We have little faith in reflections. If a man cannot draw an inference for himself, it is little use anyone attempting to draw it for him. The reader of the preceding pages must have been taught, by example, how to get money. The art of money-making is a very simple one. If your income is twenty pounds, and you spend nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings, and elevenpence-three-farthings, you will never be troubled about money matters; and, in the course of years, may have a fortune commensurate with so modest an . Having thus acquired a small amount of capital, you must not part with it to mining-brokers or stock-brokers, however the tale they tell, and however friendly you may be with them. They are bound to do business, and for the sake of that, will help their nearest friend to an investment of the rottenest character. Stock-brokers may have a sense of honour—may be gentlemen; but I question much whether a money-broker has any feeling for his clients, I have known little money made by outsiders speculating on the Stock Exchange or in mines. I have known many reduced to beggary and want by such means.
Dr. Smiles writes—“The successful merchant is not merely the man who is most fertile in commercial combinations, but the man who acts upon his with the greatest promptitude.” Mr. Crampton, George Moore’s partner, says—“I never knew him make a mistake in judgment.”
Another fact to be observed is, that it is the country lads who, as a rule, are the most successful. At first they fail in accuracy, and quickness, and promptitude. They are slow compared with town-bred boys. “The City boy,” writes Dr. Smiles, “scarcely grows up; he is rushed up; he lives amid a constant succession of excitements, one another. It is very different with the country boy; he is much slower in arriving at his than the town boy, but he is greater when he reaches it; he is hard and at first, whereas the town boy is worn smooth by perpetual , like the in a running stream. The country boy learns a great deal, though he may seem to be unlearned; he knows a good deal about nature, and a great deal about men. He has had time to grow. His brainpower is held in reserve; hence the curious fact, that, in course of time, the country-bred boy passes the City-bred boy, and rises to the highest positions in London life. Look at all the great firms, and you will find that the greater number of the leading partners are those who originally were country-bred boys. The young man bred in the country never forgets his origin.” “There is,” says Rochefoucauld, “a country accent, not in his speech only, but in his thought, conduct, character, and manner of existing, which never him.”
George Moore had a brother. He was far apter than George; he had a better education; he had read extensively, and was well in literature; but he wanted that which his brother George had—intense . Hence the failure of the one, and the success of the other. It is thus the , man who succeeds. p. 181It was thus Warren Hastings won back the broad lands of his ancestors.
“In New York,” says an American writer, “fortunes are suddenly made, and suddenly lost. I can count over a dozen merchants who, at the time I began to write this book, a few months ago, were estimated to be worth not less than 250,000 dollars—some of them half a million—who are now penniless. At the opening of this year (1868), a merchant, well-known in this city, had a surplus of 250,000 dollars in cash. He died suddenly in July. He made his will about three months before his death, and appointed his executors. By that will he divided 250,000 dollars. His executors contributed 1,000 dollars to save a portion of his furniture for his widow, and that was all that was left her out of that great estate. He did what thousands have done before him—what thousands are doing now, and will do to-morrow. He had money enough; but he wanted a little more. He was induced to go into a nice little in Wall Street; he put in 50,000 dollars. To save it he put in 50,000 dollars more. The old story was repeated, with the same result.” I knew a gentleman who began the world as an agent; he managed to get a share in a newspaper, which eventually became an immense commercial success. His share of the profits amounted to some thousands a-year; but this was not enough—he must have more. He turned money-lender, borrowing at 5 per cent., to lend money on bad security at a high rate of interest. He died in the prime of life, a bankrupt, and of a broken heart.
It is not every one who knows when to leave off money-making; but there is a time when a wise man will remain satisfied with what he has won. I knew a gentleman in the Corn Exchange, who was worth £80,000. That was not enough for him, though to many it would have been a fair fortune. He was determined to make one grand before finally retiring from business, and enjoying the fruits of his industry and enterprise. He did so against the of his friends. The grand coup was a failure, and he died as poor as Job. Such men are to be met in London every day.
A man who died very rich, was very poor when he was a boy. When asked how he got his riches, he replied—“My father taught me never to play till all my work for the day p. 182was finished, and never to spend money till I had earned it. If I had but half-an-hour’s work to do in a day, I must do that the first thing, and in half-an-hour. After this was done I was allowed to play. I early formed the habit of doing everything in its time, and it soon became easy to do so. It is to this habit that I owe my prosperity.”
Sir Titus Salt, the millionaire, who made a fortune by the introduction of alpaca-wool-cloth into the country, was a very early riser. At Bradford, where he first commenced business, before he had built his grand manufactory at Saltaire, it used to be said—“There is Titus Salt; he has made a thousand pounds before other men were out of bed.”
It was industry that helped to make Franklin a successful man of business. This industry was, he tells us, a source of credit. “Particularly I was told, that mention being made of the new printing-office at the Merchants’ Every-Night Club, the general opinion was that it must fail, there being already two printers in the place—Kermer and Bradford. But Dr. Baird gave a contrary opinion: ‘for the industry of that Franklin,’ he said, ‘is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind. I see him still at work when I go from the club, and he is at work again before the neighbours are out of bed. This struck the rest, and he soon after had offers from one of them to supply us with ; but as yet he did not choose to engage in shop business.’ I mention this,” adds Franklin, “more particularly, and the more emphatically, though it seems to be talking in my own praise, that those of my who shall read it, may know the use of that (industry) when they see its effects in my favour throughout this relation.”
Again, let us see how men lose money; for the art of keeping money is of greater importance to a man than that of making it. The great house of Overend and Gurney fell, and threw all London into a panic, because the house did not know how to keep money, but went into all sorts of ruinous , which ultimately brought it to the ground. “In a little room in one of the by-streets of New York, up a narrow, flight of stairs, may be seen a man,” says an American writer, “doing a little brokerage which his friends put into his hands. That man at one time inherited the name and fortune of a house which America p. 183delighted to honour. That house was founded by two lads who left their homes to seek their fortunes in a great city. They owned nothing but the clothes they wore, and a small bundle tied to a stick, and thrown over their shoulders. Their clothes were home-spun, were woven under the roof, and cut and made by motherly skill and sisterly affection. They carried with them the rich of a mother’s and a mother’s prayers. They were honest, , , and . They did anything they found to do that was honest. They began a little trade, which increased in their hands, and extended till it reached all portions of the civilised world. They identified themselves with every good work. Education, humanity, and religion blessed their . The of the house died, leaving a fortune, and a name without a stain. They left their business and their reputation to the man who occupies the little that we have referred to. He abandoned the principles on which the fame and honour of the house had been built up. He stained the name that for fifty years had been untarnished. He fled from his home; he wandered about the country under an assumed name. Widows and who had left trust-money in their hands, lost their all. In his fall he dragged down the innocent, and spread on all sides. A few years passed, and after about in various cities abroad, he ventured back. Men were too kind to harm him. Those whom he had befriended in the days of his prosperity, helped him to a little brokerage to earn his bread, and so he lingered on, and died, poor and forgotten, and obscure;—a warning to the prosperous, not to forget that honesty is the best policy after all.”
A fast man in business, sooner or later, comes to grief. A young man in New York represented a New England house of great wealth and high . He was considered one of the smartest and most young men in the city. The balance in the bank, kept by the house, was very large, and the young man used to boast that he could draw his cheque any day for 200,000 dollars, and have it honoured. The New England house used a great deal of paper, and it could command the names of the best capitalists to any extent. He was accustomed to sign notes in blank and leave them with the concern, so much confidence had he p. 184in its soundness and integrity. Yet, strange to say, these notes, with those of other wealthy men, with nearly the whole financial business of the house, were in the hands of the young manager in New York. In the meanwhile he took a turn at Hill’s to relieve the pressure of business. Low amusements, and the respectable company he found, suited him. From a spectator he became a dancer. From dancing he took to drinking. He then tried his hand at play, and was cleaned out every night, drinking deeply all the while. He became enamoured of a certain class of women, clothed them in silk, velvets, and jewels, drove them in dashing teams in the Central Park, secured them fine , and paid the expenses of their establishments, all the while keeping the confidence of his business associates. In his , , and dissipated look, men saw his attention to business. The New England manager of the house was the father of the young man. His reputation was without a stain, and confidence in his integrity was . In the midst of his business he dropped down dead. This brought things to a crisis, and an exposure immediately followed. The great house was bankrupt, and everybody ruined that had anything to do with it. Those who supposed themselves well off, found themselves quite the reverse. Widows and orphans lost their all. Men suspended business on the right hand and the left. In , drinking, and dissipation, this young fellow had the enormous sum of 1,400,000 dollars. It is an old familiar moral to be learnt from the story of that man’s decline and fall.
But to return to money-making. “I find,” said a shrewd merchant, “I make most money when I am least anxious about it.”
The American, James Halford, rose, step by step, up the ladder of fortune till he reached the top. Some twenty years before he had stood at the bottom, and it was curious to hear what the world said.
“It is all luck,” cried one. “Nothing but luck. Why, sir, I have managed at times to get up a step or two, but have always fallen down ere long; and now I have given up striving, for luck is against me.”
“No, sir,” cried another, “it is not so much luck as scheming; the selfish schemer goes up, while more honest folk remain at the foot.”
p. 185“Patronage does it all,” said a third. “You must have somebody to take you by the hand, and help you up, or you have no chance.”
James Halford heard all these opinions of the world, but still persisted in looking , for he had faith in himself. He rose from the lowest situation in a store till he became a trader for himself, and a large fortune.
Mr. Freedley’s unvarying motto was—“Self-reliance and self-dependence.” He said—“My observations through life satisfy me, that at least nine-tenths of those most successful in business start in life without any reliance except upon their own heads and hands—hoe their own row from the jump.”
Nicholas Longworth, the Cincinnati millionaire, says—“I have always had these two things before me:—Do what you undertake . Be faithful in all accepted trusts.”
Stephen Gerard’s motto was the well-worn one—“Take care of the cents, the dollars w............