The first time my mother saw the garbage pail of a family
almost as poor as our own, with the wife and husband constantly
complaining that they could not get along, she could scarcely believe
her eyes. A half pan of hominy of the preceding day's breakfast lay in
the pail next to a third of a loaf of bread. In later years, when I
saw, daily, a scow loaded with the garbage of Brooklyn householders
being towed through New York harbor out to sea, it was an easy
calculation that what was thrown away in a week's time from Brooklyn
homes would feed the poor of the Netherlands.
At school, I quickly learned that to "save money" was to be "stingy";
as a young man, I soon found that the American disliked the word
"economy," and on every hand as plenty grew spending grew. There was
literally nothing in American life to teach me thrift or economy;
everything to teach me to spend and to waste.
I saw men who had earned good salaries in their prime, reach the years
of incapacity as dependents. I saw families on every hand either
living quite up to their means or beyond them; rarely within them.
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