Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1919 — SAVING TO STABILIZE BUSINESS OF COUNTRY [ARTICLE]

SAVING TO STABILIZE BUSINESS OF COUNTRY

Systematic Buying and Elimination of Waste Lead to Prompt > Payment of Bills and - Happiness. American thrift will go far to tore the life of the world, to bring liberty and to make the pursuit of happiness possible to oppressed humanity. Periodically In the United States there have come times of financial depression ; production has exceeded consumption ; factory doors have dosed; workers have found themselves without money and the retailers who serve them have faced the gloomy alternative of refusing credit and going out of business because of lack of trade, or extending credit and going to smash because of lack of funds. The store closes its doors and immediately other stores, even those competing, feel the unwholesome influence. Panic spreads just as surely as when there is a run on a bank and failure stares many merchants In the face. Now the more thrifty the people of a community are the more promptly they pay their bills, and the more promptly bills are paid the more remote becomes the possibility of failure. If every worker Is a systematic saver, with savings made possible by careful, Intelligent buying and the elimination of waste, the hard time will be safely bridged and will be tremendously shortened. It is, therefore, good business for the retailer to Join In a campaign against Impulsive buying and waste. The mechanic who, in flush times, buys an unnecessarily elaborate article, and who. In hard times, repudiates his bills, Is not as good a customer as the one who used restraint in his day of prosperity and had a margin for the rainy day. The former undermines business —the latter stabilizes it.

The judicious buyer who exercises Mint In big pnreh wee «l«o carefully and conscientiously meets his obligations. The man who throws money away treats his bills as “a scrap of paper.” Waste is an enemy of good business. In certain districts of New York investigators found that 11 per cent of the contents of the garbage cans was perfectly good foodstuff. The amount of usable material abandoned In this country every year amounts to millions. The farmer leaves the plow to rust away outride the barn all winter; the housewife overheats the house; the factory worker throws good material on the scrap heap, and all those things make It possible that In the United States today there are 1,250,000 people, whose working days are over, dependent upon charity, Individual and county, to the extent of $220,000,000 a year, dependent because In their earning days they cultivated habits of waste- rather than those of thrift

Education In thrift must be an education Id values. That education must extend past the wort era of today to the workers of tomorrow. Hereafter more of a youth's precious school hours should be devoted to a consideration of the principles of how to live, how to take a helpful and progressive part ia the problems of a workaday world. The biggest lack in this notion is a department which will teach the value of a dollar. —The young man who In school re celved the proper training in thrift will take account of the use of savings. Savings- Is worse than uselesslf the hard-earned aocamulatlons are Invested in some of the innumerable gold-brlek, schemes which take millions of dollars out of our communities each year.

The treasury department Is confident that no safer and more attractive plan has been offered for the encouragement of small systematic investment than that of War Savings Stamps. If the Investor can lay aside but 35 cento a week he has here the means of putting that amount away In a safe security. If he can set aside four dollars and a few odd cento each week that amount begins working for him at a good rate of interest, which, with the principal, he will receive at the end of five years. Let the necessity of redemption arise through illness or hard times—he can hare the ready ea«h ten days after ho applies for it. In a certain great Industrial plant where 90 per cent of the employees were regular buyers of thrift stamps the Influenza epidemic was met with the minimum of suffering. The men had the funds available for doctor and medicine and proper food. They met their bUls promptly and did not embarrass the merchants of the community. It would be hard today to get any of these men to abandon the thrift habit which the government has taught them. SAVE IN WAR ON WASTE

Cardinal Gibbon* for Saving*.

An appeal for continued support of the government’s war savings campaign has beeo issued, by Cardinal Gib bona. “We should welcome the opportunity afforded by our government," said the cardinal, “to continue the saving To buy war savings is the dear duty of every j American citizen, young and oldUl urge all ottr clergy to promote this campaign by every means In their power. I urge our good people to give their heartiest support, and from the splendid evidences of their patriotism show* In the last two years I dm confident that at will meet with groat mucmm." . ...