Too Much Money | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 31, 1871

Too Much Money.

It is a great calamity for persons to have too much money, especially in early life. Young persons should learn rather than earn. Every dollar that a boy earns and lays up above his living, before he is of age, is quite likely to dwarf his power and usefulness for coming years. Many persons are too anxious to earn wages, and too impatient to submit to learn trades. What is the result? They become cobblers and bunglers, and work for half pay all their lives, while others who are willing to give their time for a few years and thoroughly master good trades, arts, and professions, will, with less natural abilities, command positions and employments that mere bunglers can never attain to, and will earn more money in one year of active service than they would have earned in the five or seven years during which they learned their trade, had they worked for wages all the time. Things that can be learned in an hour, can be done by any one; and he who devotes himself to such pursuits must compete with all the ignoramuses in the neighborhood who choose the same pursuits. He who learns to do work that no one else can do, or to do it better than others can, may command his position, and name his own terms.

The earning of large wages by young persons is a positive evil. Hundreds of young girls who work in shops and factories, and earn from twenty to forty dollars per month, will at the end of the year have less money, less health, and less comfortable clothing than their grandmothers had who did housework for fifty cents a week half a century ago. They fool away their earnings for ribbons, laces, silks, bonnets, confectioneries, and knickknacks, and after a few years, instead of being like their grandmothers, strong-limbed, full-waisted, ruddy-healthy, glad-hearted, noble women; thrifty, prudent, economical, experienced and skilled in the arts and mysteries of household life, with a little money in hand, and a noble pile of blankets and bedding with which to begin domestic life and become the happy wives of noble men, and the loving mothers of blooming children; they are broken in health, feeble in judgment, ignorant of the arts of honest life, skilled in flirtation and foolery, enamored of novels and love-stories, homeless, penniless, and friendless with a heap of tawdry finery and worthless and unserviceable, half-worn clothes; with “nothing to wear” which is comely and decent; and with neither wisdom, experience, nor health to bear the strain and care pertaining to the lives of those who lay deep and broad the firm foundations of a happy Christian home. And besides, having been accustomed to spending large amounts of money, they have never learned economy; and the poor man that marries one of them will find his nose on the grindstone for life, as he is forced to earn money to be wasted in gaudy finery, which is soon worn, torn, soiled, and cast aside, by a woman who knows not how to save or mend, but who scatters and spends continually without reason or restraint.

It is far better for girls and boys to be kept on short allowance, and thus learn to live frugal, prudent lives, than it is for them to have too much money, and so learn habits of extravagance and waste which will burden them with needless labors all their days, and perhaps drive them to dishonesty and shame, or send them sick and penniless to the poor-house or the grave.

Among the hundreds of men that crowd our prisons, and women that throng the chambers of death and hell, are few who have learned honest trades. Industrious persons with trades know what they can do, and know just where to go for steady and remunerative work. But others who in early life spend much and earn little, who are too proud to learn trades, and too lazy to do drudgery, of course look out for an easier way of getting a living: and while men, by theft, swindling, robbery and murder, work out the legitimate result of early idleness, extravagance and pride: women plunge into the depths of shame and infamy, and bid adieu to hope and joy for time and for eternity.—The Christian.