THRIFT.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9392, 12 March 1909, Page 6

THRIFT.

ADDRESS BY LORD ROSEBERY Speaking at tbe annual meeting of the Edinburgh ;Savings Bank, Earl Rosebery said;—“There is, at any rate, one sort of thrift which is in the power of the very poorest. It is to refrain from waste. If I wanted to train up a child to be thrifty I should teach him to abhor waste. I do not mean waste of money. That cures itself, because very soon there is no money to waste. But waste of material, waste of something that is useful though yon .cannot represent it in ' money value to the waster. There is waste of water, waste of gas, and things of that kind. If yon would wish your children to be thrifty I would beg yon to Impress upon them tbe criminality of waste. But let me take yon to a larger sphere of thrift, which, after all, is the main point I wish to insist today. All great Empires have been thrifty. All great Empires that were meant to continue to abide were thrifty. Take the Roman Empire, which lay like an iron stamp upon the face qf the world. It was founded on thrift. When it ceased to be thrifty it degenerated and came to an end. Prussia began with a little narrow spit of sand in the North of Europe. It was nurtured by the thrift of Frederick the Great’s father. Take tbe case of France. I am not sure that the French always put their money into the savings hank, and therefore they do not figure so well in the proportion of the depositors of the nation as some others may dn. But when in 1870 France was crushed for a time by a foreign enemy and by a money imposition which it seemed almost impossible that any nation could pay, what happened? The stockings-of the French peasantry in which they kept the savings of years were emptied into tbe chest of tbs State, and that hnge indemnity and war expense were paid oif in a time incredibly short. France was saved by her thrift.”