Franklyn Hobbs - The Secret of Wealth

"The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market it depends on two words, industry andfrugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best of both. Without industry andfrugality 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 hechoose his destiny. The responsibility and the result lie with the chooser. Each living personchoosesand 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 stateof mind. Few people get rich or acquire riches at a single stroke; most people who become richgrow rich, and the growth and development of a personal fortune is sometimes scarcely noted bythe 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 richcomes 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 notionsof men, you will never be rich. This is especially detrimental to us, that we live, not according tothe 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 iseasy to see that the same things kept people poor in those days as in our own time and theprinciples of living well and happily and gradually acquiring wealth have not changed a whitsince the year One.

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

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

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 beknown, and made little or no effort to rise above poverty, was largely responsible for his ownunhappy condition.

Poverty and pauperism must not be confused; one who has, through misfortune, ill-health or acombination of circumstances, become a pauper may have left to him no avenue of escape. Thepauper 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; Bruyereput it thus"He is poor whose expenses exceed his income." If such a condition should obtainlong enough, that person would be a pauper; from poverty to pauperism is not a long step; it isonly a short slide.

Wealth, ease, comfort and even contentment are within the reach of each one of us, though we alltravel different roads toward our selected goals. The paths of some of us lie over mountainswhere, 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, mileby mile, day by day and year by year.

In every life there are deep ravines, gullies and torrents, which the rash man comes uponunexpectedly, attempts to leap, in his haste miscalculates and falls. The man with judgmentanticipates 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 climbingsometime to his Heart's Desire. But dreams will end in dreams, unless we work and plan andsacrifice now.

If you are rich, there should be something in these pages to show you how to do more with yourriches 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! itshorter; if you are poor, the way to wealth is open to you and " Plain as way to Parish Church."Read thinkplangrow 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 RussellLowell.

"Money does all things; for it gives and it takes away, it makes honest men and knaves, fools andphilosophers; 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 smallfortunes is almost incredible.

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

Money is not wealth.

Earning thousands of dollars brings nothing to any oneunless it is so spent that "while one livesone may enjoy more fully the good things of life." The first of all good things is that one shallhave comfort and independence as long as he livesthat 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 adecision is to be made as to how money shall be spent. Shall it be spent in buying rainbows? Orshall it be spent in buying such necessities as will lastand 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 hismoney.

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 hasnot the gumption to be it:"Can't make a million dollars honestly?" he asks. "Whoever says thatis 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 canscarcely obtain the necessaries of life, and at the same time run into debt?" asks Socrates, thegreat philosopher. "The reason is," replied Isomachus, "because the former occupy themselveswith 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 ornot."

To put the whole thing into an epigram: