“Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.”–Junius.
AS a whole people we are free and inde?pendent but, as a family or as individuals, we may be free but many of us are far from independent.
Let us declare ourselves independent of fads and fancies, of foolish customs and expensive habits. An early realization of an independent financial position in the world will be possible to most of us and within easy reach of many of us, if we will decide now, resolutely and with grim determina?tion, to work for future financial independence.
“Independency may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance; I mean where a per?son contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.”–Shenstone.
Nobody ever saw so many opportunities as there are today. “Work seeks the man. Never before was it so easy for every one to make money. This is the wage-earner’s day. He is receiving 30 to 100 per cent more cash income than he ever re?ceived before. He has become a more valuable part of the national machinery–that is why he receives more money–and It has made a change not only in his financial but also his psychological condition. He feels worth while. He commands respect. He looks upon his work with new eyes and in a new mood. He has risen to the place where he not only does what he is told to do, but what he sees should be done.
Here’s another important thing–save your strength. These are excitable times. A man works at high speed. When his work is ended at night he needs rest, not excitement. Our great financiers who work fourteen hours a day, who are so busy that appointments are made for them to interview callers when they are going up or down in an elevator, or riding on the train between their offices and homes, or whirling in a motor car from one directors’ meeting to another — these men, working under the highest pressure, do not seek “relaxation” in the clubs, restaurants or theatres. They are found going direct from their work to their homes; spending every spare moment in country rest and quiet, with their families. This is the only way they can restore their fagged brains and bodies; the only way they can renew the strength which makes it possible to work hard all day and late into the night, and yet enter the office in the morning fresh for a new day’s grind.
A man who works with his hands all day is just as exhausted at night as these wizards who work with their brains. A mechanic’s flesh and blood is no more resistant to weariness than that of the president of a railroad. The man who works for a daily wage needs the same quiet and rest to create new vitality as the man who “bosses” a steel mill.
Further than that–the man who is at home, reading and resting in the evening, is not spending his money.
When you are resting tonight at home, think over the fact that you, you yourself, are a vital cog in the machinery of the world. The work you do is as important as the work done by any other one man. The war in Europe has affected this Coun?try, has affected you individually; you are working harder and getting more money out of it. You are a part of the world; if it whirls fast, you must go with it; but the sane man adapts himself to the swift pace, balances himself to it so that a sudden stopping of the world’s speed will not shoot him off into nowhere.
Men and women who have today’s good incomes, yet who have the common sense to live in the eco?nomical ways of their grandparents–well, figure what it would do for you on your income.
“The man who thinks ‘he can’t do if is alwuss more than haff right.”–Josh Billings.
Here is a message to mothers and fathers and daughters from a woman whose life since she was born has been a bed of roses:
“A girl has no right to marry unless she can cook, and bake and sew and buy the supplies and keep a house thriftily. No matter how wealthy may be the man she marries she will need to know all these things. Why, Mrs. Martin has that splendid big house and five servants and she told me that she would never be able to manage that house right if her mother had not taught her how to do everything–now she knows just how it ought to be done to be right, and the servants can’t fool her a minute. She seems proud to tell that if the whole five left her at once she could put on an apron and go into the kitchen and get better meals than those five professionals prepare.”
“This is especially detrimental to us, that we live, not according to the light of reason, but after the fashion set by others.”–Seneca.