Acres of Diamonds
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Russell H. Conwell >> Acres of Diamonds
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I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your
duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren
say to me, ``Do you, a Christian minister, spend
your time going up and down the country advising
young people to get rich, to get money?'' ``Yes,
of course I do.'' They say, ``Isn't that awful!
Why don't you preach the gospel instead of
preaching about man's making money?'' ``Because
to make money honestly is to preach the
gospel.'' That is the reason. The men who get
rich may be the most honest men you find in the
community.
``Oh,'' but says some young man here to-night,
``I have been told all my life that if a person has
money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and
mean and contemptible. ``My friend, that is
the reason why you have none, because you have
that idea of people. The foundation of your faith
is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and
say it briefly, though subject to discussion which
I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one
hundred of the rich men of America are honest.
That is why they are rich. That is why they are
trusted with money. That is why they carry on
great enterprises and find plenty of people to
work with them. It is because they are honest men.
Says another young man, ``I hear sometimes
of men that get millions of dollars dishonestly.''
Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are
so rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk
about them all the time as a matter of news until
you get the idea that all the other rich men got
rich dishonestly.
My friend, you take and drive me--if you furnish
the auto--out into the suburbs of Philadelphia,
and introduce me to the people who own
their homes around this great city, those beautiful
homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent
homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce
you to the very best people in character as well as
in enterprise in our city, and you know I will.
A man is not really a true man until he owns his
own home, and they that own their homes are
made more honorable and honest and pure, and
true and economical and careful, by owning the home.
For a man to have money, even in large sums,
is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against
covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit,
and oftentimes preach against it so long and
use the terms about ``filthy lucre'' so extremely
that Christians get the idea that when we stand
in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man
to have money--until the collection-basket goes
around, and then we almost swear at the people
because they don't give more money. Oh, the
inconsistency of such doctrines as that!
Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably
ambitious to have it. You ought because you
can do more good with it than you could without
it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your
churches, money sends your missionaries, and
money pays your preachers, and you would not
have many of them, either, if you did not pay
them. I am always willing that my church should
raise my salary, because the church that pays the
largest salary always raises it the easiest. You
never knew an exception to it in your life. The
man who gets the largest salary can do the most
good with the power that is furnished to him.
Of course he can if his spirit be right to use it
for what it is given to him.
I say, then, you ought to have money. If
you can honestly attain unto riches in Philadelphia,
it is your Christian and godly duty to do so.
It is an awful mistake of these pious people to
think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious.
Some men say, ``Don't you sympathize with
the poor people?'' Of course I do, or else I would
not have been lecturing these years. I won't
give in but what I sympathize with the poor, but
the number of poor who are to be sympathized
with is very small. To sympathize with a man
whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help
him when God would still continue a just punishment,
is to do wrong, no doubt about it, and we
do that more than we help those who are
deserving. While we should sympathize with God's
poor--that is, those who cannot help themselves--
let us remember there is not a poor person in the
United States who was not made poor by his own
shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of some one
else. It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow. Let us
give in to that argument and pass that to one side.
A gentleman gets up back there, and says,
``Don't you think there are some things in this
world that are better than money?'' Of course I
do, but I am talking about money now. Of course
there are some things higher than money. Oh
yes, I know by the grave that has left me standing
alone that there are some things in this world
that are higher and sweeter and purer than
money. Well do I know there are some things
higher and grander than gold. Love is the grandest
thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover
who has plenty of money. Money is power,
money is force, money will do good as well as
harm. In the hands of good men and women it
could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good.
I hate to leave that behind me. I heard a
man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and
thank the Lord he was ``one of God's poor.''
Well, I wonder what his wife thinks about that?
She earns all the money that comes into that
house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda.
I don't want to see any more of the Lord's poor
of that kind, and I don't believe the Lord does.
And yet there are some people who think in order
to be pious you must be awfully poor and awfully
dirty. That does not follow at all. While we
sympathize with the poor, let us not teach a doctrine
like that.
Yet the age is prejudiced against advising a
Christian man (or, as a Jew would say, a godly
man) from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice
is so universal and the years are far enough back,
I think, for me to safely mention that years ago
up at Temple University there was a young man
in our theological school who thought he was the
only pious student in that department. He came
into my office one evening and sat down by my
desk, and said to me: ``Mr. President, I think it
is my duty sir, to come in and labor with you.''
``What has happened now?'' Said he, ``I heard
you say at the Academy, at the Peirce School
commencement, that you thought it was an honorable
ambition for a young man to desire to have
wealth, and that you thought it made him temperate,
made him anxious to have a good name, and
made him industrious. You spoke about man's
ambition to have money helping to make him a
good man. Sir, I have come to tell you the Holy
Bible says that `money is the root of all evil.' ''
I told him I had never seen it in the Bible,
and advised him to go out into the chapel and get
the Bible, and show me the place. So out he went
for the Bible, and soon he stalked into my office
with the Bible open, with all the bigoted pride
of the narrow sectarian, or of one who founds his
Christianity on some misinterpretation of Scripture.
He flung the Bible down on my desk, and
fairly squealed into my ear: ``There it is, Mr.
President; you can read it for yourself.'' I said
to him: ``Well, young man, you will learn when
you get a little older that you cannot trust another
denomination to read the Bible for you. You belong
to another denomination. You are taught in
the theological school, however, that emphasis is
exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and read
it yourself, and give the proper emphasis to it?''
He took the Bible, and proudly read, `` `The
love of money is the root of all evil.' ''
Then he had it right, and when one does quote
aright from that same old Book he quotes the
absolute truth. I have lived through fifty years
of the mightiest battle that old Book has ever
fought, and I have lived to see its banners flying
free; for never in the history of this world did
the great minds of earth so universally agree
that the Bible is true--all true--as they do at
this very hour.
So I say that when he quoted right, of course
he quoted the absolute truth. ``The love of
money is the root of all evil.'' He who tries to
attain unto it too quickly, or dishonestly, will
fall into many snares, no doubt about that. The
love of money. What is that? It is making an
idol of money, and idolatry pure and simple
everywhere is condemned by the Holy Scriptures and
by man's common sense. The man that worships
the dollar instead of thinking of the purposes for
which it ought to be used, the man who idolizes
simply money, the miser that hordes his money
in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or refuses
to invest it where it will do the world good, that
man who hugs the dollar until the eagle squeals
has in him the root of all evil.
I think I will leave that behind me now and
answer the question of nearly all of you who are
asking, ``Is there opportunity to get rich in
Philadelphia?'' Well, now, how simple a thing it is
to see where it is, and the instant you see where
it is it is yours. Some old gentleman gets up back
there and says, ``Mr. Conwell, have you lived in
Philadelphia for thirty-one years and don't know
that the time has gone by when you can make
anything in this city?'' ``No, I don't think it is.''
``Yes, it is; I have tried it.'' ``What business
are you in?'' ``I kept a store here for twenty
years, and never made over a thousand dollars
in the whole twenty years.''
``Well, then, you can measure the good you
have been to this city by what this city has paid
you, because a man can judge very well what he
is worth by what he receives; that is, in what he
is to the world at this time. If you have not made
over a thousand dollars in twenty years in Philadelphia,
it would have been better for Philadelphia
if they had kicked you out of the city nineteen
years and nine months ago. A man has no right
to keep a store in Philadelphia twenty years and
not make at least five hundred thousand dollars
even though it be a corner grocery up-town.'
You say, ``You cannot make five thousand dollars
in a store now.'' Oh, my friends, if you will
just take only four blocks around you, and find
out what the people want and what you ought
to supply and set them down with your pencil
and figure up the profits you would make if you
did supply them, you would very soon see it.
There is wealth right within the sound of your
voice.
Some one says: ``You don't know anything
about business. A preacher never knows a thing
about business.'' Well, then, I will have to prove
that I am an expert. I don't like to do this, but
I have to do it because my testimony will not be
taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a
country store, and if there is any place under the
stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in
every kind of mercantile transactions, it is in the
country store. I am not proud of my experience,
but sometimes when my father was away he would
leave me in charge of the store, though fortunately
for him that was not very often. But this did
occur many times, friends: A man would come
in the store, and say to me, ``Do you keep jack
knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives,'' and
I went off whistling a tune. What did I care
about that man, anyhow? Then another farmer
would come in and say, ``Do you keep jack
knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives.''
Then I went away and whistled another tune.
Then a third man came right in the same door and
said, ``Do you keep jack-knives?'' ``No. Why
is every one around here asking for jack-knives?
Do you suppose we are keeping this store to supply
the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?''
Do you carry on your store like that in Philadelphia?
The difficulty was I had not then learned
that the foundation of godliness and the foundation
principle of success in business are both the
same precisely. The man who says, ``I cannot
carry my religion into business'' advertises himself
either as being an imbecile in business, or on the
road to bankruptcy, or a thief, one of the three,
sure. He will fail within a very few years. He
certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into
business. If I had been carrying on my father's
store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I would
have had a jack-knife for the third man when
he called for it. Then I would have actually done
him a kindness, and I would have received a
reward myself, which it would have been my
duty to take.
There are some over-pious Christian people who
think if you take any profit on anything you sell
that you are an unrighteous man. On the contrary,
you would be a criminal to sell goods for
less than they cost. You have no right to do
that. You cannot trust a man with your money
who cannot take care of his own. You cannot
trust a man in your family that is not true to his
own wife. You cannot trust a man in the world
that does not begin with his own heart, his own
character, and his own life. It would have been
my duty to have furnished a jack-knife to the
third man, or the second, and to have sold it to
him and actually profited myself. I have no more
right to sell goods without making a profit on
them than I have to overcharge him dishonestly
beyond what they are worth. But I should so
sell each bill of goods that the person to whom
I sell shall make as much as I make.
To live and let live is the principle of the
gospel, and the principle of every-day common
sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go
along. Do not wait until you have reached my
years before you begin to enjoy anything of this
life. If I had the millions back, or fifty cents of
it, which I have tried to earn in these years, it
would not do me anything like the good that it
does me now in this almost sacred presence to-
night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and over a hundredfold
to-night for dividing as I have tried to
do in some measure as I went along through the
years. I ought not speak that way, it sounds
egotistic, but I am old enough now to be excused for
that. I should have helped my fellow-men, which
I have tried to do, and every one should try to do,
and get the happiness of it. The man who goes
home with the sense that he has stolen a dollar
that day, that he has robbed a man of what was his
honest due, is not going to sweet rest. He arises
tired in the morning, and goes with an unclean
conscience to his work the next day. He is not a
successful man at all, although he may have
laid up millions. But the man who has gone
through life dividing always with his fellow-men,
making and demanding his own rights and his
own profits, and giving to every other man his
rights and profits, lives every day, and not only
that, but it is the royal road to great wealth.
The history of the thousands of millionaires shows
that to be the case.
The man over there who said he could not make
anything in a store in Philadelphia has been
carrying on his store on the wrong principle.
Suppose I go into your store to-morrow morning and
ask, ``Do you know neighbor A, who lives one
square away, at house No. 1240?'' ``Oh yes,
I have met him. He deals here at the corner
store.'' ``Where did he come from?'' ``I don't
know.'' ``How many does he have in his family?''
``I don't know.'' ``What ticket does he vote?''
``I don't know.'' ``What church does he go to?''
``I don't know, and don't care. What are you
asking all these questions for?''
If you had a store in Philadelphia would you
answer me like that? If so, then you are
conducting your business just as I carried on my
father's business in Worthington, Massachusetts.
You don't know where your neighbor came from
when he moved to Philadelphia, and you don't
care. If you had cared you would be a rich man
now. If you had cared enough about him to take
an interest in his affairs, to find out what he needed,
you would have been rich. But you go through
the world saying, ``No opportunity to get rich,''
and there is the fault right at your own door.
But another young man gets up over there
and says, ``I cannot take up the mercantile
business.'' (While I am talking of trade it applies
to every occupation.) ``Why can't you go into
the mercantile business?'' ``Because I haven't
any capital.'' Oh, the weak and dudish creature
that can't see over its collar! It makes a person
weak to see these little dudes standing around
the corners and saying, ``Oh, if I had plenty of
capital, how rich I would get.'' ``Young man,
do you think you are going to get rich on capital?''
``Certainly.'' Well, I say, ``Certainly not.'' If
your mother has plenty of money, and she will
set you up in business, you will ``set her up in
business,'' supplying you with capital.
The moment a young man or woman gets more
money than he or she has grown to by practical
experience, that moment he has gotten a curse.
It is no help to a young man or woman to inherit
money. It is no help to your children to leave
them money, but if you leave them education,
if you leave them Christian and noble character,
if you leave them a wide circle of friends, if you
leave them an honorable name, it is far better
than that they should have money. It would be
worse for them, worse for the nation, that they
should have any money at all. Oh, young man, if
you have inherited money, don't regard it as a
help. It will curse you through your years, and
deprive you of the very best things of human
life. There is no class of people to be pitied so
much as the inexperienced sons and daughters of
the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man's
son. He can never know the best things in life.
One of the best things in our life is when a
young man has earned his own living, and when
he becomes engaged to some lovely young woman,
and makes up his mind to have a home of his
own. Then with that same love comes also that
divine inspiration toward better things, and he
begins to save his money. He begins to leave off
his bad habits and put money in the bank. When
he has a few hundred dollars he goes out in the
suburbs to look for a home. He goes to the
savings-bank, perhaps, for half of the value, and
then goes for his wife, and when he takes his bride
over the threshold of that door for the first time
he says in words of eloquence my voice can never
touch: ``I have earned this home myself. It
is all mine, and I divide with thee.'' That is
the grandest moment a human heart may ever
know.
But a rich man's son can never know that.
He takes his bride into a finer mansion, it may be,
but he is obliged to go all the way through it
and say to his wife, ``My mother gave me that,
my mother gave me that, and my mother gave
me this,'' until his wife wishes she had married
his mother. I pity the rich man's son.
The statistics of Massachusetts showed that
not one rich man's son out of seventeen ever dies
rich. I pity the rich man's sons unless they have
the good sense of the elder Vanderbilt, which
sometimes happens. He went to his father and said,
``Did you earn all your money?'' ``I did, my son.
I began to work on a ferry-boat for twenty-five
cents a day.'' ``Then,'' said his son, ``I will have
none of your money,'' and he, too, tried to get
employment on a ferry-boat that Saturday night.
He could not get one there, but he did get a place
for three dollars a week. Of course, if a rich man's
son will do that, he will get the discipline of a poor
boy that is worth more than a university education
to any man. He would then be able to take care
of the millions of his father. But as a rule the
rich men will not let their sons do the very thing
that made them great. As a rule, the rich man
will not allow his son to work--and his mother!
Why, she would think it was a social disgrace
if her poor, weak, little lily-fingered, sissy sort of
a boy had to earn his living with honest toil. I
have no pity for such rich men's sons.
I remember one at Niagara Falls. I think
I remember one a great deal nearer. I think
there are gentlemen present who were at a great
banquet, and I beg pardon of his friends. At a
banquet here in Philadelphia there sat beside me
a kind-hearted young man, and he said, ``Mr.
Conwell, you have been sick for two or three years.
When you go out, take my limousine, and it will
take you up to your house on Broad Street.''
I thanked him very much, and perhaps I ought
not to mention the incident in this way, but I
follow the facts. I got on to the seat with the
driver of that limousine, outside, and when we
were going up I asked the driver, ``How much
did this limousine cost?'' ``Six thousand eight
hundred, and he had to pay the duty on it.''
``Well,'' I said, ``does the owner of this machine
ever drive it himself?'' At that the chauffeur
laughed so heartily that he lost control of his
machine. He was so surprised at the question that
he ran up on the sidewalk, and around a corner
lamp-post out into the street again. And when he
got out into the street he laughed till the whole
machine trembled. He said: ``He drive this machine!
Oh, he would be lucky if he knew enough to get out
when we get there.''
I must tell you about a rich man's son at
Niagara Falls. I came in from the lecture to the
hotel, and as I approached the desk of the clerk
there stood a millionaire's son from New York.
He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic
potency. He had a skull-cap on one side
of his head, with a gold tassel in the top of it, and
a gold-headed cane under his arm with more in
it than in his head. It is a very difficult thing
to describe that young man. He wore an eye-
glass that he could not see through, patent-
leather boots that he could not walk in, and pants
that he could not sit down in--dressed like a
grasshopper. This human cricket came up to the
clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his
unseeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk.
You see, he thought it was ``Hinglish, you know,''
to lisp. ``Thir, will you have the kindness to
supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!''
The hotel clerk measured that man quick, and
he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer,
threw them across the counter toward the young
man, and then turned away to his books. You
should have seen that young man when those
envelopes came across that counter. He swelled
up like a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eye-
glass, and yelled: ``Come right back here. Now
thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah
and enwelophs to yondah dethk.'' Oh, the poor,
miserable, contemptible American monkey! He
could not carry paper and envelopes twenty feet.
I suppose he could not get his arms down to do
it. I have no pity for such travesties upon human
nature. If you have not capital, young man, I
am glad of it. What you need is common sense,
not copper cents.
The best thing I can do is to illustrate by actual
facts well-known to you all. A. T. Stewart, a
poor boy in New York, had $1.50 to begin life on.
He lost 87 <1/2> cents of that on the very first venture.
How fortunate that young man who loses the
first time he gambles. That boy said, ``I will
never gamble again in business,'' and he never
did. How came he to lose 87 <1/2> cents? You
probably all know the story how he lost it--because
he bought some needles, threads, and buttons to
sell which people did not want, and had them left
on his hands, a dead loss. Said the boy, ``I will
not lose any more money in that way.'' Then he
went around first to the doors and asked the people
what they did want. Then when he had found
out what they wanted he invested his 62 <1/2>
cents to supply a known demand. Study it wherever
you choose--in business, in your profession,
in your housekeeping, whatever your life, that
one thing is the secret of success. You must
first know the demand. You must first know
what people need, and then invest yourself where
you are most needed. A. T. Stewart went on
that principle until he was worth what amounted
afterward to forty millions of dollars, owning
the very store in which Mr. Wanamaker carries
on his great work in New York. His fortune was
made by his losing something, which taught him
the great lesson that he must only invest himself
or his money in something that people need.
When will you salesmen learn it? When will
you manufacturers learn that you must know the
changing needs of humanity if you would succeed
in life? Apply yourselves, all you Christian people,
as manufacturers or merchants or workmen
to supply that human need. It is a great principle
as broad as humanity and as deep as the Scripture
itself.
The best illustration I ever heard was of John
Jacob Astor. You know that he made the money
of the Astor family when he lived in New York.
He came across the sea in debt for his fare. But
that poor boy with nothing in his pocket made the
fortune of the Astor family on one principle.
Some young man here to-night will say, ``Well
they could make those fortunes over in New York
but they could not do it in Philadelphia!'' My
friends, did you ever read that wonderful book of
Riis (his memory is sweet to us because of his
recent death), wherein is given his statistical
account of the records taken in 1889 of 107
millionaires of New York. If you read the account
you will see that out of the 107 millionaires only
seven made their money in New York. Out
of the 107 millionaires worth ten million dollars
in real estate then, 67 of them made their money
in towns of less than 3,500 inhabitants. The
richest man in this country to-day, if you read
the real-estate values, has never moved away from
a town of 3,500 inhabitants. It makes not so
much difference where you are as who you are.
But if you cannot get rich in Philadelphia you
certainly cannot do it in New York.
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