New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1874-12-31
UNVISE ECONOMIES.

| UNEISE ECONOMIES.
This last day of the year is cmphaticaly
the date of birth for all good resolutions, and
as duns and debts thrust themselves into most
mems notice this morning the good resolu-
tiOns are apt to take q financial babitatOn
and name, and to build up theoretically
the days of the coming year into a succession
of small economies. Especially is this the case
with people vino live on farms or i'll small
towns. The wealthy man in city finding
himself on the brink of ruin does not plan
any curtailment in the breadths of his wife's
gown, or stint the cook in the matter OF
lard. lie casts about him probably for
some venture in stocks moro daring
than the last by which to retrieve his
slippery footing and if that fail, secures
nominal agency at Berlin or Paris, whore the
boys can be placed at cheap schools and his
wife lodged au quatrieme, until he shall find
| the ground safe under his feet again. Cooks,
| footmen, dressmakers-all the other petty
leaks by which his substance has been vast
| ing, flourish undisturbed until the day when
the grand establishment is broken up, and
bronzes, marbles, pictures, and china with
the crest on each cup), are offered for sale
pursuant to the departure Of the family to
Europe" The cost of the packing-5oIes
required to store away the personal property
of many ruined millionaire would equal the
income of countless village families, as cul-
tured and refined as his own.
When debt stares one Of these peODle-the
farmer country doctor, or small stOrekceper-
in the face at the end of the year, what is he
to dof lie has no credit to carry into the
stock market, even if he knew anything about
stocks beyond the local county railroad.
WHAT is left for him but "to put on the
Screws" wisely and properly cnoughs Yet
verify they are thumbscrews. The whole
family is locked of coffee, and sell all their
best hams out of the brine. Bill (who has
now fine growth of mustache, and who goes
| to church every Sunday evening with that
pretty alto singer is driven into hatred of
mankind in patched boots all Winter; the
girls cannot save quarter-dollar out Of their
butter money for ribbons and mother gives
up her yearly alpaca and goes down into calico.
But nobody minds that; it is SO easy for mother
to go down into calico Now all these petty
savings, in case of debt, are but just to
other men, and assume the dignity which be-
longs to honorable purpose. But there is q
habit of small economies, system OF what
is called shrewd forecasting, common among
our agricultural population which is neither
just nor dignifed. 1t reaches its climax and
receives fresh impetus with the close of every
year. The saving farmer goes over his papers
in the old secretary, and if he has laid
by one hundred in the last six months,
resolves to make it two in the next.
Wife and children pay the penalty, and,
worst of all, do not know that it is penalty.
In New England the universal habit of stint
ing among the lower classes, especially in the
matter of food, principally arose doubtless from
the desire for mental improvement and the i'm
possibility of feeding both brain and body.
The effects of such abstinence through two OF
three generations have told on both physique
anu character in a manner unmstakable.
Through the whole Northern agricultural pop
ulatiOn the same system of unwise sclf-denial
for tho purpose of laying dollar to dollar in
the old teapot, or bond to bond of Govern
mcnt loans, prevails to greater or less
degree.
There is no harder worked class of domestic
servants i'll the world than - wives of the
small farmers in the Middle States and the
tar West. "Mother" forgets her own fancy,
if she ever had one, of CHEEKY, comfortable,
hospitablo home, full of generous affection
and little pleasures, which should make q
sunny background to the lives OF her boys
and girls, in the daily and hourly exigency of
hard work and niggardlincss to lay I'D few
more dollars than their neghbOrs. She washes,
scrubs cooks herself into q lean mockery of
her former self, and drops her bundle of hard
worked bones into the grave at last, leaving
behind not one gentle memory, not one
liberal sweet thought, in her children to
lcavcn tho world. And after ALL Next
day her pies are all eaten, her floors
need scrubbing again, and the money
she saved has begun to melt away.
Heaven forbid that we should counsel her
husband to take to thlittlcss ways. But as he
locks up his savings tonight let him consider
whether there may not be an actual perma-
nent value in rational amusement, in the gra-
ciOus amenities of hospitality, in the light
hearted cheerfulness that would come to his
boys and girls if the scrcwsn were slack
ened, as well as in Government bonds. Let
him consider, too, that the money must some
day fall into the hands of these children, and
whether the nggardly habit of thought he has
given them will qualify them to make it of
benefit TO themselves or the wOrld7
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