Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1870-07-26
A Lesson for Farmer Bows.


The first and main step towards obtain
ing competency of ten, twenty, or fifty
thousand dollars, is the securing of one
thousand; the chief difficulty in getting
the one thousand is in obtaining the first
hundred and keeping it. Hackneyed as
this may appear, it is fact that is ever
new, and one that ever needs to be drum
med into the ears of the struggling million
who work hard and look with straining
vision, but in vain, for the coming of plen-
tiful days. And especially does this home
ly philosophy of wealth need to be empha-
sized at the present time, and impressed
upon the young men of this generation,
since the prevalent tendency, now more
than ever before, is for beginners in mar
rled or business life to adopt such scale
of personal and family expenditure as must
render thrift impossible. The youth of
our time seem likely to forget that easy
circumstances in middle or mature age are,
as rule, only to be purchased at the cost
of rigid self-denial in earlier years. The
son and daughter are ambitious to begin
life where their parents left off.-in other
words they wish to reap where they have
not sown, or before they have sown, and
the result is, lives of make-shift anxiety
and failure. Most of those who are really
industrious, and yet find themselves at the
noon of life with only their daily efforts
between their families and want, could
have been in more comfortable circumstan-
ces, had they early learned the lesson that
the key to competency lies in the prac-
uce OF rigid economy at the outset of life
He who does not begin to save when he
commences life for himself will rarely be-
gin at ALL for where not even the nucleus
of modest fortune has been early acquir-
ed, family expenses will, after time, grow
as fast as the income, and the two keep
abreast ever afterward
Some of the ways in which even very
small sum actually saved and put aside in
early life, serves as stepping stone to fu-
ture competence are these:
The saving gives the young man a repu-
tation among his neighbors and business
associates Of being careful, frugal and pros
porous. 1t gives him what is called good
business credit, it is accepted as an index
of his business character, and instead of
his being forced to seek employment, OPP
portunities seek him. Besides, his little
ready capital enables him to take advan-
tage of business openings which if wholly
Pty-handed, he could not aspire to. 1t
enables him soon to become his own en-
pioyer-a most important consideration.
Money begets money. Capital has a nat
ural tendency to increase itself, and very
little capital in the hands of q judicious
person, and combined with the labor of
strong and skillful hands, is a vast help.
The day laborer or the mechanic who has
few hundred dollars in bank, or invested
in good Understanding security, is
capitalist as well as a working man, and is
prepared TO reap the advantages of his
double capacity.
But mainly, the saving and keeping of
the first hundred or the first thousand dol
lars is the key to future success, from the
fact that it builds up business character;
it compels the formation of habits of econ
omy, and fixes them for life; it puts the
young worker on the right road; accus-
toms him to keeping out of debt, drills him
in the homely science of keeping his fnan-
cial matters snug, and builds US a granite
determination to force expenses below in