Economy

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 17, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 19.

THE honest, GODLY business man will be ECONOMICAL. By this we do not mean penurious or miserly. He will not be wasteful. It is not economy for the builder’s apprentice or employee to pick up a nail that he has dropped or straighten one that he has bent, unless getting another involves time and trouble. Ordinarily his time is worth more to go on than to stop to recover the nail. The idle man or boy may make a gain of picking up the nails, but not the pushing employee. But in all business there should be no wastefulness. Sometimes stopping to repair a little break in the fence will save the busy farmer the ruin of his crop. The principle must become inbred, and in wisdom allowed to rule. I once knew a wood seller who to be economical would not purchase a new harness, and in consequence could haul but half a load to market. On hiring an energetic man who asked the horses to work as did he, the old patched-up harness was used up in a day. A new harness was purchased, and in a few days paid for in the extra work done. It is well to remember that “a stitch in time saves nine,” and that “if we care for the pennies, the dollars will care for themselves,” but it is also well to remember that it is possible to “save at the spigot and waste at the bung.”