“Thrift produced civilization, and thrift began with civilization.”

How old is man?

There were human beings on the earth 500,000 years ago, so scientists tell us.

The oldest building on the face of the whole earth is the Sakkarah pyramid in Egypt, built about 6800 years ago.

Think of that! A building that was 2000 years old when Abraham was born!

In a sealed tomb opened in recent years were found the footprints of men who walked there 3800 years ago!

The cave savage began to change into the civi­lized man who built buildings when the savage learned to keep things,–to accumulate food, to store fuel, to lay away skins for clothing, to hoard the shells which passed for money in his day.

Until the human race grasped this idea, people were nothing more than animals, less intelligent than the bees or squirrels who do provide for days in the future.

There was no tomorrow for the savage.

He ate shell-fish found on the shore.

He killed animals by throwing stones at them.

He ate what he wanted at the moment, and threw the rest away.

But when the savage began to make stone arrow-heads, he began to keep them, and to give them to his sons when he died. The savage father and mother began to accumulate skins and weapons and to pass them on to their children.

Each generation gave the next one its gains in the way of art, tilling the soil, making boats, or weaving cloth. All that was collected in knowledge or discovery was passed along.

We are inheriting the accumulated knowledge of all the millions who have lived and died and turned to dust during the past thousands and thousands of years!

The results of the labor of those who lived before us make the world as we see it today.

Thrift is not a natural instinct in human beings. It is the outcome of bitter experience–not our own, perhaps, but of those who lived and died before us, and who have left scarred upon us the livid brand of Nature’s inexorable law:–Those who waste will suffer.

Mankind today retains the results of his labor and thought in two ways–the money he gains he puts into the bank; the ideas and experience he gains he puts into the heads of the youngsters who are growing up.

It is the thrift of individuals which makes a nation strong or weak. “So that every thrifty person may be regarded as a public benefactor, and every thriftless person as a public enemy.”

“The capitalist is merely a man who does not spend all that is earned by work!’

Tags: The Secret of Wealth