The Labor of Your First Thousand

The first thousand dollars that a young man, after going out into the world for himself, earns and saves, will generally settle the question of business life with him. The first condition is that the young man naturally earns this thousand dollars, unquestioned. He does not inherit this sum. It does not come to him by a streak of good luck—as the result of a fortunate venture in the purchase and sale of a hundred shares of stock. It is the fruit of personal industry. He gives his time and labor for it. While he is thus earning and saving it, he must use two or three, or perhaps four, of his best years to pay his current expenses. He is, consequently, held sternly to the task of industry for a considerable period. The direct consequence to him is steady, continuous, and solid discipline in the habits of industry—in patient, persistent foreseeing and self-denying effort—breaking up all the tendencies to indolence and frivolity, and making him an earnest and worthwhile component of the community. He not only learns how to work, but he also acquires the love of work; and, moreover, he learns the value of the sum which he has thus set out to earn. His ideas of life are shaped by his own experience.