Property.
The products of labor, saved up and appropriated to our use, constitute
property. Without property life cannot rise above the hand-to-mouth
existence of the savage. It is as important to save and care for
property after we have earned it, as it is to earn it in the first
place. Property does not stay with us unless we watch it sharply. Left
to itself it takes wings and flies away. Unused land is overgrown by
weeds; unoccupied houses crumble and decay; food left exposed sours and
molds; unused tools rust; and machinery left to stand idle gets out of
order. Everything goes to rack and ruin, unless we take constant care.
Hence the preservation of property is one of the fundamental concerns of
life and conduct.
THE DUTY.
+Provision for family and for old age.+--Childhood and old age ought to
be free from the necessity of earning a living. Childhood should be
devoted to growth and education; old age to enjoyment and repose. In
order to secure this provision for old age, for the proper training of
children and against sickness and accident, it is a duty to save a
portion of one's earnings during the early years of active life. The
man who at this period is not doing more than to support himself and
family, is not providing for their permanent support at all. They are
feasting to-day with the risk of starvation to-morrow.
In primitive conditions of society this provision for the future
consisted in the common ownership by family or clan of flocks and herds
or lands, whereby the necessities of life were insured to each member of
the clan or family from birth to death.
THE VIRTUE.
+The importance of systematic saving.+--In the more complex civilization
of to-day, property assumes ten thousand different forms; is held mostly
by individuals; and has for its universal symbol, money. Hence the
practical duty is to lay aside a certain sum of money out of our regular
earnings each month or week during the entire period of our working
life, or from sixteen to sixty. Persons who acquire a liberal education,
or learn a difficult trade or profession, will not be able to begin to
save until they are twenty or twenty-five. Whenever earning begins,
saving should begin. If earnings are small, savings must be small too.
He who postpones saving until earnings are large and saving is easy,
will postpone saving altogether. The habit of saving like all habits
must be formed early and by conscious and painful effort, or it will not
be formed at all. Saving is as much a duty as earning; and the two
should begin together. Earning provides for the wants of the individual
and the hour. It requires both earning and saving to provide for the
needs of a life-time and the welfare of a family. Savings-banks and
building and loan associations afford the best opportunities for small
savings at regular intervals; and no man has any right to marry until he
has a savings-bank account, or shares in a building and loan
association, or an equally regular and secure method of systematic
saving. In early life, before savings have become sufficient to provide
for his family in case of death, it is also a duty to combine saving
with life-insurance. Both in investment of savings and in
life-insurance, one should make sure that the institution or
organization to which he intrusts his money is on a sound business
basis. All speculative schemes should be strictly avoided. Any company
or form of investment that offers to give back more than you put into
it, plus a fair rate of interest on the money, is not a fit place for a
man to trust the savings on which the future of himself and his family
depends. Security, absolute security, not profits and dividends, is what
one should demand of the institution to which he trusts his savings.
Economy eats the apple to the core; wears clothes until they are
threadbare; makes things over; gets the entire utility out of a thing;
throws nothing away that can be used again; gets its money's worth for
every cent expended; buys nothing for which it cannot pay cash down and
leave something besides for saving. It is a manly quality, or virtue,
because it masters things, keeps them under our control, compels them to
render all the service there is in them, and insures our lasting
independence.
THE REWARD.
+The savings of early and middle life support old age in honorable rest,
and give to children a fair start in life.+--All men are liable to
misfortune and accident. The improvident man is crushed by them; for
they find him without reserved force to meet them.
The economical man has in his savings a balance wheel whose momentum
carries him by hard places. His position is independent and his
prosperity is permanent. For it depends not on the fortunes of the day,
which are uncertain and variable; but on the fixed habits and principles
of a life-time, which are changeless and reliable.
THE TEMPTATION.
+Living beyond one's income: running in debt.+--Income is limited; while
the things we would like to have are infinite. We must draw the line
somewhere. Duty says, draw it well inside of income. Temptation says,
draw it at income, or a trifle outside of income. Yield to this
temptation, and our earnings are gone before we know it, and debt stares
us in the face. Debts are easy to contract, but hard to pay. The debt
must be paid sometime with accumulated interest. And when the day of
reckoning comes it invariably costs more inconvenience and trouble to
pay it than it would have cost to have gone without the thing for the
sake of which we ran in debt.
Never, on any account, get in debt. Never spend your whole income. These
are rules we are constantly tempted to break. But the man who yields to
this temptation is on the high road to financial ruin.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+Wastefulness.+--The wasteful man buys things he does not need; spends
his money as fast as he can get it; lives beyond his means; throws
things away which are capable of further service; runs in debt; and is
forever behindhand. He lives from hand to mouth; is dependent upon his
neighbors for things which with a little economy he might own himself;
makes no provision for the future, and when sickness or old age comes
upon him, he is without resources.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+Miserliness.+--Economy saves for the sake of future expenditure.
Miserliness saves for the sake of saving. The spendthrift sacrifices the
future to present enjoyment. The miser sacrifices present enjoyment to
an imaginary future which never comes; and so misses enjoyment
altogether. The prudent man harmonizes present with future enjoyment,
and so lives a life of constant enjoyment. The spendthrift spends
recklessly, regardless of consequences. The miser hoards anxiously,
despising the present. The man of prudence and economy spends liberally
for present needs, and saves only as a means to more judicious and
lasting expenditure. The miser is as much the slave of his money as is
the spendthrift the slave of his indulgences. Economy escapes both forms
of slavery and maintains its freedom by making both spending and saving
tributary to the true interests of the self.
THE PENALTY.
+The thing we waste to-day, we want to-morrow.+--The money we spend
foolishly to-day we have to borrow to-morrow, and pay with interest the
day after. Wastefulness destroys the seeds of which prosperity is the
fruit. Wastefulness throws away the pennies, and so must go without the
dollars which the pennies make. Years of health and strength spent in
hand-to-mouth indulgence inevitably bear fruit in a comfortless old age.