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Sunday, April 12, 2020

Teach Children Proper Perspective on Money, April 9, 1920

From the April 9, 1920, editorial page of the Hertford County Herald, published every Friday by J. Roy Parker, editor, and Jas. S. Vinson, manager, Ahoskie, N.C.

A Lesson for Parents

Recently a woman in a large city committed suicide. The brief news item chronicled the happening. The incident excited a moment’s comment and was forgotten. Who has much interest in one woman who gave up the fight simply because of the want of moral courage to continue the struggle!
A serious lesson is bound up in the happening. It would be well for parents to ponder the situation, because the parents of this woman were more responsible than she was.

The parents were wealthy and gave their children everything that they thought would serve her as a member of a wealthy family. On her education and on her wardrobe, large sums of money were cheerfully spent. Thus the child grew up into a woman with no other idea than to spend money and enjoy life. Not a word had ever been taught her about the possibility of a turn in the tide of fortune and in that case of taking care of herself. Not a really useful thing had ever been taught her.

But she got along swimmingly for a while. Like a butterfly she flitted here, there and everywhere. And, she was envied by other women who did not have her supposed advantages. In the course of time she married; a supposedly wealthy man with decided sporting proclivities, of course, and for a year or two they had a very grand time. But suddenly things did not go right—took a turn. Fortune decamped and left the poor miseducated woman stranded. Her father’s fortune was gone and her husband dead, she found herself in want and no experience to be summoned to her aid. For 10 years she made the best of the fight as she could and was very miserable all of the time. One night a mood of despondence caught her in the right frame of mind to commit suicide and in a moment it was all over.

Today thousands of children are growing up to believe their fortune is already made and that they need not take a thought to the contrary. Parents who fail to train them to meet the requirements of life, in whatever guise they may come, gamble with their children’s future. Often the more amiable and willing children they are, the harder is the denouement when fortune takes a turn for the worst. One man may spend the thousands upon thousands of dollars on his child, and the mother may exercise every material care to insure its happiness and health, only to handicap it the more in the years that are to come.

Wealth and personal comfort are delightful as slaves, but fiends as masters. This is a fact that every child should be taught from the cradle up.


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