Thrift

1895

Thrift is a virtue. No people can long be free who are not thrifty. It is true that thrift sometimes passes beyond virtue, degenerating into the vice of greed. Because there are men who are greedy — drunk with the intoxication of wealth and power — we sometimes are told that wealth and power are criminal. There are some that hold that thrift is folly and personal ownership a crime. In the new Utopia all is to be for all, and no one can claim a monopoly, not even of himself. There may be worlds in which this shall be true. It is not true in the world into which you have been born. Nor can it be. In the world we know the free man should have a reserve of power, and this power is represented by money. If thrift ever ceases to be a virtue, it will be at a time long in the future. Before that time comes our Anglo-Saxon race will have passed away and our civilization will be forgotten. — David Starr Jordan in Popular Science Monthly.