THRIFT -- Chapter 25

THRIFT

From The Young Man and Himself by James S. Kirtley

Thrift is the art of saving a portion of every dollar earned. Thrift is in the man, and shows itself in, and, is in turn, trained by, his insight, energy, frugality and vigilance. If one is not able to get on in the world, he will not make much headway in the affairs of the soul. Not everyone has inherited the talent for thrift, but everyone must acquire it, and he can if he begins in time. Not everyone has the habits of thrift, but in some cases they could still be acquired. Not only must one have it in order to acquire worldly goods, but to secured the best moral development.

Thrift accumulates. The very process of acquiring brings into play the qualities that are essential to nobleness of character. It requires forethought, and, as Dr. Munger has pointed out, forethought is what marks the civilized man from the savage. One who lives from hand to mouth without thought of tomorrow is violating the wise injunction of Christ to be not anxious about tomorrow, for he is laying up cause for an anxious morrow. This forethought is able to look down the lines of the future and see things. It notes the order of Nature’s events and the need’s of an ordered way of treating those events. It forbids all speculation. It excludes the idea of luck. It notes cause and effect and adapts means to ends.

Thrift trains the powers to master Nature’s forces. The nomadic people who accumulate nothing, do nothing in developing or controlling the forces of nature. They acquire the skill in reading the surface indications and in overcoming the obstacles to the enjoyment of their improvident lives. But they use none of the great powers of nature. They may discover minerals, but do not develop mines. They know where the pasture lands are, but know not how to cultivate so as to produce more grasses and cereals. They can pitch a tent to perfection, but cannot build a house. They know how to move, but not how to stay. They know how to go, but not how to grow.

Thrift awakens vigilance. It never loses a chance to know, to seize and to act. Thrift requires the mastery of details, and therefore thoroughness. Thrift arouses energy and sets all the nature in a glow. To be sure, it may appeal to an unworthy pride, and the riches may demoralize, but it need not be so. Thrift requires self-dependence and is utterly destructive of the parasitic habit of living on the ideas or possessions of others.

Thrift requires economy. Waste is immoral, criminal. There is abundant room for economy. Economy would enable us to supply almost all the crying wants of the unfortunate. One can rear a family and buy a home on the salary that would not support drunkard. "He that buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy," as poor Richard says. Economy requires self-control, self-denial, intelligent forethought and skill. "Where there is no prudence there is no virtue," says Dr. Johnson.

SHREWD WORDS ON SAVING.

We may draw on the Chicago pork-packer again for some unique advice: "I have pride enough to believe that you have the right sort of stuff in you, but I want to see some of it come out. You’ll never make a good merchant of yourself by reversing the order in which the Lord decreed that we should proceed – learning the spending before the earning end of business. Pay day is always a month off for the spend thrift, and he is never able to realize more than 60 cents on any dollar that comes to him. But a dollar is worth one hundred six cents to a good businessman and he never spends the dollar. It is the man who keeps saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern. That is where you’re going to find yourself weak if your expense accounts don’t lie; and they generally don’t lie in that particular way, although Baron Munchausen was the first traveling man, and my drummers’ bills still show his influence.

"Now I want to say right here at the meanest man alive is the one who is generous with money that he is not had to sweat for, and that the boy who is a good fellow at someone else’s expense would not work up into first-class fertilizer. That same ambition to be known as a good fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they will always be second-rate clerks. If you have it, hold it down until you have worked for year. Then, if your ambition runs to hunching up all week over a desk, to earn dollars to blow on a few rounds of drinks for the boys on Saturday night, there is no objection to your gratifying it; for I will know that the Lord didn’t intend you to be your own boss."

Thrift requires that one spend, but makes expenditures wise and ennobling. It is cultivated by "spending upward," as Dr. Munger says, "that is, for the higher faculties." To quote still further from him: "Spend for the mind rather than for the body; for culture rather than for amusement. The very secret and essence of thrift consists in getting things into higher values. As the clod turns into a flower, and the flower inspires a poet; as bread becomes vital force, and vital force feeds moral purpose and aspiration, so should all our saving and outgo have regard to the higher ranges of our nature. If you have a dollar, or a hundred, to spend, put it into something above the average of your nature, that you may be attracted to it. Beyond what is necessary or your bodily wants and well-being, every dollar spent for the body is a derogation of manhood. Get the better thing, never the inferior. The night supper, the ball, the drink, the billiard table, the minstrels– enough calls of this sort there are, and in no wise modest in their demands, but they issue from below you. Go one by a book instead, or journey abroad, or bestowed gift."

WHAT IS ECONOMY?

Economy is another form of self-denial, and one who sacrifices the lower to the higher, in one thing, has learned the habit of it may more easily do it in all things. It requires that one live within his income. Thrift shows character. "One is already poverty-stricken if his habits are not thrifty." Ruskin well says: "Economy, whether public or private, means the wise management of labor, and it means that, mainly, in three senses– namely first, applying your labor rationally; secondly, preserving its produce carefully; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably."

As one’s calling is devised and adopted for the purpose of developing himself, the who prospers in his calling and honestly accumulates by means of it, is being developed. To be sure, one who fails may succeed in making his character by means of the very failure it self, but such cases are rare. When the motives in acquiring wealth are right, and the use made of it is unselfish, the character is mightily developed by it. The same pork-packer of Chicago says to his son : "You know how I began-- I was started off with a kick, but that was a kick up, and in everyone’s senses lifted me up a little bit higher. I got two dollars a week, and slept under the counter, in you can bet buying new just how many pennies there were in each of those dollars a how hard the floor was. That is what you have got to learn."

That which is acquired in such a way is a distinct blessing. Money shows character, and, in a sense, is character. In fact, to quote the words of Dr. Munger, "Character, for the most part, is determined by one's relations to money. Find out how one gets, saves, spends, gives, lends, borrows and bequeaths money, and you have the character of the man in full outline. Nearly all the virtues play about the use of money– honor, justice, generousity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice."

The possession of a little of this world's goods gives one a proprietary interest in this rich old world and increases his sense of responsibility. The dangerous classes are those who who have nothing to protect, nothing dependent upon them. A very interesting experiment was begun by Mr. William R. George, near Freeville, in Thomkins County, New York, in 1895, in behalf of neglected children. It is called the "Junior Republic." It is self governing, in the main, and responsibility is divided out among those boys. They elect their own president, school board, council, and in fact govern themselves. They are given a sense of responsibility. A recent writer says: "The largest practicable measure of self-government was allowed them. Mr. George believed that this would prove an incentive for them to do right. He was not mistaken. Another favorite theory was this: Let a boy possess something, and he will acquire self respect and honor. It is the man who has nothing, and no idea of securing anything honestly, whose mind turns to the channels of theft."

SUCCESS IN THRIFT.

Sir Thomas Lipton says:
"I have often been asked to define the true secret of success. It is thrift in all its phases, and principally, thrift as applied to saving. A young boy may have many friends, but he will none so steadfast, so constant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable of pushing him ahead, as a little leather-covered book, with the name of a bank on its cover.Saving is the first great principle of all success. It creates independence, it gives a young man standing, it fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with proper energy; in fact, it brings him to the best part of any success-- happiness and contentment. If it were possible to inject the quality of saving into every boy, we would have a great many more real men."

One may never be wholly independent, for interdependence is one of the absolute facts of life. Yet there is a limit within which it is right to feel provided for, by the savings which thrift gathers. Robert Burns is not wholly wrong in his letter to a young friend:

"To court Dame Fortune's golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her,
and gather wealth by every wile
That's justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant,
but for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."

The possession of wealth is the possession of power. The consciousness of that power is worth something to a man who knows its moral meaning. It gives him an interest inn the business affairs of life. It gives him an interest in shaping that business, and it secures for him admittance into the councils of men of affairs.

The possession of some worldly goods gives one a sort of hope for the future; he feels that those who are dependent upon him are in some degree provided for, and he need not consume his heart with anxious cares.

It saves one from the horrors of poverty, and no one has the right to be voluntarily poor. It gives a man power to do good, to be generous with his fellow man. The thriftless man who despises the moral power of money, usually lacks an interest in his fellow man. Thrift calls into action the nobler powers which furnish the power for most of our benevolence.

AMERICAN EXTRAVAGANCE.

"One of the hardest lessons for Americans to learn," writes Prof. William Matthews, "is that waste is impoverishment. They can all see, readily enough, that, if all the property in the country were suddenly destroyed, the whole human race would thereby be made so much poorer; but when the destruction is very slight -- as when a cup or saucer is broken-- they do not recognize that the loss, felt chiefly by one person, falls, really, on all mankind. One of the main causes of our wastefulness has been, doubtless, the exceeding richness of our natural resources. When soil is so wondrously fertile as ours has been, especially in the West, it is not strange that its cultivators should seek to swell their crops by increasing the area of culture, rather than by use of expensive dressings, subsoiling, and other thorough methods. Nature has been so bountiful to us that the habit of despising little savings has been acquired by us unconsciously. Cultivating a land 'nearly smothered in its own richness.' we have, till recently, learned to think it useless to dig down deep, when it was much easier to skim the surface.

"One of the paradoxes of waste is that the persons most addicted to it are not men and women of independent means, who can support themselves in spite of their extravagant expenditure, but the poorer classes. There is hardly an able-bodied laborer who might not become financially independent, if he would but carefully husband his receipts and guard against the little leaks of needless expense. But, unfortunately, this is the one thing which the workingman finds it hardest to do. There are a hundred laborers who are willing to work hard, to every half-dozen who are willing to properly husband their earnings. Instead of hoarding a small percentage of their receipts, so as to provide against sickness or want of employment, they eat and drink up their earnings as they go, and thus, in the first financial crash, when mills and factories 'shut down,' and capitalists lock up their cash instead of using it in great enterprises, they are ruined. Men who thus live 'from hand to mouth,' never keeping more than a days march ahead of actual want, are little better off than slaves.

"Professor Marshall, the noted English economist, estimates that $500,000,000 are spent annually by the British working classes for things that do nothing to make their lives nobler or truly happier. At the last meeting of the British Association, the president, in an address to the economic section, expressed his belief that the simple item of food waste alone would justify the above estimate. One potent cause of waste, today, is that very many of the women, having been brought up in factories, do not know to buy economically, and are neither passable cooks or good housekeepers. Mr. Atkinson estimates that, in the United States, the waste from bad cooking alone is over a thousand million dollars a year!"

Everyone can learn to be thrifty, if he begins in time. Some have thrift naturally, and turn everything into money, as Shakespeare turns the stories that he heard into dramas and Beethoven little strains of music into symphonies. Some few elementary rules are necessary. [1]The first is to save a portion of every dollar made. "No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings." [2]Be steadily at work at some useful and well-planned enterprise, and allow no idleness save as a preparation for future work. [3]Avoid luxuries, they destroy values. [4]Invest something of your money in yourself, in enlarging the mind, expressing the nobler sympathies, and ministering to your fellow man. [5]Give away some portion of every dollar made. This is indispensable to thrift. [enumeration supplied by editor].

end of chapter, page 198.-cpl 6-30-01.