If parents who give their children money when they ask for it would, instead, give them a stated sum each week or month for spending money, and make it an object for them to save it, it would go a long way toward prejudicing them against debt.
I believe in allowances for children, and for wives, too, for that matter. It makes them responsible for a certain sum, and nearly always they will take a certain pride in making it go as far as possible.
Chief Watts, of the Boston police, does not think that debt is a cause of crime. He says:
I never heard of any one stealing to pay their debts, and although being in debt may have an influence on a certain class of criminals—such as shoplifters and embezzlers—I do not think that it has any influence on the general run of crime.
So far as suicide and murders are concerned, I can’t recall a case of suicide where the person had been worrying about debt, neither can I recall a murder that debt had anything to do with.
It’s girls, not debt, that cause murders and suicides—not that I blame the women; I should not want to be understood that way—but love-affairs are generally the cause of police records along those lines. Men seldom get desperate from debt. I believe that the general tendency of every one is to pay his debts if he has half a chance.
It was a Massachusetts sage—Emerson—who wrote:
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!