The North-Carolina standard., 1850-01-02
LIVING AND MEANS

rotten Morality, radically false and vicious Public
Sentiment disgase themselves, h that which efsrac
eriEes certain individuals as destitute Of fnancal
capacity. kind, smiable, generous, good SON Of
man., Geo runs the varnish, but utterly unqualified
for the management Of his own finances la mere
child in everything relating to money, &c. &1es-
meaning that with an income Of $500 year he per-
sisted in spending $I 600 with an income Of $2,-
600 to $4,000, he regularly spent Eve to eight thou
sand according to his ability to run in debt OF the
creduity of others in trusting him.
The victims of this immorality-debto as wellas
creditor-are entitled to faithful dealing the
hands Of those not directly affected by the misde-
meanors of the former. 1t is the duty Of the COM
muny to rebuke and repress these pernicious gloss
es, making the truth heard and felt that nordinate
expenditure is knavery and crime. No man has
moral right thus to lavish on his wnappetites
ey which he has not earnedand does notreally need
II Public Opinion Were sound on this subiect-if
man living beyond his means when his means were
commensurate with his real needs, were subjected to
the reprehension he deserves-the evil would be in
stantty checked and ultimately eradica:ed.
1he world is full of people who can't imagine why
they don't prosper like their neghbors when the real
obstacle is not in banks nor tariffs, in bad public
policy nor bard times, but in their extravaganza
and needless ostehtatioI. The young mechanic or
clerk marres and takes house, which he proceeds
to furnish twice as expensvely he afford, and
then his wife, instead of taking hold to help
livelihood by doing her own work, must have
hired servant to help her spend his limited earnings.
len years afterward you will find him struggling on
under double load of debts and children, wonder
ing why the luck was always against him, while his
friends regret his unhappy destitution Of financial
ability Had they from the first been frank and hon
est he need not have been so unlucky.
Through every grade of society this vice of nor-
dinae expenditure insinuaes ITSELF The single man
hired out in the country at ten to fifteen dollars per
MONTH who contrves to dissolve his years earnings
in frolics and fine clothes the clerk who has three
flve hundred dollars year and melts down twenty
to fifty OF it in liquor and cigars, are paralleed by
the young merchant who fllss spacious house with
costly furniture, gives dinners and drives fast horse
on the strength of the profits he expects to realize
when his goods all sold and his notes all paid
Let a man have genius for spending, and whether
his income is dollar day dollar minute it is
equally certain to prove inadequate. If dining, wi
ming and parygving won't help him through with it,
building, gaming and speculating will be sure to-.
The bottomess pocket will never fill, 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 nde-
pendent exertion will be pretty likely to wear poor
mans hair into his grave.
No man who has the natural use of his faculties
and his muscles has any right tax others with the
cost OF his support, this class of non-6nancial
gentlemen habitually do 1t is their mistake
to fancy that if debt is only paid at last the oblga-
ton of the debtor is fulfilled; but the fact is not so
man who sells his property 70. another's promise
to paw next week or next month, and is compelled to
wear out pair of boots in running after his due,
which he finally gets after 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, beside 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 a
running fight with bills and loans through life is
continually ning other mems means, is serious
burden and deiriment to those who deal with him.
although his estate should finally pay every dollar of
his legal obligations.
Inorinate expenditure is the cause of great share
of the crime and consequent misery which devastate
the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns
is fast qualifying himself for gambler and thief
the trader or mechanic who overruns his income is
very certain to become in time trckster and cheat
Wherever you spending faster than he earns,
there look out for vllany to be developed though
be the arthest thing possible from his present thought
When the world shall have become wiser and its
standard of morality more lofty, it will perceive and
affirm that profase expenditure, even by who can
pecuniarily afford it, is pernicous and uniustfa-
ble-that man, however wealthy, has no right to
lavish on his own appetites, his tastes his osteua
ton. that which might have raised hundreds from
destitution and despair to comfort and usefulness.
But that is an improvement in public sentiment which
must be waited for, while the other is ready and
obvious.
The meanness, the dishonesty, the niquity, of
squanderng thousands unearned, and keeping others
out of money that is justly theirs, have rarely been
urged and enforced they should be. They need but
to be considered and understood to be universally