Consider that word Thrift. If you will look at "Dr. Johnson's
Dictionary," or if you know your "Shakespeare," you will see that
Thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a
word, the marks of a man's thriving.

How, then, did the word Thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality,
the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which
first, of course, meant the management of a household--got to mean
also the opposite of waste.

It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in
fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their
material, their force.

Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws
of nature--call them, rather, laws of God--which apply not merely
to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to
physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every
person in this room.

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much
work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the
least jar and obstruction, least wear and tear.

And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know
the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it
easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your
money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts,
which end in disappointment and exhaustion.