered, he pinned it down on his mind, fastened it there, and made it stay. He used to say—‘When a man tells me that he forgot to do something, I tell him he might as well have said, ‘I do not care enough about your business to take the trouble to think of it again.’ I once had an intelligent young man in my employment who deemed it sufficient excuse for neglecting any important task to say, ‘I forgot it.’ I told him that would not answer. If he was sufficiently interested, he would be careful to remember. It was because he did not care enough that he forgot it. I drilled him with this truth. He worked for me three years, and during the last of the three he was entirely changed in tins respect. He did not forget a thing. His forgetting, he found, was a lazy and careless habit of the mind, which he cured.”
While we write, the great orator of the age has lectured the people of Hawarden in particular, and of England in general, on the virtues of thrift. The subject is worthy of his genius. Thrift lies at the foundation of all individual or national greatness. The Times notes that Mr. Gladstone only harps on an old string when he says that Englishmen are lacking in thrift. The failing is commonly admitted, and it is by no means confined to a single class. It pervades the whole community. We may be more industrious than our neighbours, but we certainly are more extravagant. We earn strenuously, but it is in order that we may spend freely. In our choice of food and its preparation, in our dwellings, in our comforts and luxuries, and in our recreations, we are lavish as compared with other nations. There is probably no single class in this country which does not, as a rule, live nearer to the margin of its income than the corresponding class in France. The French peasant is almost the slave of his land and his family, and labours unceasingly for the one while he saves ungrudgingly for the other. Our own labourers work as hard no doubt, and probably harder, but they are much more extravagant in their habits. Their food is far more solid and expensive, and it is dressed with far less thrift and skill. The case is not very different with the classes higher in the social scale. Their industry and perseverance are unrivalled, but these virtues are too often made to do duty for prudence and economy as well. Mr. Gladstone is, no doubt, light in attributing to friendly societies an influence which tends in some degree to counteract the evil consequences of individual prodigality. They do not directly encourage a more frugal mode of life among the masses, but they develop a social feeling of common welfare which at least counteracts individual selfishness. Thus, independently of their purely economical advantages, they are by no means despicable instruments of political and social education. But, after all, it is on the individual himself that it depends whether he shall be thrifty, and get on in the world, or shall be careless, and indolent, and extravagant, and finally sink down to the bottom, a burden to the rest of the community. “The way to wealth,” says an old writer, “is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two plain words—industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both.”
As we go to press, we find a meeting held at the Mansion House, London (the Earl of Shaftesbury in the chair), to hear Miss Emily Faithfull lecture against the extravagance of modern life. Ladies (she said) were sometimes accused of being the direct means of wild expenditure; and what answer could be made to their accusers? They had only to walk in any fashionable resort to see a great deal of prodigal display in dress, which could be accounted for only by the explanation that many of its wearers were living beyond their means. This state of things arose because women were ranked by what they wore, and not by what they were. Men and women seemed to have lost the faculty of enjoying inexpensive pleasures. The same extravagance was to be found among high and low, master and man. The reason of the outcry about bad servants was, because all those of the present day wished to be like their betters; fine-ladyism had descended from the drawing-room to the kitchen. Of the various causes of this, one was the love of money, more deeply rooted in the minds of the people of England than in those of any other nation in the world. Another was the modern fusion of classes—people finding themselves in a position in which they were compelled, by the tyranny of custom, to “make an appearance” beyond their legitimate means. One of the most crying evils of these times was the credit system, and its twin-brother debt, well described as the curse of the middle classes, and which, like drink, was carried on in a blind, stupid, reckless fashion. The meaning of the word “economy” was continually being falsely made to imply the saving of money, whereas it only meant the best possible administration of time, labour, and money.—Mr. Thomas Hughes, Q.C., said that the great dangers for this country were unthrift and intemperance; and unless we could make it sober and thrifty it would soon become insolvent.
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A PRACTICAL BOOK FOR PRACTICAL MEN.
THE INDUSTRIES OF THE WORLD.
A Complete Course of Technical Education for the
Artizan and the Manufacturer.
Fully Illustrated with Diagrams and Portraits.