by T. S. Arthur
“Yes, I suppose it is. But it is one thing to commence business, and another thing to succeed in it. There are plenty of chances in favor of your losing every cent you have, and then being obliged to go back to journey-work, which will not be the most agreeable thing in the world. For my part, I would much rather enjoy what little I have as I go along, than stint and deny myself every thing comfortable for six or seven years, in order to set up business for myself, and then lose every dollar. It is not every man, I can tell you, who is fit to go into business, nor every man who can succeed, if he does. The fact is, there must be journeymen as well as master-workmen. As for me, I have no taste for going into business, and don’t believe I should succeed if I did set up for myself. I expect to work journey-work all my life, and might just as well take my comfort as I go along.”
“I shall not attempt to dispute what you say about some men being born to be journeymen, and others to be master-workmen,” replied the friend of Johnson, “for I am very well aware that the gifts of all are different; and that some men are so peculiarly constituted, that they would not succeed if they were to set up business for themselves. But the want of a business capacity, or inclination, is no reason at all why a journeyman mechanic should not save every cent he can.”
“What good will it do him? He is bound to be a poor worker all his life, and why should he deny himself the few comforts he has as he goes along, in order to lay by a hundred or two dollars?”
“I am surprised to hear you ask such a question, Johnson. But I will answer it by saying, that he should do it for the very reason that I save my money; that is, to enable him to educate his children well, to lighten his own and his wife’s toil, when they grow older, and to be able to obtain for his family more of the comforts of life than they now enjoy.”
“Don’t exactly see how all this is to be achieved. Suppose he get together as much as five hundred dollars; and instead of risking it in business, he send his children to some expensive schools, hire help for his wife, and take some comfort as he goes along; how long do you suppose his five hundred dollars will last? But two years, and then he must come down again and be ten times as unhappy, for it is a much easier matter to get up than to go down.”
“Pardon me, Johnson,” replied his friend, “but I must say you are a very short-sighted mortal. If you can’t imagine any better mode of using your five hundred dollars after you have saved it, I don’t blame you for not caring about making the attempt to do so. But I can tell you a better way.”
“Well, let us hear it.”
“With your five hundred dollars, after you had saved it, you could buy yourself a snug little cottage, with an acre of ground around it. How much rent do you pay now?”
“Seventy-five dollars a year.”
“Of course this would be saved after that, which, added to what you were already saving, would make a hundred and fifty dollars a year. Take fifty of that to buy yourself a cow, some pigs, and chickens, and to get lumber for your pig-sty, hen-house and shed for your cow in winter, and you would still have a hundred dollars left, the first year, to go into the Savings’ Bank. Your garden, which you could work yourself by rising an hour or two earlier in the morning; your cow, your chickens and your pigs, would make a sufficient saving in your expenses to pay for all additional charges in entering your children at better schools. In three years more, laying by a hundred and fifty dollars a year, which you could easily do, would give you enough to buy another cottage and an acre of ground, which you could easily rent to a good tenant for eighty dollars a year. In three years more, going on with the same economy, you would have seven hundred dollars more to invest, which could be done in property that would yield you seventy or eighty dollars a year additional income. By this time the village would have grown out toward your grounds, and perhaps doubled, may be quadrupled their value for building lots, some of which you could sell, and adding the amount to the savings of a couple of years, be able to build one or two more comfortable little houses on your own lots. Going on in this way, year after year, by the time your ability to work as a journeyman began to fail you, the necessity for work would not exist, for you would have a comfortable property, the regular income from which would more than support you. Now all this may be done, by your simply giving up your tobacco, beer and oysters, and your day’s holiday once a month. Is not the result worth the trifling sacrifice, Johnson?”
“It certainly is,” was the serious reply. “You have presented a very attractive picture, and I suppose it is a true one.”
“It is, you may depend upon it. Every journeyman mechanic, if he be industrious and have a prudent, economical wife, as you have, may accumulate a snug little property, and live quite at his ease, when he passes the prime of life. Is it not all very plain to you.”
“It certainly is, and I am determined that I will try to get a-head just in the way that you describe. If you can save seventy-five dollars a year, there is no good reason why I should not do the same.”
“None in the world. Only persevere in your economy and self-denial, and you are certain of accomplishing all I have set forth.”
We are sorry that we cannot give as good an account of Johnson as we could wish. He tried to be economical, and to break himself of his bad habits of chewing, drinking, and other self-indulgences, for a little while, and then sunk down into his old ways and went on as usual.
Hopelessly his poor wife, now in ill health, is toiling on, and will have to toil on until she sink, from exhaustion, into the grave, and her children become scattered among strangers, to bear the hard lot of the orphan.
How many hundreds are there like Johnson who spend as they go, in self-indulgence, what, if properly hoarded, would make their last days bright with life’s declining sunshine.
THE END.
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