The more a
man earned, the more he--or his wife--spent. I saw fathers and mothers
and their children dressed beyond their incomes. The proportion of
families who ran into debt was far greater than those who saved. When a
panic came, the families "pulled in"; when the panic was over, they "let
out." But the end of one year found them precisely where they were at
the close of the previous year, unless they were deeper in debt.
It was in this atmosphere of prodigal expenditure and culpable waste
that I was to practise thrift: a fundamental in life! And it is into
this atmosphere that the foreign-born comes now, with every inducement
to spend and no encouragement to save. For as it was in the days of my
boyhood, so it is to-day--only worse. One need only go over the
experiences of the past two years, to compare the receipts of merchants
who cater to the working-classes and the statements of savingsbanks
throughout the country, to read the story of how the foreign-born are
learning the habit of criminal wastefulness as taught them by the
American.
Is it any wonder, then, that in this, one of the essentials in life and
in all success, America fell short with me, as it is continuing to fall
short with every foreign-born who comes to its shores?
As a Dutch boy, one of the cardinal truths taught me was that whatever
was worth doing was worth doing well: that next to honesty came
thoroughness as a factor in success.
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