The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1885-05-23
FALSE ECONOMY.
Some Pertinent Reflections by m Old
Writer from the Pacific Slope Who
Knows What He is Writing About.

Seek the poorest for economy's sake
Live on the cheapest. Dress cheaply.
Get yourself cheap lodgings where
CRIME and squalor prevail.
BY so doingyou will put on the atmos-
phere of poverty as you do your over
coat and carry it with you as one of the
signs revealing the very condition you
want and need to conceal. Poverty
will drive most people from you. They
are afraid of you. They feel in your
presence the possible request of Lend
me dollar for few days
This ought not to be so. But it is so.
This is not homily on fancies but one
on facts
There is quite as much reckless saving
in this world as reckless spending. As
when a man walks three or four miles
to save fare, and thereby walks the
strength out of mind and body, that he
needed for some important purpose.
That's one of the ways of keeping poor.
Take care of your pence in taking good
care of yourself and keeping body and
mind in the best condition, and not in
ramming every nickel your fist closes
over down rat hole, while you suffer
and weaken for what it could buy
think real poverty means starving
ones self of the good things of this
world or being starved for lack of them,
as you please. There's law for culti-
waiting this sort of poverty as fixed in its
working as the law which carries the
errth around the sun. Make up your
mind that YOU won't abide this sort of
poverty and so act as opportunities pre-
sent themselves, and see if elements
and agencies do not come to you to help
you enjoy life as you live. Only there
is presumed on your part sufficient sense
to know such elements and agencies and
also to know how to use them.
Who are the rich? a man with a
million may live feeling as poor as
poverty;' scared half to death every
time he takes out his pocketbook for a
necessary outlay; distressing himself by
the hour with the thought that his last
| purchase of a dollars worth at one shop
might have been secured for ninety
cents at another starving his stomach
with indigestible ten-cent lunches and
studying what he calls economy until
economy has turned into mserliness.
Another man buys what he needs
treats himself to the best he can find and
afford, treats his body to decent food and
clothing and gets lots of good out OF
them as he goes along.
Which is the richer of the two?
What do YOU want? 70 feel miserably
poor all your days on earth that YOU may
so die poor as poverty" though worth
the million YOU have scraped together
through starving your body, starving
your tastes, scrimping, cheese-paring
and living in such dread of poverty that
YOU have become a money boarding
mOnomaniac, distressed by the money
gripcs every time you open your purse
for a car fare.
Go unshaven to-day to save the bar
ber's fee, and YOU feel unshayen and I'M
presentable. That is the very day you
will meet the man on whom you desire
to make a favorable impression, and who
may take stock OF your stubby beard
and Judge YOU thereby. Buy the cheaper
shoes or the cheaper coat or hat to save
few dollars, and you buy so many
cheap signs which will let you out and
keep YOU out of the class who might be
NEST useful to you, as you might in turn
also be to them.
A man bred to misery morality and
| stuffed full in his youth of Ben Franklin's
maxims provocative of economical starry
alton, went to strange place in search
of business, having in his pocket 500
For economy sake heput up at third
| class hotel, where grease and rancidity
| made him half-sick and sallOw For
economys sake he kept on wearing a
| suit of clothes verging on scediness,
when an expenditure of $40 on apparel
would have made him Outwardly a
far more presentable person. Week
! after week he grew outwardly
more secdy and inwardly more sick,
and further from the situation he sought,
! for his clothes and his third rate bear
inc and address, coming of stopping at
third-rate hotel, enveloped him with a
third-rate atmosphere and created for
him with others third-rate impression.
So his hundred dollars dwindled and
| dwindled away on this basis of economy
nntil he could not purchase new suit
of clothes, while those he wore became
daily less and less preSentable. As he
! became less preSentable he had less and
less face to present himself to the kind
Of people most necessary for him to
seek
The second man coming to the same
place on a similar errand chose better
though more expensive lodgings and
thereby got himself among and was
seen of men among more respectable
class of people He, also, had but 500
in the world, but when he saw in his
clothing signs of wear and tear and
more coming, he said to himself: ''lf
buy me a fifty dollar suit of clothing,
though l get nothing to do, | shall have
the apparel, anyway, and that better
business basis to stand on than a seedy
suit
Ask any man of the world which OF
the two was most likely to get along
and make his way.
Take care of the pence and the
pounds will take care of themselves. y
says your careful old man of money.
True! But are you taking care of the
pence when for economy's sake you
dose yourself with the dirt and rancid.
ity of slop-dish restaurant? Are you
taking care of yourself? Won't poor
living make you poorer? There is a
pretty straight path for many between
poor feeding and poor whisky. Are not
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