And have you ever noticed that the man of means keeps a sharp lookout on his daily personal expenses - a closer watch than does the man of moderate means? This gives the owner of money a glimpse each day into the very scheme that made him successful. It keeps up the habit.

Not only do the careers of successful men prove that the savings habit gave them their start, but every such man, every employer in fact, insists upon the same quality in the young men whom he trusts with responsibility. Successful men who began at the bottom and have reached the top like nothing so much in a young man as economy.

"When a young man asks me for a position my first question is whether he has an account in a savings-bank," said the late Jacob Straus, who was the leading citizen of Ligonier, Indiana, when he died a few years ago.

Business men have a firm conviction that those who work for them can not manage the firm's affairs if they can not manage their own affairs. This conversation between an executive and a subordinate asking for more pay is recorded in The Saturday Evening Post:

"Own your home?"

"No."

"Any investments?"

"Never been able to make any - salary too small."

"If you can't manage such things for yourself, how can you for the house?"

Instinctively the employer has confidence in an economical clerk, and is suspicious of one who lives beyond his means. When a bank clerk begins to splurge the president begins to watch him. Nearly every bank defalcation starts with extravagance upon the part of the ultimate defaulter.

One western concern asks every applicant for a position how much he has saved, and if he is over thirty and has accumulated nothing his chances are pretty slim. Even more common is it for a firm to want to know what an employee does with his earnings when he is a candidate for a higher position. And why is this? It is because the successful business man of today is not a gambler. He is taking no chances. The only way the business man can decide how his employee will handle the business - and business means money - is to judge by the manner in which the employee has handled his own money in the past.

Many concerns go further than merely to employ and advance the thrifty workman. They strive to make him thrifty even if he is of his own accord a failure in that direction. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, the manufacturers pay half the wages in cash, and half in certificates of deposit in local savings-banks. These certificates pass like cash among the merchants, but of course if an employee leaves them in the savings-bank they draw interest.

Just before Christmas every one of the seven hundred men whose business it is to assist in the actual making of flour at one of the large mills in Minneapolis receives in his pay check a gift of twenty-five dollars. It is a part of the Minneapolis company's profit-sharing scheme. The only "string" tied to the gift is that the employees must open savings-accounts in some bank. In this way the company is giving more than so many dollars. It is instilling the priceless quality of thrift.

Perhaps, young man, you want to go into business for yourself. It takes money to do that, and the chances are that nobody will hand it out to you on a silver platter. If you can finance your own proposition, at least in part, it will prove by far the cheapest way. The ordinary money lender comes high, as we all know by hearsay if not by actual hard experience.

The one great cause of business failure in this country is lack of capital. This is just as true of the little enterprises as it is of the big. It is just as true, far more so indeed, of the corner grocery store, than of the great city concern.

Day in and day out there is a desperate cry from all over this country for capital, capital. Men who are brilliant inventors, who own large tracts of valuable mineral land, even managers who are able to build railroads, do not know where to turn for money. They have had a vision. They know that with money enough they can make profits for themselves and for investors, and benefit the community to boot. But they have no money of their own, and bankers and investors will not lend unless the originator of the scheme puts up something as an evidence of good faith.

The best opportunity in the world means nothing if you are not able to grasp it. "If wishes were horses beggars would ride." No one suffers more than the poor inventor. He has something more than opportunity. He has a real contribution to give the world. But it will never make good without capital. Many an elderly inventor has sold the result of years of work for a mere trifle because he had no capital of his own to develop it. Of course every inventor can not save a fortune, or even a modest sum. But if he has been working at a regular trade he should have been able to save enough at least to seize the great opportunity when it comes.

The young man with five hundred dollars to start business with in a small way does not find it hard to persuade some acquaintance with idle money looking for an opening to lend him another five hundred dollars. But the most silver-tongued young person with no capital of his own will not find it easy to drag out even a few dollars to start in business. When we meet our opportunity nothing so counts as ready money. The only way to have ready money is to begin to save, RIGHT NOW.