Financial reward

“ If the worker's efficiency reaches 100 per cent. or more for any one week, and the hours on reward are, say, forty or more, a cash reward of 1s. or 2s., or other suitable amount depending on the status, etc., of the worker, is given in addition to the reward earned by production. ”

“ Can it be that a just God suffers the sons and daughters of some of us to eke out a bare existence as the best reward of earnest effort and sterling worth, and at the same time rewards these other men with $36,000,000 for one day's [51] labor? ”

“ Why should I not find things and get rewards? Pug-dogs at a guinea a time did not represent wealth, but there were more serious losses that brought higher rewards. The same paper provided me with an instance. On the evening of the 20th inst., in or near Erciston-square, W., Lady Meskell had lost a pearl necklace. A description of it was appended, and a reward of four hundred pounds was offered. ”

“ With ten, or twenty millions! My system is similar to that of the State: the higher the debt of a country, the higher stands her credit; therefore, what is credit?—wealth! This is elementary, not counting that it involves a high question of moral philosophy. But I shall explain my financial and philosophical ideas on a more favorable occasion. Go to Mariette, and report to me later. As for me, I have promised to take my little shop-girl out on a new saddle-horse which, by the way, cost me an outrageous price. ”

“ The lender might himself use the money to gratify his own desires. It is his money; he may use it, as he pleases, for his own gratification. Or he may himself employ it productively, and, at the end of the period, receive back his principal with the customary rate of profit. ”

“ After a nation has fixed what its money shall be, it then issues different forms of credit money all of which are directly or indirectly redeemable in the commodity to which a fixed and stable value has been given. ”

“ It is the compensation which the borrower pays to the lender, for the profit which he has an opportunity of making by the use of the money. Part of that profit naturally belongs to the borrower, who runs the risk and takes the trouble of employing it, and part to the lender, who affords him the opportunity of making this profit. ”

“ Superfluous expenses are to be retrenched as they enable a person to devote a portion of money to satisfy the claims of benevolence, friendship, and charity: great gain is frequently the result of seasonable forbearance: good order and management, and not sordid savings, are the source of profit. ”

“ Does the value of your savings lie so heavily upon your hands that you want to get rid of it? If so, then, and only then, by all means follow the lead of your greenback and fiat-money apostles, who promise to relieve you of your cares by a kind of money which in fact will relieve you of the value of your saved earnings. But, if you are the sensible men I take you to be, you will not forget that the first rule of wisdom teaches you to make sure of that which you have before grasping at shadows beyond. Do you want your savings to be worth dollar for dollar? ”

“ Their pens and pencils, luxuries of every sort, and car fare, as well as their charity fund, come from this allowance, and they are learning the right use of money as they never could in any other way. ”

“ Gifts of all kinds, expenses of all kinds, outgo of every description, must come from new sources of revenue; my fortune and its income and the surplus over the previous year’s outgo must be treated as a sacred fund of which I was merely the trustee. That rule has put me often in straits, has forced me to many money-making measures [134] that in the narrow view would be called relentless. But to it the world owes my highest achievements, as a financier and industrial leader, and to it I owe the bulk of my fortune.
The brain earns in vain, however hugely, if the hands do not hoard ”

“ She opened the drawer of a work table and pulled out a stack of envelopes held with a rubber band. She put the stack at the other edge of the table.
"Would you rather have all cash or bank accounts or both?"
My heart began to beat. She was where the money came from!
ou trying to tell me you're a philanthropist?" I demanded.
"Business is philanthropy, in a way," she answered calmly. "You need money and I need your services. To that extent, we're doing each other a favor. I think you'll find that the favor I'm going to do for you is a pretty considerable one. ”

“ Never before in the history of finance had it been made possible for men of modest means to further a charitable work, a noble work, a work appealing to all the highest aspirations of humanity and creditable to every finest instinct of the human heart, and at the same time to reap an enormous profit! And the price was only twenty-five dollars a share—while they lasted! ”

“ For why should a man be saving, whose success depends, not on frugality, but on a ‘successful hit’? and who, in a single speculation, may lose the savings of years?”
“That is a fact,” observed my friend. “How many of the gentlemen that dined with us to-day do you think are possessed of real property? Not one-third of them. And yet they are all ‘young, respectable merchants,’ as a certain New York paper calls them, doing ‘a handsome business’ on a borrowed capital. ”

“ In a money economy those who have cash use it to pay their bills or settle their accounts.
Those who buy on credit pay interest to money lenders. The money lenders, later the bankers, make their profits by helping others to spend beyond their own means. ”

“ When a man has earned, out of his hard work, a hundred dollars more than he needs for current expenses, he reasons thus: ‘I can not go into business with a hundred dollars; I can not embark in trade; but, as I work, I want my money to work.’ And so he puts his small gains where they will earn something. He lends his money to a wealthier neighbor, or puts it in the savings-bank. ”

“ Without care and method, the largest fortune will not, and with them, almost the smallest will, supply all necessary expenses. As far as you can possibly, pay ready money for everything you buy and avoid bills. ”

“ Money travels rapidly from hand to hand, from one pocketbook to another, from bank to bank, to borrower or drawer, in constant circulation.
"Has any one of your economists calculated how many times an active one-dollar multiplies itself in a year from the time it is first issued from the Treasury? How much does it earn in interest, compound interest, commissions, bonuses, dividends, and profit gain from constantly being shifted from person to person, bank to bank, and loan to loan? ”

“ It scarcely occurs to any of them that he needs a knowledge as to gold; yet every bargain into which he enters depends for one of its two terms on gold. I cannot but believe that the diffusion among business men of the fuller knowledge of the equation of exchange, of the relation of money to deposits, of credit cycles and of interest, which the future is sure to bring, will pay rich returns in mitigating the evils of crises and depressions which now take them so often unawares. ”

“ His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, that my exertions, whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them. Between money and such services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no common principle of comparison: they are quantities incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort and convenience of animal life. ”

“ Such a use of his economic gain, the right to receive income, to procure a satisfaction which can be obtained only by the expenditure of money or property, would seem to be the enjoyment of the income whether the satisfaction is the purchase of goods at the corner grocery, the payment of his debt there, or such non-material satisfactions as may result from the payment of a campaign or community chest contribution, or a gift to his favorite son. ”

“ I own it would be highly agreable to me, to have always a sum of money lying by me, besides my income; for I do assure you, Sir, that it is much more a scheme of economy than of expence. I should employ about seven or eight hundred of it to encrease my annuity during a year and a half and to enable me to travel agreably. ”

“ The spending of the fortune has taken a certain number of years (suppose ten) , and during that time 1,000,000 dollars' worth of work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sum for it. Where is the product of that work? By your own statements, wholly consumed; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have given therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars' worth of work, and ten years of time, and you have produced, as ultimate result, one beggar. Excellent economy, gentlemen! ”

“ And this larger balance would be drawn, upon for the extra expenses, such as entertaining and amusements, charities, and the thousand and one pleasant ways of spending money that are open to the possessor of the larger income, and are rigorously out of the reach of the owner of 500l. ”

“ It is not simply what you carry home in your pocket, as a result of your day’s work and of all the days of work, but what you carry away in mind and heart as well; what you carry away in the gratitude and appreciation of your fellow men; what you gain in the beneficent influence you may exert upon the community through your calling. Ten thousand a year is a splendid return from the investment of one’s personal ability, but there are other returns which may be added to the figures named in your contract in such a way as to make the money consideration seem the small end of it. ”

“ Since 1849, we have probably paid to them at the rate of nearly a million of dollars each year. Is there any scarcity of money? No. Are you fearful that one man is going to get all the gold in the world and sift it to the four winds, so that it never can be gathered? ”

“ I have more wealth than I need for my own use, and at present there are a few hundreds for which I am wanting a safe investment; permit me to take the liberty of an old friend and well-wisher, and to place these hundreds to your account, to be repaid in quarterly or half-yearly instalments, as you think best. ”

“ Even you, Monsieur Gagnon, could look into the future on those terms. When the expenses exceed the income, what takes place? One pays out all one's ready money, one borrows, sells a cow, a horse, a piece of land. ”

“ There will be a lively chorus of groaning and railing among them, for the miraculous paper money, which was to relieve them of their burdens, will, instead, relieve them of their property, and not in all cases at the same time of their debts. The paper money apostles promise to make business lively. Aye, my friends, if you are in debt, they will indeed make it lively for you. ”

“ The factor, if he be a man of money, and answers their bills, fails not to make them pay for advancing; or sells the goods to loss to answer the bills, which is making them pay dear for the loan; or refuses their bills, and so baulks both their business and their credit. ”

“ He who thoughtlessly gives away ten dollars, when he owes a hundred more than he can pay, deserves no praise,—he obeys a sudden impulse, more like instinct than reason: it would be real charity to check this feeling; because the good he does maybe doubtful, while the injury he does his family and creditors is certain. True economy is a careful treasurer in the service of benevolence ”

“ But the whole of the money-getting classes, and, to some extent, the classes who merely spend what others got and gave them, can look very well back upon a series of monetary sensations which have marked epochs in their lives. Our remembrances of that kind are, of course, most deeply engraved, and most clearly recollected, in the cases in which we are working for ourselves, and have ourselves achieved steps and triumphed over difficulties in life—each step and triumph marked by a lengthening of the purse. ”

“ As the bills grew heavier and heavier, from year to year, with the wife and two children assiduously expanding them, he paid none the less cheerfully. "There is some satisfaction in paying up for them," reflected he. "At least a man can feel that he's getting his money's worth." ”

“ With the assistance of borrowed money people enter into business, and carry on trades, from which by their abilities, diligence, or good fortune, so much profit arises that they soon acquire more than is requisite for their daily support; and under these circumstances the lender may undoubtedly receive for the beneficial use of his money a certain remuneration, especially as he himself might have employed it to advantage; and as by lending it he runs the risk of losing either the whole or a part of his capital, or at least of not receiving it again so soon as he may have occasion for it. ”

“ Interest and loan together will scarcely amount to one-half of your father's yearly income, so you will still be piling up money, even if you should live as a gentleman ought to live, and spend fifty thousand francs a year. ”

“ It is true, there are a great many people who owe more money than is due them, and who, if we should suddenly jump into specie payments, that is, all at once reduce the depreciation of the currency or the premium on gold from such and such per cent. ”

“ To both forty-seven thousand dollars seemed a fortune—forty-seven thousand dollars in cash in the bank, ready to issue forth and do their bidding at the mere writing of a few figures and a signature on a piece of paper. In a sense they knew that for many years the family's annual expenses had ranged between forty and fifty thousand, but in the sense of actuality they knew nothing about it—a state of affairs common enough in families where the man is in absolute control and spends all he makes. Money always had been forthcoming; therefore money always would be forthcoming. ”

“ It is then shown that interest on money-loans is paid because money affords special advantages as a medium of exchange, and the value of this property of money is traced to its ultimate utility, or, in other words, to the increment of productivity which the last addendum to the volume of money affords by facilitating the division of labor. ”