Part 6 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ECONOMY.

Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand.

--I Kings, XVIII, 44.

Franklin says that, if you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. Cicero, many hundreds of years before Ben Franklin said: ”Economy is of itself a great revenue,”

and another Roman writer put it still better when he said: ”There is no gain so certain as that which arises from sparing what you have.”

”Beware of small expenses,” again writes Franklin; ”a small leak will sink a great s.h.i.+p.” In our large cities there are thousands of servant girls earning from two and a half to three dollars a week. The men who employ them often get from twenty-five to one hundred dollars per week, yet it is a notorious fact that the prudent servant girl usually has more money at her command, clear of all debts, than her employer, whose expenses sc.r.a.pe very closely against his income. Now you are on a salary in a store. Perhaps that salary is yours, to spend as you see fit. If so, remember that, like the highest officer in the land, you have certain duties. If you were President you could not appoint your old schoolmate Secretary of State unless he had made as much progress in politics as yourself. So, too,

IN YOUR MONEY MATTERS,

you cannot make yourself so valuable to your employer that he will not, before he advances you, inquire into your personal expenses, and find out what you do with your money. If you have spent it, year after year, as fast as you could get it, he will have great misgivings about letting you into a position where your desire to distribute currency can possibly lead you to practice on his funds. Among the easy ways to spend money in a small town is the habit of hiring livery-rigs. The business is just as useful as a drug-store, but no poor boy should hire equipages for mere pleasure. To attend a funeral, or to take a sick mother or sister out in the suns.h.i.+ne, is commendable. The youth who does that rarely needs the other suggestion, however, for those who spend the most money at a livery stable are usually seen with their mothers and sisters the least. No young man who thinks well of himself will enter a saloon at all. Often the worst cla.s.ses in the whole country frequent

RURAL SALOONS,

men who dare not walk through the streets of any of the large cities.

Perhaps at the card-table in the groggery across the street is a man who has come to your town to break into your employer's store! Anyway, there is no ”business” in the world which returns so little for the money accepted as the saloon. Take

A GALLON OF WHISKY,

for instance. It is worth a dollar to a dollar and a half. It has been taxed ninety cents by the Government, leaving it worth that much less.

Well, now, a man is expected to go into a saloon, and, for about three tablespoonsful of this stuff, he pays ten cents in the town and fifteen cents in the city. Your news dealer pays eight cents for an ill.u.s.trated paper, and twenty-eight cents for a popular magazine. He sells the one for ten cents and the other for thirty-five cents, taking all the risk of not getting a sale. If you could afford to travel with such people as are found in saloons, in the first place, and to put such truly abominable stuff in your mouth in the second place, you could not, even then, in the third place, afford to give fifteen cents for what is in fact worth less than a mill. You are in reality giving away your money to the Government and the saloon keeper.

LET VANDERBILT SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT,

and those who have made their fortunes and their bad habits the saloon-keeper. I have dwelt on this, because these are few young men who are not tempted. All the above applies to tobacco. It is an utterly obnoxious habit to use tobacco. It is the cause, together with the dough falsely called pastry, of all the dyspepsia in our climate. It ruins the eyes, it costs money in vast quant.i.ties, returning almost nothing in goods, and has but one redeeming feature that I know of--it is

JUST AS BAD ON MOTHS AS IT IS ON MEN,

and it makes a musty room smell a little better. If you can keep out of saloons and shooting galleries, you will not play billiards or cards--both very expensive--you will not use tobacco, and you will be less apt to go to dances and hire livery teams. Should you preserve yourself against these vices of our young men, you will have money without denying yourself clothes as handsome as a poor young man looks well in. Three short years' savings will put you in possession of a sum of money sufficient to set you to thinking about business for yourself, either with your employer or alone, for

LIFE IN AMERICA IS SHORT.

A man is a failure almost before he thinks he ought to have been considered as started. If you have been receiving small remuneration, be a.s.sured that a capital all the smaller is needed in your town. The market value of labor is the largest element in the problem of business.

If you worked cheap, then others will, and if they will, it is because living is cheap. The high-priced man in the city has to be paid highly because of his expenses, not because he has taken a vow to save a large amount of money. ”He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he that has a great deal left to him does to his father's care,” says William Penn. ”He is a good wagoner who can turn in a little room,” says Bishop Hall. How many a man, in getting a costly home, has found that old Franklin was right when he said it was easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. Therefore, when you get anything,