Excerpts from

  "The Secret of Wealth"
by Franklyn Hobbs




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FOREWORD

"The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market -- it depends on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do; with them everything." -- Franklin.

AS a man chooses his coat for its wearing qualities or for the moment's passing whim, so does he choose his destiny. The responsibility and the result lie with the chooser. Each living person chooses--and each hour that passes fixes his choice deeper and deeper in his daily life.

Wealth is a state of mind or perhaps 'twould be better to say that wealth is created through a state of mind. Few people get rich or acquire riches at a single stroke; most people who become rich grow rich, and the growth and development of a personal fortune is sometimes scarcely noted by the busy man or woman, who is thus almost unconsciously growing rich.

The acquiring of money and property, once begun, is a simple and easy process; growing rich comes through habits that are such fixed parts of one's daily life that, once on the road to wealth, it would be quite difficult, if not wholly impossible, to stop the growth.

"If you live according to what nature requires, you mill never be poor; if according to the notions of men, you will never be rich. This is especially detrimental to us, that we live, not according to the light of reason, but after the fashion set by others."

These thoughts from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who was born in Rome before the year One. It is easy to see that the same things kept people poor in those days as in our own time and the principles of living well and happily and gradually acquiring wealth have not changed a whit since the year One.

There is no condition into which a man may come that is more to be feared by the individual and by society than the condition of poverty; it maddens a good man to crime and drives a madman to destruction. The condition of poverty is not a normal one and may quite easily be thrown off by any one who has health and the will of progress. It was Thucydides who said this about 425 B. C.:

"An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful."

Nearly 2,200 years later Oliver Goldsmith said:

"To be poor, and seem to be poor, is a certain way never to rise."

So for more than 2,000 years, it has been understood that the person, who was poor and let it be known, and made little or no effort to rise above poverty, was largely responsible for his own unhappy condition.

Poverty and pauperism must not be confused; one who has, through misfortune, ill-health or a combination of circumstances, become a pauper may have left to him no avenue of escape. The pauper is to be pitied and to be helped.

The poor are those people who spend more than they get or at least spend all they get; Bruyere put it thus--"He is poor whose expenses exceed his income." If such a condition should obtain long enough, that person would be a pauper; from poverty to pauperism is not a long step; it is only a short slide.

Wealth, ease, comfort and even contentment are within the reach of each one of us, though we all travel different roads toward our selected goals. The paths of some of us lie over mountains where, if we have the strength, we may leap from peak to peak of success, but the many of us, the great multitude, who travel the level plains, must approach success steadily rod by rod, mile by mile, day by day and year by year.

In every life there are deep ravines, gullies and torrents, which the rash man comes upon unexpectedly, attempts to leap, in his haste miscalculates and falls. The man with judgment anticipates the chasm and carefully builds a bridge upon which he crosses in perfect safety.

First of all, we live to live. Not one of us is there who does not dream today of climbing sometime to his Heart's Desire. But dreams will end in dreams, unless we work and plan and sacrifice now.

If you are rich, there should be something in these pages to show you how to do more with your riches and to more fully enjoy the wealth which has been bestowed upon you.

If you are on the way to wealth, something herein should serve to smooth the road and make! it shorter; if you are poor, the way to wealth is open to you and '' Plain as way to Parish Church.'' Read --think--plan--grow rich. Every man cannot be rich, but you and I can. Poverty usually "comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance and folly."

"Wealth may be an excellent thing, for It means power, leisure and liberty."--James Russell Lowell.

"Money does all things; for it gives and it takes away, it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so on to the end of the chapter."-- L'Estrange.

IS MONEY WEALTH? The number of men and women who can now be laying away small fortunes is almost incredible.

At the same time they can live well, dress well, and surround themselves and their families with all needful comforts and educational advantages.

Money is not wealth.

Earning thousands of dollars brings nothing to any one--unless it is so spent that "while one lives one may enjoy more fully the good things of life.'' The first of all good things is that one shall have comfort and independence as long as he lives-- that means putting money by.

"To maintain prosperity is harder than to acquire it."

Nowadays it is easy to earn money. Intelligence and business ability come in strongest when a decision is to be made as to how money shall be spent. Shall it be spent in buying rainbows? Or shall it be spent in buying such necessities as will last--and in buying capital?

"A man's capital is what he has left after he has fed and clothed himself, and paid for the ' incidentals' of life which include everything from railroad tickets to a tooth-brush."

Every day the choice is before every one of us. Here is money. Shall I buy luxury which I fancy --or shall I buy more capital?

We cannot do both.

The difference between the rich man and the poor man is the difference in what he buys with his money.

The rich man has bought wealth and position.

The poor man has bought trash.

A leading financier overthrows another mistaken theory of the man who wants to be rich but has not the gumption to be it:--"Can't make a million dollars honestly?" he asks. "Whoever says that is wanting in industry, or courage, or integrity, or aptitude."

"How is it that some men live in abundance, and have something to spare, while others can scarcely obtain the necessaries of life, and at the same time run into debt?" asks Socrates, the great philosopher. '' The reason is," replied Isomachus, "because the former occupy themselves with their business, while the latter neglect it."

"The young man should never hear any language but this:

'You have your own way to make, and it depends upon your own exertions whether you starve or not.' "

To put the whole thing into an epigram: --

He who would be poor--

"Thinks of life as a goblet to be drained instead of a measure to be filled."

CHAPTER 2

"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!'