risked and lost everything in some venture. As they now have others depending on them, they do not dare to take the risks which they took in young manhood to get a new start, and so they struggle along in mediocre positions, still mocked with ambitions which they have no chance to gratify.
How many inventors and discoverers have fought the fight of desperation amidst poverty and deprivation for years and years, and have succeeded in giving the world that which helps to emancipate man from drudgery and to ameliorate the hard conditions of civilization, and yet have allowed others to snatch their victories away from them and leave them penniless, just because they did not know how to protect themselves!
Thousands of people who were once in easy circumstances are living in poverty and wretchedness to-day because they failed to put an understanding or an agreement in writing, or to do business in a business way. Families have been turned, penniless, out of house and home, because they trusted to a relative or a friend to “do what was right” by them, without making a hard and fast, practical business arrangement with him.
It does not matter how honest people are, they may forget, and it is so easy for misunderstandings to arise that it is never safe to leave anything of importance to a mere oral statement Reduce it to writing. It costs but little, in time or money, and when all parties interested are agreed, that is the best time to formulate the agreement in exact terms. This will often save lawsuits, bitterness, and alienations. How many friendships have been broken because understandings were not put in writing 1 Thousands of cases are in the courts to-day for this reason, and a large part of lawyers’ incomes is derived from them.
Many people have a foolish idea that others, especially friends or relatives, will be sensitive and think their honesty questioned if they are asked to put their proposition, or agreement, or understanding in writing. It is not a question of confidence. It is a question of business, and business should be done in a business way, so that in case of death, or some other unforeseen event, every possibility of complication or misunderstanding will be eliminated. The very people you may think will be sensitive or offended because you are so exacting will really think more of you for your straightforward business methods and your carefulness in avoiding misunderstanding.
Many a cultured girl has been thrown suddenly on her own resources by the failure or the death of her father, and has found herself wholly incapable of administering his affairs or of earning a living. Many women, their husbands having died suddenly, are left with large business responsibilities, which they are utterly unfit to assume. They are at the mercy of designing lawyers or dishonest business men, who well know that they are mere babies in their hands when it comes to important transactions.
Business talent is as rare as a talent for mathematics. We find boys and girls turned out of school and college full of theories, and of all sorts of knowledge or smatterings of knowledge, but without the ability to protect themselves from human thieves who are trying to get something for nothing. No girl or boy should be allowed to graduate, especially from any of the higher institutions, without being well grounded in practical business methods. Parents who send their children out in life, without seeing that they are well versed in ordinary business principles, do them an incalculable injustice.
I have heard a young woman boast that she did not know anything about money matters, and had no desire to. She said that she had no idea of the value of a dollar, that she could spend all the money she could get, but that it was distasteful to her to discuss economy. Many such women object to any common-sense consideration of the financial question. They think it is not necessary for them to know anything about money from the purely business point of view, as they consider that phase of life belongs wholly to their fathers or brothers or husbands.
An instructive example of the result of such spirit and ignorance I found in a lady who had lost her property through a lack of business knowledge. She told me that she knew nothing whatever about business. She had never known the value of money. Her husband died and left her with a large property, and it was her custom to sign any paper or document that her lawyer or agents presented to her, usually without reading. The people who had charge of her property knew that she knew nothing about business and took advantage of her ignorance. They got her property away from her, and she did not have enough left even to conduct a legal fight to get it back.
Thousands of girls are sent out into the world with what is called finished educations, who cannot even give a proper receipt for money, to say nothing of drawing a promissory note, a draft or a bill, or understanding the significance and importance of business contracts. Such a woman presented a check for payment to the paying teller of her bank. He passed it back to her with the request that she be kind enough to indorse it. The lady wrote on the back of the check, “I have done business with this bank for many years, and I believe it to be all right. Mrs. James B. Brown.”
A society woman in ’New York presented a check for payment at a bank, and the teller told her that it was not signed. “Oh, do they have to be signed?” she responded. “What an awful lot of red tape there is about the banking business.”
I know of a lady whose husband made a deposit for her in a bank and gave her a check book so that she could pay her bills without calling on him for money. One day she received a notice from the bank that her account was overdrawn. She went to the bank and told the teller that there must be a mistake about it, because she still had a lot of checks left in her book. She knew so little about business methods that she thought she could keep drawing any amount until the checks were all gone.
This sounds ridiculous and almost incredible, yet the very girl who laughs at it may make even more absurd blunders. Many an accomplished woman, when given a pen and asked to sign an important document drawn up by an attorney or a long-headed business man, will sign it without reading it or even asking to be informed of its contents, only to learn afterwards by disastrous results that she has signed away her property and turned herself out of her home. Only a short time ago I read of a lady who had won a suit involving about $20,000. New evidence, however, was brought forward, which caused the court immediately to reverse its decision. It was proved that the lady had sworn falsely. She was perfectly innocent of any such intention, but she had sworn that she had never signed her name to a certain document. The document was produced, and, to her utter astonishment, she saw her signature affixed to it She acknowledged at once that the signature was hers, although she had just sworn that she had never signed the paper in question. It appeared that, during her husband's lifetime, whenever papers were to be signed, he told her where to write her name, and she did as she was told, without having the slightest idea of the contents of the papers.
Many people have come to grief by giving full power of attorney to their lawyer or business agent Very few impractical people, especially women, understand the significance of a full power of attorney, which authorizes the person so empowered to deal with your property in all respects as if it were his own, or as if he had for the time being assumed your personality. He may sign your name to any instrument; he may bind you to anything he pleases; he may draw money from your bank; he may impersonate you in all business transactions. In short, as far as business arrangements are concerned, he stands practically and legally for yourself. This is a tremendous power to place in the hands of another, and people should be very careful to whom they assign it. It should never be conferred on any person but one whose honesty is above suspicion, and whose knowledge of business and of men and affairs has been tried and proved.
“Oh, I signed a paper, giving full power of attorney to my lawyer before I went abroad,—I trusted everything to him,—and when I came back practically everything was gone. My business affairs were so complicated that I have not had the money to fight the man I trusted.” This was, in brief, the story of one man’s wrecked finances, as he told it to me.
Women will often pay out large sums of money, and never think of asking for a receipt, especially if they are dealing with friends or people they know well. Intelligent women, however, ought to know that our government is a good example of how we should do business. It
