GOING INTO DEBT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 76, 29 March 1878, Page 4

GOING INTO DEBT.

Half the young men in the country, with many old enough to know better, would "go into business," that is into debt to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to envy the merchant and manufacturer, whose life is an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant 'shining,' and who from month to month barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most men in business ; so that it has been computed that but one in twenty of them achieves a pecuniary success. For my own part — and I speak from sad experience — I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt. Let no man misjudge himself unfortunate or truly poor as long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard words, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach are disagreeable ; but debt is infinitely worse than all. I repeat, my young friends, avoid pecuniary obligations as you would pestilence and famine. If you have but fifty cents and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar ! Of course I know that some men must do business that involves risk, and must often give notes and other obligations, and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying at some little sacrifice all he owes. I speak of real debt — that which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side, obligation and dependence on the other ; and I say, from all such let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore ! — " Horace Greeley."