p. 167 | ECONOMY FOR YOUNG MEN

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1868

ECONOMY FOR YOUNG MEN.

The man who has not backbone enough to keep his expenses within his income is too pusillanimous to merit success. He is bankrupt before he starts in business. If you cannot save something out of a small salary you cannot out of a large one. The habit of saving must be formed before any increase of salary can do you any good. If you cannot live within your means on a small salary, a large one will only prove a curse to you. You think, perhaps if you do not dine at the Maison Doree, if you refrain from cigars, billiards, theatres and operas, you are a pattern of economy. You may be very far from it. You may be a spendthrift without any of these. If your income is small, true economy will lop off many things that seem necessaries. As a nation we spend too much money. It is time for us all to get back to the simpler habits of twenty years ago. Then two men that we have now in mind, rich and successful, began as errand boys at $2.50 a week for the first year, with a small annual increase, that after seven years of faithful apprenticeship barely brought their wages up to $7 a week. A millionaire of Chicago, and not long since the great dry goods merchant of Lake street, began loaning his employer small sums saved from just such a pittance as this. At that time white beaver hats were in vogue among gentlemen. He and his brother managed to make one such hat do for both. Of course when one went to church, or an evening party, the other did not. Two other successful business men of this city were about the same time preparing for college. They roomed together, and in order to live within their means boarded themselves. They bought milk, butter, meat, corn meal and vegetables at low prices in those days, and cooked them in their room to suit their taste, and lived well. How much do you think it cost them? Just thirty-seven and a half-cents a week each. Think of that, you young men who feel that you have cheated your epigastrum if you dine once or twice on that sum!—“No young man of spirit will pinch himself in that way,” you exclaim, “It’s unmanly.” Not a bit of it. It is unmanly to live beyond your means. If bare floors and the simplest necessities are all your means will allow, to accept the situation cheerfully will be evidence of the highest type of manliness, and to do otherwise is to be either a beggar or a scoundrel. We advocate no stingy, narrow, sordid or miserly views, but if you wish to succeed in business, and maintain your self-respect, then we say first, last, and all the time, live within your means.—Exchange.