The purpose of this book is to help young men and women of moderate earning capacity to save and invest money. Incidentally its aim is to show the advantages of thrift. The main purpose is the practical one of explaining actual, workable methods of saving and investment. There has been enough preaching, enough exhortation. What is wanted at this time is a simple statement, not so much of why, as how.

As I conceive it, the investment of money is fully as important as mere economy. Frugality never gets anywhere unless the money is safely put to work afterward. Money may be kept in an old tin can or a broken-down stove without the owner having any knowledge of investment, but bills and coin hidden in that way are pretty sure to be lost, destroyed or stolen. Besides, in a generation's time, invested money doubles itself, and as long as your money can be made to earn interest, why not be the gainer?

Thousands of people are able to save and yet have never made a successful investment. I believe the one process is no harder than the other, provided a few simple principles are understood. So I have devoted half this book to methods of saving and half to the general subject of putting money to work, which includes the use of bank-accounts, life insurance and home owning, as well as the purchase of bonds, mortgages and stocks.

Experience plainly indicates that true economy is far more difficult than the actual earning of money. It may seem a paradox, but a moment's reflection shows that saving is all a question of spending. Saving money merely to have it, to keep it, is about the most despicable trait a human being can display. There is only one object in economy for any decent person, and that of course is to have the money to spend when you really need it or want it for a useful object.

There is no great secret about earning money. Of all pursuits it is the simplest and most obvious, provided one will take the proper, well-understood steps. It is an occupation in which almost any diligent, earnest, persistent person may hope to get on. There is nothing indefinite or intangible about it. There is no will-o'-the-wisp or phantom, such as baffles the man or woman who seeks to become a great artist, poet, inventor, scientist or statesman.

But it is a hard task to spend money judiciously after having earned it. We all know that many of the most industrious and successful workers are the most foolish when it comes to spending money. It takes a lot of planning and ordering of one's earnings to get the most out of them. It takes system and thought and will power. Spending money wisely is about the most difficult work there is. It is something that can't be figured out in dollars and cents, like business profits, because there are all kinds of people in the world with unlike temperaments, and what would be rank extravagance for some are necessities for others. Then, too, the spending of money has been haphazard ever since mankind had money at all, whereas earning money has long been a science. The latter is constantly being specialized and subdivided, but the housewife's expenditures still cover the whole range of living. Business and professional men and women are all more or less specialists in their work, but how many have had any special training in spending money? Yet just because it is hard work to use money to the best advantage are you going to give it up?

I do not need to say that if intelligent spending is less common than the earning of money, sagacious investment seems to be more difficult than either. Nothing is more frequent than the sight of a man who has made a fortune in a business he knows something about losing it in a venture he knows nothing about. Almost all rich men leave estates with thousands of shares of worthless stocks.

This little book aims, then, to throw light on one of the hardest problems that men and women have to face. From a personal, individual point of view, and from that alone, the subject is approached. But let us not forget, in this absorbing pursuit - this learning how to save and invest money - that nations have precisely similar problems. I believe that if the individual learns economy nations will do the same.

It has been proved often that poverty of resources and adversity of natural conditions breed in a people thrift and its resultant virtues. What is true of individuals is equally true of races and nations. When shiftless, poverty-stricken negroes are taught trades and begin to save and accumulate land and property crime decreases, they become law-abiding citizens and win the respect of white neighbors. The early American colonists had to fight hard to gain a foothold on a new continent, and the habits of thrift gained in the struggle for existence kept them and their descendants vigorous for more than a century. Great wealth of natural resources, ease of acquiring a living and long cycles of prosperity breed habits of waste and decay. When mad extravagance took the place of foresight and care among the Romans, that nation crumbled and fell to destruction. This country has become prodigal of its vast resources. Extravagance has come to reign supreme.

A party of Belgians traveling from New York to Chicago were astounded at the signs of waste on every hand. They spoke of the unused land, lumber, crops; and then after they had visited several cities, declared that the waste of men was fully as great. Extravagance in this country is a national menace, for remember that every dollar thrown away is either the product or equivalent of human labor, and so must in the long run be paid for by hard work.