Samuel Smiles：Thrift, Excerpt 140

The late Sir Arthur Helps, when speaking of high and low wages, and of the means of getting and spending money, thus expresses himself on the subject, in his "Friends in Council":"My own conviction is, that throughout England every year there is sufficient wages given, even at the present low rate, to make the condition of the labouring poor quite different from what it is. But then these wages must be well spent. I do not mean that the poor could of themselves alone effect this change; but were they seconded by the advice, the instruction, and the aid (not given in money, or only in money lent to produce the current interest of the day) of the classes above them, the rest the poor might accomplish for themselves. And, indeed, all that the rich could do to elevate the poor could hardly equal the advantage that would be gained by the poor themselves, if they could thoroughly subdue that one vice of drunkenness, the most wasteful of all the vices.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
Locator：Excerpt 140 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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