The leader., 1902-01-08
WORST OF TlRANTS.
The Problem of Receipts and Expen-
dftures IL One In which Every
Man, Woman and Child IL
Interested.
Especial Washington letter.

Especial washington Better.1
(( a LII individuals should be book
~ keepers" says the secretary
of the treasury. The sub
jects of receipts and expenditures
should be drilled into the minds of
school children. The problem of how
to live within stated income should
not he left to the solution of maturity
or old age.
1.-THE state should be thrifty. 1t
should be understood that public
wealth can only flow from private
prosperity. 1t is wicked for private in-
dividuals to waste their substance. 1t is
criminal for state to expend more than
its income or promote wastefulness in
official life. The manner of the living
of public men receives more careful
scrutiny by the plain people than they
imagine. There flows forth therefore
from the recklessness of the livings of
some public men not only the jeal-
ousies which engender crime, but hab-
its of wastefulness among the people
themselves"
The subject of conversation was the
fact that so many rich men are seeking
places in high official life, not for the
purpose of earning their livings there
by, but for the purpose of having ex-
allied social station. Such men do not
serve the people well, but use the Of
fees for their own selfish ends. The
conclusion reached was that the peo-
pie should take more individual inter
est in political affairs than they do, and
should see TO it that rich me are not
sent into high public places merely be-
cause they are rich; nor should rich
men be debarred from public service il
the people understand that they have
patriotic purposes. But the accumu-
lation of rich men in body at the ma
tional capital promotes an atmosphere
of aristocracy which is inconsistent
with the spirit of our government.
The problem of receipts and ex-
penditures, which Secretary Gage says
children should be taught to solve, has
occupied the minds of many mature
men and women, including wilkins
Micawber and all of his class. Few can
easily learn that wealth consists of the
savings rather than the earnings. The
miracle of the loaves and fishes was
completed only when obedience was
given to the commands: Gather up the
fragments that remain, that nothing
may be lost" The miracle taught not
only a lesson of the divine power of
the Theanthropos, but also inculcated
lesson of political economy. Nature
knows no waste. She utilities the small
est atoms. Man alone is wasteful.
Even the beasts of the field are eco
nomical. The squirrels save and the
bees busily store away food for the
winter. Man alone does not seem dis
posed to look ahead ''for a rainy day."
Grover Cleveland once said: ut is
our neighbors who keep us poor, be-
cause we try to live as they live, instead
of living as we ought to live, on our
incomes" A similar lesson was in
culcated by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer,
who said: 80 apportion your wants
that your means may exceed them
Every man who earns ten shillings a
week can do this if he please, whatever
he may say to the contrary; for. if he
can live upon ten shillings a week, he
can live upon nine and eleven pence
Poverty is relative and therefore not
ignoble. Neediness is a positive degra-
dation. If l have only 6 100 year, l
am rich as compared with the major
ity of my countrymen. If l have 6 s.