The Secret Of Wealth
132 total pages.
That day money was born. For anything is money which is movable property or represents such property. Many and various things have been money during the history of the world. Salt, dates, olive oil, rice, all have been used just as we use gold. Even today, among savage tribes of Central Africa, cattle are money. The price of a wagon or a wife is two cows or twenty cows, according to circumstances. And in Eskimoland, iron fish-hooks are currency, but so very scarce that the possession of forty fish-hooks makes a man wealthy. Probably the best known character in all the land of fiction is "Robinson Crusoe." Nearly everybody, young and old, has read how ingenious that sailor was at inventing ways of making his living on his solitary island sufficiently dependable so that he would be sure of having food and shelter even though he should be ill, or grow old and unable to bring in supplies each day. But not many people know that "Robinson Crusoe's Father," Daniel DeFoe, the writer who told this famous story, was also the originator of the savings bank. The story runs this way: "During the seventeenth century there was an alarming amount of discontent and uprising and crime in the European countries, and this was owing to the fact that the great mass of the people possessed nothing. They had no property and it seemed impossible for them to accumulate anything. Daniel DeFoe, among other thinking people, believed that if people could have a chance to save and own something they would become law-abiding, self-respecting and better citizens. So about 1689 he worked out a plan whereby the wage-earner could lay aside a part of his earnings and have it invested. This was such a big success that during the following century a number of institutions sprang up, the most of them in Germany and Switzerland, and later on in England." Eobinson Crusoe was a wonderful example of what thrift and industry will do for a human being, in spite of what seem to be insurmountable difficulties. He had to provide the actual articles of food and clothing for his future use--while we only need to store money for the future, for money will provide us with comfort and luxury all through life.
|
|
The Secret Of Wealth