Los Angeles herald., 1907-01-21
DESTROYING DEBT
RESULT OF PRIDE
TALMAGE breaches SERMON
ON FRUGALITY
Defends Henry Ward 5eeeher's State
ment That Man Can Support
Family on a Dollar and a
Half Weekly

"Destrying debt was the subject Of
a sermon by Frank Dewitt Talmage
yesterday. In part he said:
paul was a practical minister, and
not one famed for mere intellectual at.
tainments. His rostrum was more often
the ropemakcr's bench than the syna-
gogue's pulpit. As a practical gospel
physician he, in my text, today dag
noses one of the most distressing moral
diseases of the human race. He saw
that the men and women Of his time
were living beyond their means and
struggling in the quicksand of debt,
just as many people are doing in the
twentieth century; therefore, he gave
in his Roman epistle the same advice
that Horace Greeley once wrote: Never
run into debt. Hunger, cold, rags hard
work, suspicion. unjust reproach, are
! disagreeable, but debt Is infinitely worse
than them all, Avoid pecuniary oblga-
tion as you would a pestilence or
famine. If you have not more than so
cents, and can get no more for week,
buy peck of corn, parch it, and live
on it, rather than owe any man dali
! lar owe no man anything'--that
means, in John Randolph's interpreta-
| ton of the philosophers stone, pay as
you 60 That means that if you have
no money with which to satisfy your
personal desires, then let them be un-
satisfied. Allow no creditor, as a jailer.
to rivet a heavy iron ball of financial
obligation to your limbs. Do not buy
a feathered singer, unless at the same
| time you have money to purchase
cage in which to let your songster abide.
Debt is generally the offspring of
pride. The bare necessaries of life are
very small. Nearly every man can
fN,,
necessaries if he will only work hard,
do his best, and not waste his income on
useless eXtravagances. Henry Ward
Beecher once made the declaration that
a man could feed himself and wife and
a family of growing children upon $1.50
per week. For making this statement,
Mr.. Beecher was sharply arraigned by
thousands of critics. Many newspaper
editorials affirmed that the Plymouth
pastor was advocating the reduction Of
the laborers' salaries to % cents a day.
He was not attempting any such thing.
| What Mr.. Beecher tried to prove was
this: The bare necesSaries of life are
very small; therefore, most people can
provide for their actual needs of they
will only be energetic, and at the same
time be frugal.
But this frugality, in many cases,
pride will will not permit them to prac-
tice. Pride, with the smiling, supercili-
Gus face and bediamonded finger, usually
comes to the young mans home with
such insinuating words as these: My
friend, you have no right to rear your
family as you are doing. You should
, not allow your wife to stand behind the
! counter or to live in the back room CT
the store with her two babies, as your
; mother once did. This is a different
age from that in which your father
; started out. If you do not let your
| children grow up in a respectable neigh
borhood and go to refined and eXpen-
sive private schools then their youthful
associates will be bad and refined peo-
pie will have nothing TO do with them
SO the young man, who was making
humble income and was on the high
road to ultimate financial success, hires
a private home on the boulevard. He
moves his family away from the neigh
borhood of his store. He hires clerk
to do the work formerly done by his
wife, while he himself is visiting the
wholesale departments. The income,
small before, becomes less and less The
expenses of the family sustenance are
doubled and quadrupled. A haunted,
worried, anxious look comes over the
young mans face. Instead of there
being a balance in the bank now there
is deficit. Instead of the wholesale
stores allowing the young man all the
credit he wishes, now they begin to
push him. And one day Debt, the Off
spring of pride, calls at the store to see
how the young man is getting along.
But instead of Debt now coming with
the obsequ:ousness of a visitor, he
strides into that young mans store and
home with the mien and the heavy step
of a tyrant and a master.
Then L see Debt call out to a yelled
figure who is standing in the doorway.
He says: Come in, mother; come in.
You need not be afraid come in Then
the female figure throws back the veil
from off her head and 1 see that she is
the old hag, Pride with a painted
withered, sneering, scornful face. Then
Debt takes Mother Pride through the
aisles of the store, and through the
rooms of the young mans home, and he
says: Mother, these goods-they will
soon all be mine. These pictures upon
the walls and those carpets upon the
floor, those dishes in the closets-they
shall soon all be mine. And / will make
the young man drop his life insurance
policy when he dies. | will literally strip
his widow of everything. Aha, that
young man did not realize what keen,
shrewd. far-seeing, satanic planner
could be. when l told him to increase
his outgo over his financial income. l
am we'll worthy to be called thy child,
mother; L carry misery and woe wher-
ever l CO. Such is nearly always the
outcome of every mans life, when pride
and debt go hand in hand and are al
lowed to sit down by the domestic fire.
side"