THE HABIT OF SAVING 263finds. themself poverty-stricken, in ill health, and actually growing old
long before the time they should begin to show signs of old age.
Millions of untimely, nameless graves have been filled by this cruel
state of mind known as the fear of poverty.
About ten years ago a young man held a responsible position with
the City National Bank of New York City. Through living beyond his
income he incurred a large amount of debt, which caused him to worry
until this destructive habit began to show up in his work and he was
dismissed from the bank's service.
He secured another position, but at less money, and his creditors
embarrassed him to such a degree that he decided to resign and move to
another city, where he hoped to escape them until he had accumulated
sufficient money to payoff his indebtedness. Creditors have a way of
tracing debtors, and very soon they were again close on the heels of
this young man, whose employer found out about his indebtedness and
dismissed him from his position.
He then searched in vain for employment for two months. One cold
night he went to the top of one of the tall buildings on Broadway and
jumped off Debt had claimed another victim.
COMMENTARY
As you read Napoleon Hill's comments about debt and poverty, the stories may
seem melodramatic and you may feel that they don't bear much relationship to
conditions in your world. People's sense of responsibility and personal obligation
has changed, and financial debt no longer has the taint about it that it had in
Hill's day. After all, the America Hill was writing about was before the crash of 1929
and the Great Depression that followed. It was before the modern stock market,
the antitrust laws, the FTC, and the Federal Reserve; well before credit cards, and
light years before e-commerce and dot-com billionaires.
The times have indeed changed, but the changing social mores have not
altered the basic principles of success. The tales that Hill tells may be from another