Albuquerque evening citizen. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1905-1907, 1905-10-19
A SAVINGS

The accumulation of half a million dollars from a
grammar school principals salary, ranging from $1,000
to $4,000 a year, for fifty years, is a remarkable achieve
ment of Prof. Alpheus Du Bots, of New York. IL is an
achievement as mysterious to the ordinary mind as is the
rapid accumulation of millions by some public officials
whose salaries are less than their cost of living.
Three thousand dollars a year for fifty years aggre-
gates $3.50 00-$350O00 less than a half million. Yet
reference to the interest table will show that the feat
which seems so extraordinary, if not impossible, may be
accomplished very easily. Nothing accumulates faster
than money at compound interest. Ten dollars saved
every year and invested at 8 per cent VIII amount 10
$1,000 in thirty-five years, and $4,000 laid aside from a
salary of $4,000 and allowed to accumulate for forty
years will grow to about $25O,000. Another ten years Will
put it very near the half million mark. Du Bots had the
advantage for many years of 7 per cent legal interest.
So the wonder is, not that his modest salary proved
the seed of a big fortune, but that anyone well paid for
years should come to old age with empty hands. Prof.
Du Bots was no mere miserly recluse. He mixed with
men and women and was a good deal of a dandy, fas-
tidious to the last. He had some reputation as poet ana
musician. In him many of the finer feelings had some
development.
Nevertheless, his soul was dwarfed to the littleness
of money. His first thought was for money always-not
for the fascination of making it on a grand scale in some
great financial game, not for the joy of creating it out of
the earth or sky or sea for the blessing of mankind; but
for the small and evil satisfaction of hugging TO himself
all that came to his hands.
He who sacrifices the love and companionship OF
wife and child for the sake of money may amass mil
lions, but pauperizes his soul. He who, for the sake Of
saving, denies himself the riches of sympathy and help
fulness and alienates himself in spirit from his fellows
is the poorest man in the world. The miser is the mena-
est of men, for while he lives solely for self he gets less
out of life than any other man. He has money, but de-
mics himself the things that money can buy. In
making money the end, instead of the means, of life he
narrows his purposes and achievements down to nothing
ness.
Unfortunately, the dividing line between thrifty saw
ing and misery meanness is not always Sharply cut. But
the despicable example of one miser, nor a thousand, can
ever shake the firm foundation upon which rest whole
some saving and thrift. The soul of thrift is saving. Most
men who have learned the trick of making millions at a
single deal first learned how to double their pennies. To
the man who would become rich the habit of saving, once
firmly fixed, is his most important capital. To the man
OF moderate income who hopes only for assurance of
means to establish his children in the world and to pass
his declining days in comfort the saving habit is his most
valuable and securest asset,
Happier and wiser and richer is he who is master OF
small fortune than he who is slave to a large one. The
interest table never fails. 1t is the human factor that
Tails in such computations, through inability to persist
IN wholesome habits Of saving. But, after all, the worse
danger is at the other extreme. The saving habit, once
formed, is apt TO grow even faster than money at com
pound interest. Ayarice is worse than extravaganza.
Happy is he who can keep in the golden mean. wanting
little that he has not and having little that he does not
need. He is the really richest and wisest and happiest
man in the world. and the rarest.