One-Trip Boxes.
Our country uses every year, it is estimated, 500,000,000 shipping cases and boxes, of wood and fiber, which are destroyed after only one trip. The estimated cost of these is $120,000,000. From every large store, every night, huge vans go forth piled high with these discarded containers. The only use made of them is conversion into kindling-wood, which is a fearfully wasteful use. It would be entirely practicable to make them so well and transport them so carefully and open them so prudently that each would be good for many journeys instead of being thrown away at the end of a single trip. A little painstaking would save to the country at least $120,000,000 annually from this source alone.
Nor is such a waste as this to be noted only in the business realm. Much of our activity, mental and spiritual, is of a one-trip nature. Most of our plans are made for the occasion instead of for life. Most of our good impulses are used and then thrown away, instead of being adopted as habits. Most of our methods are built at haphazard and clumsily used, so that they fall to pieces at the end of a single trial.
Let us build our life boxes to last. Let us look beyond the minute. Let us not live one-trip lives.