Law 9. A SCOUT IS THRIFTY.
_It is expected that a Scout will save every penny he can, and put
it in the bank, so that he may have money to keep himself when out of
work, and thus not make himself a burden to others; or that he may
have money to give away to others when they need it_.
There are many Boy Scouts to-day who will in a few years' time become
very rich men although they have not much to begin with. That is a
certainty, because a good many are determined to make their fortunes,
and if a lad begins by being thrifty he generally succeeds in the end.
A fellow who begins making money as a boy will go on making it as a
man. Some fellows, of course, want to do it by easy means, and that as
a rule does not pay.
Some fellows see a fortune in betting on a horse race or football
match; you may win a few shillings now and then but you are absolutely
certain to lose half the time, and it is a fool's way of trying to
make money, because the bookies who make a living by it trust to there
being a sufficient number of fools to keep on betting and supplying
them with money.
Such money is not earned, it is only gained by chance and therefore is
not worth having--to a fellow with manly ideas.
Any number of poor boys have become rich men, but it was because they
meant to from the first. They WORKED for it and put by every penny
that they earned in the bank to begin with.
Lots of boys are already at work doing this, and I hope that very many
of the Boy Scouts are also at it. Two good rules are given for making
your fortune. The first is "_Spend_ less _than you earn_."
The second is "_Pay ready money, and don't run into debt_."
Many of you probably have heard of the Nasmyth steam hammer which is
used in all the great iron works?
Well, Nasmyth, as a boy, worked in his father's workshop, and used to
spend a great deal of his spare time in a neighbouring iron foundry,
and he took to using tools and making all sorts of models of engines,
etc., just as you Boy Scouts who are working up for your Engineer's
Badge might do.
He made one model steam-engine so large that a man bought it for the
purpose of driving a machine tool in his factory, and so he began to
make money by selling his own home-made engines. And finally he went
to work at a big engineering shop because he felt that he was one of a
large family and that his father could not afford to keep them all and
he was resolved to make his own living.
He could not afford to have his food cooked for him on the small pay
that he got as a boy at the works, but he manufactured his own
cooking-stove and found that with its help he was able to live on ten
shillings a week.
He worked so well in the shop that the manager raised his wages to
fifteen shillings a week. But as he had found that he could live on
ten shillings, he put by the extra five shillings each week in the
bank, and all the time he kept making tools for himself in his spare
hours, and eventually started himself in business on his own account
with his own money and his own tools, and finally invented his
celebrated steam hammer.
By the time he was forty-eight, he had made a big income and quite a
fortune. Many men would not have been content with this, but would
have gone on until they became millionaires. But Nasmyth did not, he
was content to retire from hard work with sufficient money to buy a
happy home, where he went in for making telescopes and studying
astronomy and also in doing good turns to people not so well off as
himself.
And he gave some good advice to young fellows wanting to make a
success of their lives in the following words:
"If I were to try to compress into one sentence the whole of the
experience I have had, and offer it to a young man as a certain means
of bringing success in whatever position he holds, it would be
this:'_Duty first, pleasure second_,'"
"I am certain from what I have seen that what so many call 'bad luck'
comes in nine cases out of ten from putting that maxim the other way
round and satisfying your pleasure first and attending to work and
duty afterwards."
One poor man, a farm labourer, made himself rich by writing poetry.
His name was Stephen Duck, the thresher poet. But unfortunately
numbers of other working men, seeing his good fortune, also thought it
would be an easier way of making money to write poetry rather than by
doing hard work, and Horace Walpole, when writing of Duck, said.,
"that he succeeded as a poet, but he also succeeded in ruining at
least twenty good workmen."
There are very few young men who have not at one time or another in
their lives thought themselves splendid poets. I hope this will be a
warning to them, and that they will take to hard work as a means of
making their way in the world.
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