St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1885-08-08
HEALTH AND WEALTH.
Two Conditions Which Have Many Points
In Common.

Two Conditions Which Have Many Points
In Common.
Health and wealth have many points
in common; first of all in their very
names. To have health is to be well;
to have wealth is also to be well-well
of.
Wealth is for the most part got i'll
three ways-by inheritance, by self-de-
NAL, BY care, labor and attention; often
by some combination of these three.
Wealth is lost by eNtravagant expnndi
| ture or by carelessness and neglect.
Health may also be got in these three
ways. A man may inherit it from his
ancestors; he may gain or keep it by de-
nying his appetites for luxurious food
and drink. and for excuses Of all kinds;
he may besides have to work for it. by
painstaking exercise, and a constant SUI
pervision over his habits. In brief, UNI
less a man has inherited large and
vigorous stock of health. he must do as
he has to do when he does not inherit
| wealth-earn it.
lie may also lose his health by extrav
agant demands upon it, by reckless ex-
penditure or by careleSsnesS in nurtur-
ing and preservingi it.
Moreover. the connection betweeL
health and wealth is SO close that if he
spends his wealth lavishly and rcckleSsly
on luxurious living and dissipation ut
the gaming table or other improper
places far into the night, his health will
go with his wealth. So again it often
happens that he can not have both an
excess of health and an excess of wealth
at the same time. He often loses his
health acquiring his wealth, and If he
has to care anxiously for his health he
is not likely to accumulate wealth.
Again, health is like wealth in thas "a
man may accumulate health not only
without wronging any body. but in doing
so actually benefits the world. a man
who gathers health and vigor from the
air and the water, from proper exercise
and correct life. does not take one
particle of health from anybody. There
still remain in the earth and atmos-
| phere plenty of the elements of health
for all the rest of the world. He, more
over, provides in himself and his Of
| spring certain number of persons who
| will not burden the community witt
sick and feeble members.
So, too. man by his labor and his
self-denial may, without injuring any
person whatsoever, gather wealth from
the soil. from the manufacturing forces
of nature and art or from his capacity
| to organize business enterprises and SO
reduce the friction of commerce. The
wealth thus created is besides posi-
| tive addition to the comfort and pros
perity of mankind.
Man can not voluntarily be deprived
of his health. He may sacrifice it him.
self. just as he may sacrifice his wealth.
| for the benefit of his fellow-men. But
no one can take it from him. If there
| were any way of doing SO there would
be but one result. No man would deny
himself or take any pains whatever to
| acquire or preserve his health. only for
the sake OF being obliged to give it ur
to some person, too luxurious or toe
lazy to acquire it for himself.
The same is true of wealth. No man
| would accumulate wealth if he knew il
would be confiscated by the self-indul-
| gent or the lazy the moment he had got
enough of it to tempt them to take il
/
| socialist and communist schemes. II
| put in practice. men would cease to &C.
| 4uire wealth. and the civilization would
degenerate into savagery.
In some conditions men are forced to
Eve up their wealth to other people.
Slaves have to do it. Heavily-taNed
people have to do it. What is the re.
sult9 Slaves and the heavilv-taxed
cease to produce much more than
| enough to keep themselves alive, and
the races or nation which long suffer
such state of things become impover.
ished and go to decay.
There is one particular. however. i'll
| which health seems to. but really does
| not differ from wealth. If it were pos
sible for shrewd and cunning man to
obtain health from other people, leaving
| them sick and feeble, he would then be
| like the Spectator or gambler who OBJ
tains property from others without pro-
ductive labor. But man who should
get health in this way would add moth
| ing to the common stock of health.
He would merely transfer from other
people to himself. This, however,
would be an unequal distribution, not
an accumulation of health. So the
gains of gambler or Spectator are not
an accumulation of wealth but an I'M
equal distribution of property.
Such transfers add no more to the
general wealth of the country than
transfers of health would add to its gen
eral health. But any man who by self
den'a or labor accumulates either
health or wealth is not only entitled to
what he acquires, but his acquisition is
| positive addition to both the heath
and the wealth of the wOrld.-DetyDh
Free Press.
HAYDN,