HAPTER XX.

THE USE OF MONEY.

The money question in the management and training of children has a
distinct bearing on the subjects of some of the preceding chapters. It is
extremely important, first, in respect to opportunities which are afforded
in connection with the use of money for cultivating and developing the
qualities of sound judgment and of practical wisdom; and then, in the
second place, the true course to be pursued with them in respect to money
forms a special point to be considered in its bearing upon the subject of
the proper mode of dealing with their wishes and requests.

_Evil Results of a very Common Method_.

If a parent wishes to eradicate from the mind of his boy all feelings of
delicacy and manly pride, to train him to the habit of obtaining what he
wants by importunity or servility, and to prevent his having any means of
acquiring any practical knowledge of the right use of money, any principles
of economy, or any of that forethought and thrift so essential to sure
prosperity in future life, the best way to accomplish these ends would seem
to be to have no system in supplying him with money in his boyish days, but
to give it to him only when he asks for it, and in quantities determined
only by the frequency and importunity of his calls.

Of course under such a system the boy has no inducement to take care of
his money, to form any plans of expenditure, to make any calculations, to
practise self-denial to-day for the sake of a greater good to-morrow. The
source of supply from which he draws money, fitful and uncertain as it may
be in what it yields to him, he considers unlimited; and as the amount
which he can draw from it does not depend at all upon his frugality, his
foresight, or upon any incipient financial skill that he may exercise, but
solely upon his adroitness in coaxing, or his persistence in importunity,
it is the group of bad qualities, and not the good, which such management
tends to foster. The effect of such a system is, in other words, not to
encourage the development and growth of those qualities on which thrift and
forehandedness in the management of his affairs in future life, and, in
consequence, his success and prosperity, depend; but, on the contrary, to
cherish the growth of all the mean and ignoble propensities of human nature
by accustoming him, so far as relates to this subject, to gain his ends by
the arts of a sycophant, or by rude pertinacity.

Not that this sy