Beverly Thornton
10th Cavalry, Troop K
U.S. Army

Troop K, 10 th Cavalry
Nebraska History, A quarterly journal published by the Nebraska State Historical Society
Volume 55, Number 2, Summer 1974
The Fort Robinson Y.M.C.A., 1902-1907 – pg. 165
A social Organization in a Black Regiment by Frank N. Schubert
Taken from The Colored American, March 1905

Economy by Beverly F. Thornton

I feel honored beyond expression, at the pleasure derived from being called upon to address you on such an important subject. Every thinking man is looking and hoping that his future condition will be bettered. We are apt to get our eyes fixed on the great height to which men have soared, and thereby lose sight of the lowly conditions from whence we sprung. Cornelius Vanderbilt began life as a farmer, A.T. Stewart made his start in life as a school teacher, Geo. W. Childs was an errand boy for a bookseller at $4.00 a month, Jay Gould canvassed Delaware County, N.Y., selling maps, Whitelaw Reid did work as a correspondent on a Cincinnati newspaper at $5.00 a week, Adam Forepaugh was a butcher in Philadelphia, Pa., when he decided to go into business, Senator Brown made his first money by ploughing his neighbor’s field with a pair of oxen, Andrew Carnegie did his first work in Pittsburg, Pa., at a telegraph office, at $3.00 per week. So it is with all; great futures have small beginnings.

All these noted men have stood just where we to-day stand, relative to a future. There is no man in good health who may not become independent, if he will but carefully husband his resources and guard against the leak of useless expenditures.

But to become independent one must be willing to pay the price. He must be industrious and prudent; perhaps the harder of these rules to follow is the latter. We will find many persons who are industrious, but few who will properly manage their earnings. The class that work the hardest, spend more and are careless of their earnings. Instead of saving to provide for a rainy day, they eat, drink, and lavishly spend their earnings, and when financial reverses come, and when mills and factories stop, they are ruined men, compelled to live from “hand to mouth,” not having more than a day’s ration ahead for actual needs. They are not much better off than slaves. They are not their own masters, they are like “driven cattle,” and may at any time have to choose between bondage or starvation. They cannot help being servile, for they know they can neither command their time nor choose how or where they should live. To one who has seen much of the miseries of the poor, it is hard to account for this shortsightedness. Ask those who spend all as they go, why they do not lay aside something, and they will reply, “there is no use, what good is the saving of a few cents?” If I could save four or five dollars per week it would amount to something.” It is by this careless reasoning that thousands are kept in poverty, who could by self denial be comfortable and independent. They do not consider to what enormous sums little savings reach, at least when continued through series of years. What workman is it who may not save fifty dollars of his earnings each year? Yet this small sum compounded at 6 per cent, interest, amounts to about $650.00 in ten years, to about $1,060.00 [sic} in twenty years, thus securing a sum that would be of great assistance to him in his old age, and [he would be] considered a rich man in most of our little towns.