Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1917 — Hoarding and Indiscriminate Parsimony Long Way From Real Thrift [ARTICLE]

Hoarding and Indiscriminate Parsimony Long Way From Real Thrift

By S. W. STRAUS

President of American Society for Thrift

“It is not the aim of thrift nor the duty of men to acquire millions. Hoarding millions is avarice, not thrift.” This bit of philosophy, uttered some time ago by Andrew Carnegie, can well be applied to American life at the present time. Lack of a proper ■understanding of thrift has been responsible for a< great deal of harm in America recently. ' . 4 This has been due to false economy, but people are rapidly geltting around to the viewpoint that hoarding and indiscriminate parsimony ere a long way from real thrift. What we all must learn is to eliminate waste. There is a great deal of difference between waste and sensible spending. The most reprehensible form of waste, of course, at the present time is is the matter of food. Secretary Houston has said that if only a single ounce of edible food, on the average, is allowed to spoil or to be thrown away in each of our 20,000,000 homes, over 1,300,000 pounds of material would be wasted each day. This would be at the rate of 464,000 pounds of food a year. Think of the millions of acres of land and the thousands of people nec-’ . essary to produce this vast amount of food I ' > It would be a very good idea fqi* every American home today to adopt the slogan, “Save an ounce of food a day.” z This ia a little thing to do. It really requires no amount of selfBacrifice. ' On the other hand, we have all bdfen eating a little too much. Cutting down our rations a trifle will be good for .our health. “Save an ounce of food a day.” ' . Let every American home do this and we will have gone a long way toward the solution of our food problem. ‘ r .