HOW TO MAKE MONEY.

INTRODUCTION.

It is perfectly indifferent within what circle an honest man acts, provided he do but know how to understand and completely fill out that circle.

An honest and vigorous will, could make itself a path, and employ its activity to advantage, under every form of society.

GOETHE.

EADER, if you have a dollar, or desire to work for one, you have an interest in the contents of this book. You have looked at the title and glanced at the table of contents. They awake your expectation, if they do not please your fancy; and you say to yourself, "will this, can this, really teach me how to make money? Will it instruct me how to keep my money when made, and how to make it in its turn productive?" If its directions and rules. are followed, it will. It will even show you with such plainness that he who runs may read, how to make money earn money. But remember that every one,

though the most practical of men, knows more than he uses to advantage. However carefully you may read, you may not apply the principles here laid down, or heed the examples given: if so, you may get curious information, but will not receive all we, or you, desire from the reading.

Wealth is the want and wish of nearly every person whose subsistence is not dependent upon the exertions or fortune of others, or who, being dependent, is anxious not to remain so. It is seen to be the means, not only of supplying the imperative needs of human nature, but of adding innumerable gratifications to almost every faculty, appetite, passion, or taste of humanity. It buys dress and jewels, equipage, fine houses and grounds. It searches sea and land, near and far, for delicacies to load the table. It fills the library with books, the walls and portfolios with pictures, the halls and parlors with statuary. It gives ability for large subscriptions to religious, charitable, and philanthropic purposes, to found churches, schools, asylums, and hospitals. Most of all, perhaps, in the average view, it commands a respect, an influence, a power among his fellows, which the person possessing it might without it never hope to attain.

"Some people have an idolatrous love of money. The Israelites had their golden calf; the Greeks had their golden Jupiter. Old Bounderby valued the man who was worth a hundred thousand pound.'

Others do the same. money, possessions, value. 'What is his income?' are the usual questions. If you say, 'There is a thoroughly good, benevolent, virtuous man,' nobody will notice him. But if you say, 'There is a man worth a million of money,' he will be stared at till out of sight. A crowd of people used to collect at Hyde Park Corner to see a rich man pass. 'Here comes old Crockie!' and the crowd would separate to allow him to pass, amidst whispers of admiration. It was old Crockford, who made a large fortune by keeping a gambling house." *

The lowest human nature loves 'What is he worth?'

There is no doubt that wealth, in the eye of the world, sometimes of the tribunals of justice and the halls of legislation-aye, even of those great educators of humanity, the pulpit and the press-covers a multitude of sins. The rich offender too often goes scot-free, while the poor devil takes his reproof, his scorn and neglect, or his conviction and sentence, whatever his misdeed may bring, quite as a matter of course, and without any redress for injustice, if such there be.

"Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it."

And, as the same great poet of humanity puts it,

"The learned pate

Ducks to the golden fool."

All this is not to be named in praise of wealth;

* Samuel Smiles, "Thrift."

but that it is among the most conspicuous results of riches, among the most inspiring motives to its pursuit, in the mind of many eager delvers for gold, is not to be denied, and so must fairly be taken into the account.

On the other hand poverty, hard, grinding, biting poverty, is almost universally recognized as one of the greatest, meanest ills of humankind. Those who have written in praise of indigence have usually themselves been possessed of abundance, like Seneca, the Roman moralist, writing upon a golden table of the pleasures of poverty; and it may well be doubted whether any one, however apparently contented with his lot or happy-go-lucky in his disposition, has declaimed sincerely against riches and in behalf of the empty pocket. As the great Dr. Johnson wisely suggests,

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Poverty takes away so many means of doing good, and produces so much inability to resist evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all virtuous means to be avoided. Resolve, then, not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but of beneficence. No man can help others who wants help himself: we must have enough before we have to spare. Poverty is a great It certainly destroys

enemy to human happiness.

liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and

others extremely difficult.

All to whom

want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to

think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor."

Especially is poverty terrible when it comes, as it often does, after experience of wealth. If every man in business, and every woman who holds the pursestrings for home expenditure, could early in life be brought by reading or personal knowledge to understand the horrors of want after affluence, as usually consequent upon failure, what a revolution would be wrought in the business and domestic world! The dollar that would or should do its part in preventing such a catastrophe would not be squandered in trifles or superfluities until at least it could be done without danger, until continued labors and accumulated savings had made the dreaded result next to impossible.

Let the small philosophers say what they will, it is money almost alone that improves the position of the struggling aspirant in the world's general regards; and if one possesses this, and in addition the qualities of the educated and refined, the energetic and nobly ambitious, nearly every goal in the race of life may be his. Let all remember that the dollar in hand can be so invested as to make one round in the ladder of position and influence, as it can otherwise be foolishly spent and help to leave us just where we do not want to be, at the foot of the ladder and in abject poverty.