New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-12-30
THLS WEEK.

The season is Janus-faced, and while it
smiles like Santa Claus himself on the young
STEERS, hath scOwl on the other side OF its
mouth for the rest of us. for the melancholy
time is come of paying bills. In this week all
the necessaries wherewith we comforted our
bodies during the year, all the pleasant little
luxuries.to which we invited our souls, present
the sting which they invariably have left be-
hind. The coat is old, the bouquets long ago
dust which we left at our sweetheart's door
morning after morning; even the vine with
which we consOled our bachelOrhOOd on Christ
mas Day has been drunk and forgotten; but
now come the avenging ghosts of them:
futtering host of yellow envelopes with
thinnest and most suggestive OF Enclosures,
which meet us at breakfast and pursue us all
day. What were the Eumenides to these
Furiesf Orestes apparently, had good looks
and ready wit enough to wheedle them and
Minerva too out of his sentence; but what
could good looks avail him against an angry
tailOr's bill
1t isa time with hattened pocket-bOOks before
us, for solemn thought, for remOrse, for welghty
good intentions. The most DOus father OF
family finds himself as full of good resolutions
on New-Year's as pagan hell itself Is reported
to be. Not one of us, perhaps, from the house
keeper with her market-bO0k in hand to the
woud-be Sardanapalus of BOwery clerk, who
does not at least on this one week of the
year count up our resources and honestly
determine to retrench. In all probability the
resolves will amount to just nothing. Money
will be scarcer next year, while nothing Is so
hard to break rs a habit of spending 1t, by
a family or a single member of it. Very few
women and fewer men have that kind OF self
control which enables them to stint every day
IN the year in order to lift the burden from
the invisible last one.
A statement made lately in the English pa
pers may help us to this wholesome self
control if we consider it rightly. return has
been made to Parliament of the rentals of all
houses in the kingdom, from which is deduced
the startling fact that in land of million
"aires and princes the number of really COM
"fortable people is less than II per cent of the
"population." BY the comfortable" is meant
a family owning or renting house at 500
per year, or over; "a householder says the
Spectator, "who is out of the class of the
"anxiOus, intends to give his children fair
education, andi can contemplate a holiday
without any sickening feeling of despair 1t
"implies, in London, house costing 1915,
"and an income of not less than $4,000; and
in the country a rental of $3.50 aud an in
"come of $4,000 While, therefore," it con-
TIMES, "every year sees a new millionaire en-
"ter society, it is an undOubted fact that only
100000 families in Great Britain are comfort
cable. One in eight only of the population
"need not regard n sovereign as a very serious
" sum, and only to four in a thousand is q five
"pOund note not a most important amount Of
"money." Here is matter for reflection for us.
While the ratio OF expenditure here in the
cities is so much heavier that no man with an
income of only $4,000 could command in New
York house of the grade accessible to him in
London, the income of every man willing to
work is at least double that which the same
amount of Skill knowledge, and industry
would conquer for him in Great Britain. The
mechanic, who in England would regard the
taking in" of daily paper as an unpaTdon-
able extravaganza, here can afford a mode of
life not only comfortable but, to the English
view luxurious. The farmland here, with his
cosy house, patch of ground, and plentiful
provender, the year round, of bacon, chickens
and pie, in Dorsetshire would chew his black
bread unmoistened save by lard, on Sundays.
with chance of meat once in the year.
The moral of which is, in brief, that money
comes i'll so easily in this country that if COM
mon sense rules a mans outlay there is no
reason why any family above the rank of
absolute paupers should be in debt on this
last week of the year. To effect this result
next year, the first consideration should be to
pitch our tent where our income will go fur
thest. The salary or wages which in New
York will rent room in tenemene house,
will command in an inland town a large
dwelling and corresponding comforts; salary
and wages being just as sure there, and no
risk, among the friendlier village folk, of
starvation. The second consideration is that
money which comes easily is apt to 20 in the
same slippery fashion Fashionables in Fifth
ave. or Denver, with their coDventionalism,
their inccssant aping, lileh daily from the purse
that odd dollar which leaves the wOful deficit
at the end of the year Let us bid Fashion
goodbye, then, and leave the eyes of
our neighbor out of our calculation in the
next twelvemonth's expenses, and we shall
face our creditors with light hearts and full
pockets when the New Year of "a dawns.
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The strike Of the gas-stokers in London has set
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