Des Moines courier. ([Ottumwa] Iowa) 1848-1854, 1850-03-01
DES MONIES COURIER,
Living and Means.

their neighbors, when the real obstacle
is not in banks nor tariffs, in bad public
policy or had times, but in their own ex-
travagance and needless ostentation.
The young mechanic or cleik marries
and takes house, which he proceeds 10
furnish twice as extensively as he can
afford and then his wife, instead of ia
king hold TO help him earn livelihood
by doing her own work, must have hi
red servant to help her spend his limited
earnings. Ten years afterwards. you
will find him struggling on under dou-
BILE load of debts and children, wonder
ing why the luck was always against
him, while his friends regret his unhap-
Ply destituion of financial ability. Had
they from the first been frank and honest,
he need not have been so unlucky.
Through every grade of society this
vice of inordina,e expenditure insinuates
itself. The single man hired out in the
country at ten to fifteen dollars per month,
contrives to dissolve his years earnings
in frolics and fine clothes; the clerk who
has three to five hundred dollars year,
and melts down twenty to fifty of it in
to liquor and cigars, are paralleiled by
the young merchant who fills spacious
house with costly furniture, gives dinners
and drives fast horse on the strength
of the profits he expects TO realize when
his goods are all sold and his notes all
paid. Let a man have genius for spen,
ding, and whether his income is a dollar
day or dollar minute, it is equally
certain to prove inadequate. If dining,
winning and party-giving won't help
him through it, building, gaming and
specializing will be sure to. The bot
tomless pocket will never ill, no matter
how bounteous the stream pouring into
it. The man who being single, does not
save money on six dollars per week,
will not be apt to on sixty; and he who
does not lay up something in his first
year of independent exertion, will be We
ry likely to wear poor mans hair in
to his grave.
No man, who has the natural use of
his faculties and muscles, has any right
TO tax others with the cost of his support,
as this class of non-fnancial gentlemen
habitually do. 1t is their common mis-
take to fancy that if debt is only paid
at last, the obligation of the debtor is full
filled, but the fact is not so. A man
who sells his property for another's
promise to pay next week, or next
month, and is compelled to wear out a
pair Of boots in running after his due;
which he finally gets after a year or two,
is never really paid. Very often he has
lost half the face of his demand by not
having the money when he needed it,
besides the cost and vexation of running
after it. There is just one way TO pay
an obligation in full, and that is, TO pay
it when due. He who keeps up run
ming fight, with bills and loans through
life, is continually living on other mems
means, is serious burden and detri-
ment to those who deal with him, al
though his estate should finally pay eve
ry dollar of his legal obligations.
Inordinate expenditure is the cause of
great share of the crime and conse-
quent misery which devastate the world.
The clerk who spends more than he
earns is fast qualifying himself for a
gambler and thief, the trader or me-
chanic who overruns his income is very
certain to become in time trickster and
cheat. Where ever you see a man spen-
ding faster than he earns, there look out
for villainy to be developed, though it be
the larthest thing possible from his pres
ent thought.
When the world shall have become
wiser, and its standard Of morality more
lofty, it will perceive and affirm that
profuse expenditure, even by one who
can pecuniarily afford it, is pernicious
and unjusti6able, that man, however
wealthy, has no just right to lavish
on his own appetites, his tastes, or his
ostentation, that which might have rails
ed hundreds from destitution and despair
to comfort and usefulness. But that is
an improvement in public sentiment
which must be waited for, while the 9TH
er is more ready and obvious.
The meanness, the dishonesty, the in
Equity of the squandering thousands, un-
earned, and keeping others out of their
money that is justly theirs, have rarely
been urged and enforced as they should
be. They need but be considered and