Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1915 — THRIFTY PEOPLE HAPPIEST. [ARTICLE]

THRIFTY PEOPLE HAPPIEST.

A Growing Bank Account Doesn’t Always Mean Skimped Pleasures By Any Means. Dennis Tierriey was a ranch hand all his life. When he recently died he left $20,000. William Wayne Belvin inherited $600,000 and has just been sentenced to one day in jail as a vagrant. The one saved his money, the other squandered it. They are typical. There is a continuous procession of the thrifty upward into the ranks of the well to do or in or alongside of a similar procession downward into the poorhouse and jails. There is a cult which despises thrift, holds that vagrancy and crime are a necessary result of our civilization, that a man is a fool to save, because since society is responsible for his condition society owes him a living. The same cult, and it is larger than many suppose, says that charity is a despicable humbug, since it yields

up for the benefit of the unfortunate but a trifle of the possessions which in fact all belong to the miserable who need it. And yet it is self-evident to those who think, and ought to be self-evi-dent to all, that if society is responsible for the ' condition of Belvin, who is in jail, it was equally responsible for that of Tierney, who died and left $20,000, The two were under the same social Influences, and

one cannot in reason say that the same social influences can produce opposite results.—San Francisco Chronicle.