CHILDREN'S FINANCIAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9064, 26 May 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHILDREN'S FINANCIAL EDUCATION.

Of all exclusively worldly things the most important is money. There is nothing rail, tangible, and purchasable for which it is not an equivalent. Even farther than that its liotency extends. It cannot buy health, nit it can soothe pain and prolong life. It cannot buy love and esteem, but it can purchase so good a counterfeit that even the purchaser is deceived. It cannot buy the Christian graces, but it can educate and maintain missionaries to disseminate those graces. It can build churches and buy masses to be sung for tho repose of the soul. There is but one thing a man can do without money—he can die. Just that—no more. To live he must have monoy, and to bury him requires money. Without money nothing can be done. To preach and spread the free Gospel salaries and expenses must be paid. A rich man is always n welcome acquisition to a church, even if ho is not conspicuous for piety. He has the " sinews of war." Throughout tho history of the church we find that though it has theoretically favoured poverty, it has always needed and accepted tho aid of riches, ;ind that its clergy havo not overlooked, when in their privnto capacities they were forming alliancos for any purpose, that practical, but yet seldom preached upon text, " I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." Since, then, money is so potent a power, so vital a necessity in all timos and places, and something with which we muet all have more or less to do, it seems strange that, while we teach our children so many things the uses of which are more or problematical, wo leave them—in the majority of cases—to work out for themselves that greatest of all wordly problems—the uso of money. This part of thoir education must be given by the parent or guardian. Usually thoir sole instruction on the subject consists of a knowledge that so much—or so little—as the case may be, is at their disposal. The first monetary lesson should be the saving up for a definite purpose. Persistent determination, the self restraint involved in doing without things, the acquired habit of naving monoy without feeling it burn in tho pocket—all those and other kindred good lessons are thus inculcated. Nothing is more beneficial to a child than to earn money. Only by toiling themselves do they come to a realising view that labour should be rewarded, and that money is hard to get. Above all, a child should nevor bo allowed to receive money—no matter how small tho coin — from anyone except those whoso duty requires them to supply its needs. Nothing more insidiously destructive of self respect could be imagined than the practice of "tipping" children, in England the labourer who tells you the time of day will accept a coin, but tho native born American will, by request, stop as he delivers his milk or groceries, and use his masculine strength to help the kitchen-mnid lift an artiole of furniture, or some similar service, and feel insulted at the proffer of pay. The English labourer's itching palm has been contracted by generations of "tipping." On the other hand, tho American's universal neighbourly kindness and disdain of pecuniary recompense in little things is tho result of the combined independence and interdependence necessitated by the social exigencies of a new country. A fixod income is in many ways a great help and educator to even a ten-year-old child. All the better if that income is earned by tho performance of home duties.

The financial relations of children to the church are generally all wrong. No earthly or heavenly good is done to children by giving them a penny or a nickel every Sunday to use as a contribution "for the heathen." It is a farce. The coin is not theirs, nor is theirs the charitable impulse that placos it in the contribution box. They should givo from their own store, and thoy should iirst givo to the heathen whose heathenism they can sec for themselves, in their daily lives around them, or by accompanying their parents to the mission for street Arabs of the great city. Nor is it well that a church, oven to gain a new building, should mako mendicants of the little onos in ite pale, and allow them to crave a small coin of all whom they encounter, "for the good of tho church." The amallness of the request is a sure guarantee that it will bo granted, but such a course of indiscriminate beggary belittles a church and destroys tho sensitiveness of a child's pride. The house of worship should be a tomplo erected by self sacrificing labour, and not a cairn, whereon every passer-by is equ sled to throw a etono.