Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-02-23
WHY NOT SAVE
BY II. Addington Bruce

IT is a familiar and true saying, easy
come, easy 60" If it were only an
equally true saying, Hard come, hard
CO." the sorrow and suffering now so COM
mon a fact in human experience would be
diminished to an almost unbelievable ex-
tent.
But the fact is, as borne out by Stats
tics Of insurance companies, that no matter
how hard men may have to work for the
money that comes to them as wages or sal
airy or business profits, the great majority
spend with as little thought to the future
as is shown by those to whom money comes
by the easy routes of inheritance, gambling
or fraud.
Comparatively few Systematically set
aside part of each weeks savings as insur-
ance against the rainy day of unemploy-
ment, sickness and old age. Many seek to
excuse their failure to do this on the ground
that ct costs so much to live"
And no doubt it does. This fact is pain
fully impressed on all except the rich. Even
So some saving is possible to almost every
Garner of money, and unless some saving
! is done the penalties of poverty and semi
| poverty are in the end certain to be I'M
/ posed
| More than this, when systematic saving
SPbA tAO't
! ately increased as ones earnings increase, a
| future not merely devoid Of worry about
! money matters but holding possibilities of
great comfort, is almost equally made GER
| tain. Money Systematically saved and wise
| ly invested makes money at an astonishing
| rate, even when the initial savings are
| small.
Of this | was reminded the other evening
| by an item in a newspaper 1t told of the
sale, for $4,000 spot cash, of hotel in
a Massachusetts town.
The purchaser was one Nicholas Conte
an Italian who foN nearly twenty years had
| been repairing shoes in the town where the
! hotel situated. He had not begun life
as a capitalist. He was typical immigrant.
And shoe repairing, everybody knows, is
| not the most lucrative industry in which a
man can engage.
Yet Conte, by the practice of thrift, had
| contrived to amass what really is small
J fortune. He had done this, moreover, with
| out being penurious, according to the item
reporting his purchase of the Berkshire
County hotel
"He has lived in comfortable circum-
stances, raised family of children, and
| observed the laws and customs Of his adopt
| ed country"
Be sure, though, that Conte gave even
more thought to outgo than to income. He
did not misidentify luxpres with necessi-
| ties, as is the common practice. And if
today he can indulge in sundry Injuries, it
! IS because he was wisely thrifty through
the eighteen years of his cobbIing.
! Not everybody, to be sure, can expect to
| prosper as Nicholas Conte obviously has
prospered. But almost all can draw from
| his experience hint of incalculabe benefit
if they will but act on it.
And further than this, as every systematic
saver can bear witness, once the habit Of
saving is started it becomes, like every
| habit, increasingly easy to keep up. The
difficulty is in starting it. To conquer this
| difficulty the Zone thing needful is recogni-
ton of the trouble that lies ahead if the
saving habit is not established
(COpyright 1924O