Chapter 3: How can Money Help or Hinder? 5. Overcoming Insecurity

As we wish our own families to be secure let us also cherish the same ideal for all other families, and recognize that national success requires that all worthy persons shall have a chance to be self-supporting.

Families that are in financial straits should not give up hope, nor lose their sense of dignity. Those who have love are rich in spite of all material limitations. Such people can laugh at a degree of misfortune that might wreck others less firmly grounded, and if defeated temporarily they can start again with united strength.

This does not mean, however, that we look upon inadequate incomes with any degree of allowance, for the lack of work and of a living wage handicaps homemaking efforts and makes it harder for some to take their full place in community life. In a time of world turmoil every well-managed home counts on the side of security and peace and homes either deprived of economic security or failing to achieve it through their own carelessness are likely to add to the forces of unrest.

Both as homemakers and as citizens let us keep the main aims in mind, and realize that economic resources exist to meet human needs. In a great and intelligent civilization richly blessed with natural resources the material aids to a good life ought to be within the reach of all. Let the home-builder be also a civilization-builder by contributing to a neighborly and democratic philosophy of life, so that no one will want too much and no family need be in want.