The Secret Of Wealth

During a year about 200 million tons of farm products are hauled by wagon from farms to the railroads--200 million tons, costing 25 cents per ton every mile they are moved! The usual farm wagon carries only about a ton and a half at a load--think of the innumerable times wagons jolt to town and back again over bad roads! If the same business economy and cost-reducing-system which is applied to the building and operating of a railroad was applied to country highways, the enormous waste of money eaten up by bad roads would be ended, and the farmer would be able to save more than half of the sum it now costs him to carry a load of wheat from his barn to the elevator.

Good roads reduce expense, yet the average farmer endures bad roads as if they were imposed upon him by Providence, like the color of his hair, or his parentage. He thinks considerably about that 1 cent per ton per mile which it costs to ship a carload of potatoes to New York or Chicago, or somewhere else, but it seldom occurs to him to cut the expense of getting potatoes from his fields to the station. There is an enormous leak in his profits--and he does not see it. He is so accustomed to his routine of life that he never stops to figure that the difference to him between a bad road and a good road is several hundred dollars a year. He appreciates the difference to his personal comfort--but expense, that is a thought which has hardly reached him enough to start him reducing it.

What expense are you so accustomed to that you don't consider it?

What place for saving money are you overlooking because it is a familiar part of your life?

What spot is there in your household, in your business or social life which could be made to save you money, by the application of a new viewpoint and common sense?

Perhaps you are living in a house which is more expensive than you need for either comfort or convenience--but you have lived there so long you dislike making a change. Perhaps you are keeping up a social life which does not give you pleasure in proportion to its cost. Perhaps you have set your heart upon your daughter being a pianist or a singer, and are straining yourself to pay the bills-- when she may be already thinking of marriage and a home of her own, and these pleasant duties will end the career for which you have cast away so many precious dollars.

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