The Art of Money Getting

Get money; get it honestly, if you can, but get money

The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick. He has no ambition; no incentive; no force.

Prosperity is a more severe ordeal than adversity, especially sudden prosperity. “Easy come, easy go,” is an old and true proverb. A spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying canker-worm which gnaws the very vitals of a man’s worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds, or millions. Many persons, as they begin to prosper, immediately expand their ideas and commence expending for luxuries, until in a short time their expenses swallow up their income, and they become ruined in their ridiculous attempts to keep up appearances, and make a “sensation.”

This is an illustration of Dr. Franklin’s “saving at the spigot and wasting at the bung-hole;” “penny wise and pound foolish.” Punch in speaking of this “one idea” class of people says “they are like the man who bought a penny herring for his family’s dinner and then hired a coach and four to take it home.” I never knew a man to succeed by practising this kind of economy.

few years ago, before kerosene oil was discovered or thought of, one might stop overnight at almost any farmer’s house in the agricultural districts and get a very good supper, but after supper he might attempt to read in the sitting-room, and would find it impossible with the inefficient light of one candle. The hostess, seeing his dilemma, would say: “It is rather difficult to read here evenings; the proverb says ‘you must have a ship at sea in order to be able to burn two candles at once;’ we never have an extra candle except on extra occasions.” These extra occasions occur, perhaps, twice a year. In this way the good woman saves five, six, or ten dollars in that time: but the information which might be derived from having the extra light would, of course, far outweigh a ton of candles.

That we are born “free and equal” is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be. One may say; “there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while I have but one thousand dollars; I knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, I cannot do that, but I will go and hire one and ride this afternoon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that I am as good as he is.”

Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us.

Some men have a fool­ish habit of telling their busi­ness se­crets. If they make money they like to tell their neigh­bors how it was done. Noth­ing is gained by this, and oft­times much is lost. Say noth­ing about your prof­its, your hopes, your ex­pec­ta­tions, your in­ten­tions. And this should ap­ply to let­ters as well as to con­ver­sa­tion. Goethe makes Mephistophiles say: “Never write a let­ter nor de­stroy one.” Busi­ness men must write let­ters, but they should be care­ful what they put in them. If you are los­ing money, be spe­cially cau­tious and not tell of it, or you will lose your rep­u­ta­tion.

The best kind of char­ity is to help those who are will­ing to help them­selves

If a man has plenty of money, he ought to in­vest some­thing in ev­ery­thing that ap­pears to prom­ise suc­cess, and that will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit mankind; but let the sums thus in­vested be mod­er­ate in amount, and never let a man fool­ishly jeop­ar­dize a for­tune that he has earned in a le­git­i­mate way, by in­vest­ing it in things in which he has had no ex­pe­ri­ence.