Acres of Diamonds
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Russell H. Conwell >> Acres of Diamonds
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Now John Jacob Astor illustrated what can
be done anywhere. He had a mortgage once on
a millinery-store, and they could not sell bonnets
enough to pay the interest on his money. So
he foreclosed that mortgage, took possession of
the store, and went into partnership with the very
same people, in the same store, with the same
capital. He did not give them a dollar of capital.
They had to sell goods to get any money. Then
he left them alone in the store just as they had
been before, and he went out and sat down on
a bench in the park in the shade. What was
John Jacob Astor doing out there, and in partnership
with people who had failed on his own hands?
He had the most important and, to my mind, the
most pleasant part of that partnership on his
hands. For as John Jacob Astor sat on that bench
he was watching the ladies as they went by;
and where is the man who would not get rich at
that business? As he sat on the bench if a lady
passed him with her shoulders back and head
up, and looked straight to the front, as if she
did not care if all the world did gaze on her, then
he studied her bonnet, and by the time it was
out of sight he knew the shape of the frame, the
color of the trimmings, and the crinklings in the
feather. I sometimes try to describe a bonnet,
but not always. I would not try to describe a
modern bonnet. Where is the man that could
describe one? This aggregation of all sorts of
driftwood stuck on the back of the head, or the
side of the neck, like a rooster with only one tail
feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day there
was some art about the millinery business, and
he went to the millinery-store and said to them:
``Now put into the show-window just such a
bonnet as I describe to you, because I have already
seen a lady who likes such a bonnet. Don't make
up any more until I come back.'' Then he went
out and sat down again, and another lady passed
him of a different form, of different complexion,
with a different shape and color of bonnet. ``Now,''
said he, ``put such a bonnet as that in the show
window.'' He did not fill his show-window up
town with a lot of hats and bonnets to drive
people away, and then sit on the back stairs and
bawl because people went to Wanamaker's to
trade. He did not have a hat or a bonnet in that
show-window but what some lady liked before
it was made up. The tide of custom began immediately
to turn in, and that has been the foundation
of the greatest store in New York in that line,
and still exists as one of three stores. Its fortune
was made by John Jacob Astor after they had
failed in business, not by giving them any more
money, but by finding out what the ladies liked
for bonnets before they wasted any material in
making them up. I tell you if a man could foresee
the millinery business he could foresee anything
under heaven!
Suppose I were to go through this audience
to-night and ask you in this great manufacturing
city if there are not opportunities to get rich in
manufacturing. ``Oh yes,'' some young man says,
``there are opportunities here still if you build
with some trust and if you have two or three
millions of dollars to begin with as capital.''
Young man, the history of the breaking up of the
trusts by that attack upon ``big business'' is only
illustrating what is now the opportunity of the
smaller man. The time never came in the history
of the world when you could get rich so quickly
manufacturing without capital as you can now.
But you will say, ``You cannot do anything
of the kind. You cannot start without capital.''
Young man, let me illustrate for a moment. I
must do it. It is my duty to every young man and
woman, because we are all going into business
very soon on the same plan. Young man, remember
if you know what people need you have
gotten more knowledge of a fortune than any
amount of capital can give you.
There was a poor man out of work living in
Hingham, Massachusetts. He lounged around the
house until one day his wife told him to get out
and work, and, as he lived in Massachusetts, he
obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on
the shore of the bay, and whittled a soaked
shingle into a wooden chain. His children that
evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a
second one to keep peace. While he was whittling
the second one a neighbor came in and said:
``Why don't you whittle toys and sell them? You
could make money at that.'' ``Oh,'' he said, ``I
would not know what to make.'' ``Why don't
you ask your own children right here in your
own house what to make?'' ``What is the use
of trying that?'' said the carpenter. ``My children
are different from other people's children.''
(I used to see people like that when I taught
school.) But he acted upon the hint, and the
next morning when Mary came down the stairway,
he asked, ``What do you want for a toy?''
She began to tell him she would like a doll's bed,
a doll's washstand, a doll's carriage, a little doll's
umbrella, and went on with a list of things that
would take him a lifetime to supply. So, consulting
his own children, in his own house, he took
the firewood, for he had no money to buy lumber,
and whittled those strong, unpainted Hingham
toys that were for so many years known all over
the world. That man began to make those toys
for his own children, and then made copies and
sold them through the boot-and-shoe store next
door. He began to make a little money, and then
a little more, and Mr. Lawson, in his _Frenzied
Finance_ says that man is the richest man in old
Massachusetts, and I think it is the truth. And
that man is worth a hundred millions of dollars
to-day, and has been only thirty-four years making
it on that one principle--that one must judge
that what his own children like at home other
people's children would like in their homes, too;
to judge the human heart by oneself, by one's
wife or by one's children. It is the royal road to
success in manufacturing. ``Oh,'' but you say,
``didn't he have any capital?'' Yes, a penknife,
but I don't know that he had paid for that.
I spoke thus to an audience in New Britain,
Connecticut, and a lady four seats back went home
and tried to take off her collar, and the collar-
button stuck in the buttonhole. She threw it
out and said, ``I am going to get up something
better than that to put on collars.'' Her husband
said: ``After what Conwell said to-night, you see
there is a need of an improved collar-fastener that
is easier to handle. There is a human need;
there is a great fortune. Now, then, get up a
collar-button and get rich.'' He made fun of her,
and consequently made fun of me, and that is
one of the saddest things which comes over me
like a deep cloud of midnight sometimes--although
I have worked so hard for more than half a century,
yet how little I have ever really done.
Notwithstanding the greatness and the handsomeness
of your compliment to-night, I do not
believe there is one in ten of you that is going to
make a million of dollars because you are here
to-night; but it is not my fault, it is yours. I
say that sincerely. What is the use of my talking
if people never do what I advise them to do?
When her husband ridiculed her, she made up her
mind she would make a better collar-button, and
when a woman makes up her mind ``she will,''
and does not say anything about it, she does it.
It was that New England woman who invented
the snap button which you can find anywhere
now. It was first a collar-button with a spring
cap attached to the outer side. Any of you who
wear modern waterproofs know the button that
simply pushes together, and when you unbutton
it you simply pull it apart. That is the button
to which I refer, and which she invented. She
afterward invented several other buttons, and
then invested in more, and then was taken into
partnership with great factories. Now that woman
goes over the sea every summer in her private
steamship--yes, and takes her husband with her!
If her husband were to die, she would have money
enough left now to buy a foreign duke or count
or some such title as that at the latest quotations.
Now what is my lesson in that incident? It
is this: I told her then, though I did not know
her, what I now say to you, ``Your wealth is too
near to you. You are looking right over it'';
and she had to look over it because it was right
under her chin.
I have read in the newspaper that a woman
never invented anything. Well, that newspaper
ought to begin again. Of course, I do not refer
to gossip--I refer to machines--and if I did I
might better include the men. That newspaper
could never appear if women had not invented
something. Friends, think. Ye women, think!
You say you cannot make a fortune because you
are in some laundry, or running a sewing-machine,
it may be, or walking before some loom, and yet
you can be a millionaire if you will but follow
this almost infallible direction.
When you say a woman doesn't invent anything,
I ask, Who invented the Jacquard loom that wove
every stitch you wear? Mrs. Jacquard. The
printer's roller, the printing-press, were invented
by farmers' wives. Who invented the cotton-gin
of the South that enriched our country so amazingly?
Mrs. General Greene invented the cotton-
gin and showed the idea to Mr. Whitney, and he,
like a man, seized it. Who was it that invented
the sewing-machine? If I would go to school to-
morrow and ask your children they would say,
``Elias Howe.''
He was in the Civil War with me, and often in
my tent, and I often heard him say that he worked
fourteen years to get up that sewing-machine.
But his wife made up her mind one day that they
would starve to death if there wasn't something
or other invented pretty soon, and so in two hours
she invented the sewing-machine. Of course he
took out the patent in his name. Men always do
that. Who was it that invented the mower and
the reaper? According to Mr. McCormick's
confidential communication, so recently published, it
was a West Virginia woman, who, after his father
and he had failed altogether in making a reaper
and gave it up, took a lot of shears and nailed
them together on the edge of a board, with one
shaft of each pair loose, and then wired them so
that when she pulled the wire one way it closed
them, and when she pulled the wire the other
way it opened them, and there she had the principle
of the mowing-machine. If you look at a
mowing-machine, you will see it is nothing but
a lot of shears. If a woman can invent a mowing-
machine, if a woman can invent a Jacquard loom,
if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, if a woman can
invent a trolley switch--as she did and made the
trolleys possible; if a woman can invent, as Mr.
Carnegie said, the great iron squeezers that laid
the foundation of all the steel millions of the
United States, ``we men'' can invent anything
under the stars! I say that for the encouragement
of the men.
Who are the great inventors of the world?
Again this lesson comes before us. The great
inventor sits next to you, or you are the person
yourself. ``Oh,'' but you will say, ``I have never
invented anything in my life.'' Neither did the
great inventors until they discovered one great
secret. Do you think it is a man with a head like a
bushel measure or a man like a stroke of lightning?
It is neither. The really great man is a plain,
straightforward, every-day, common-sense man.
You would not dream that he was a great inventor
if you did not see something he had actually done.
His neighbors do not regard him so great. You
never see anything great over your back fence.
You say there is no greatness among your neighbors.
It is all away off somewhere else. Their
greatness is ever so simple, so plain, so earnest,
so practical, that the neighbors and friends never
recognize it.
True greatness is often unrecognized. That is
sure. You do not know anything about the
greatest men and women. I went out to write
the life of General Garfield, and a neighbor, knowing
I was in a hurry, and as there was a great
crowd around the front door, took me around to
General Garfield's back door and shouted, ``Jim!
Jim!'' And very soon ``Jim'' came to the door
and let me in, and I wrote the biography of one
of the grandest men of the nation, and yet he
was just the same old ``Jim'' to his neighbor.
If you know a great man in Philadelphia and you
should meet him to-morrow, you would say,
``How are you, Sam?'' or ``Good morning, Jim.''
Of course you would. That is just what you would
do.
One of my soldiers in the Civil War had been
sentenced to death, and I went up to the White
House in Washington--sent there for the first
time in my life to see the President. I went
into the waiting-room and sat down with a lot
of others on the benches, and the secretary asked
one after another to tell him what they wanted.
After the secretary had been through the line,
he went in, and then came back to the door and
motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom,
and the secretary said: ``That is the President's
door right over there. Just rap on it and go
right in.'' I never was so taken aback, friends,
in all my life, never. The secretary himself made
it worse for me, because he had told me how to
go in and then went out another door to the
left and shut that. There I was, in the hallway
by myself before the President of the United
States of America's door. I had been on fields of
battle, where the shells did sometimes shriek and
the bullets did sometimes hit me, but I always
wanted to run. I have no sympathy with the
old man who says, ``I would just as soon march
up to the cannon's mouth as eat my dinner.''
I have no faith in a man who doesn't know enough
to be afraid when he is being shot at. I never
was so afraid when the shells came around us
at Antietam as I was when I went into that room
that day; but I finally mustered the courage--
I don't know how I ever did--and at arm's-
length tapped on the door. The man inside did
not help me at all, but yelled out, ``Come in and
sit down!''
Well, I went in and sat down on the edge of a
chair, and wished I were in Europe, and the man
at the table did not look up. He was one of the
world's greatest men, and was made great by one
single rule. Oh, that all the young people of
Philadelphia were before me now and I could say
just this one thing, and that they would remember
it. I would give a lifetime for the effect it would
have on our city and on civilization. Abraham
Lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted
by nearly all. This was his rule: Whatsoever he
had to do at all, he put his whole mind into it and
held it all there until that was all done. That
makes men great almost anywhere. He stuck to
those papers at that table and did not look up
at me, and I sat there trembling. Finally, when
he had put the string around his papers, he pushed
them over to one side and looked over to me, and
a smile came over his worn face. He said: ``I
am a very busy man and have only a few minutes
to spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it
is you want.'' I began to tell him, and mentioned
the case, and he said: ``I have heard all about
it and you do not need to say any more. Mr.
Stanton was talking to me only a few days ago
about that. You can go to the hotel and rest
assured that the President never did sign an order
to shoot a boy under twenty years of age, and
never will. You can say that to his mother anyhow.''
Then he said to me, ``How is it going in the
field?'' I said, ``We sometimes get discouraged.''
And he said: ``It is all right. We are going to
win out now. We are getting very near the light.
No man ought to wish to be President of the
United States, and I will be glad when I get
through; then Tad and I are going out to Springfield,
Illinois. I have bought a farm out there
and I don't care if I again earn only twenty-five
cents a day. Tad has a mule team, and we are
going to plant onions.''
Then he asked me, ``Were you brought up on a
farm?'' I said, ``Yes; in the Berkshire Hills of
Massachusetts.'' He then threw his leg over the
corner of the big chair and said, ``I have heard
many a time, ever since I was young, that up
there in those hills you have to sharpen the noses
of the sheep in order to get down to the grass
between the rocks.'' He was so familiar, so everyday,
so farmer-like, that I felt right at home with
him at once.
He then took hold of another roll of paper, and
looked up at me and said, ``Good morning.'' I
took the hint then and got up and went out.
After I had gotten out I could not realize I had
seen the President of the United States at all.
But a few days later, when still in the city, I saw
the crowd pass through the East Room by the
coffin of Abraham Lincoln, and when I looked
at the upturned face of the murdered President
I felt then that the man I had seen such a short
time before, who, so simple a man, so plain a
man, was one of the greatest men that God ever
raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty.
Yet he was only ``Old Abe'' to his neighbors.
When they had the second funeral, I was invited
among others, and went out to see that same
coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield. Around
the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom
he was just ``Old Abe.'' Of course that is all they
would say.
Did you ever see a man who struts around
altogether too large to notice an ordinary working
mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is
nothing but a puffed-up balloon, held down by
his big feet. There is no greatness there.
Who are the great men and women? My
attention was called the other day to the history
of a very little thing that made the fortune of a
very poor man. It was an awful thing, and yet
because of that experience he--not a great inventor
or genius--invented the pin that now is called
the safety-pin, and out of that safety-pin made
the fortune of one of the great aristocratic families
of this nation.
A poor man in Massachusetts who had worked
in the nail-works was injured at thirty-eight, and
he could earn but little money. He was employed
in the office to rub out the marks on the bills
made by pencil memorandums, and he used a
rubber until his hand grew tired. He then tied a
piece of rubber on the end of a stick and worked
it like a plane. His little girl came and said,
``Why, you have a patent, haven't you?'' The
father said afterward, ``My daughter told me
when I took that stick and put the rubber on
the end that there was a patent, and that was the
first thought of that.'' He went to Boston and
applied for his patent, and every one of you that
has a rubber-tipped pencil in your pocket is now
paying tribute to the millionaire. No capital,
not a penny did he invest in it. All was income,
all the way up into the millions.
But let me hasten to one other greater thought.
``Show me the great men and women who live
in Philadelphia.'' A gentleman over there will
get up and say: ``We don't have any great men
in Philadelphia. They don't live here. They live
away off in Rome or St. Petersburg or London or
Manayunk, or anywhere else but here in our
town.'' I have come now to the apex of my
thought. I have come now to the heart of the
whole matter and to the center of my struggle:
Why isn't Philadelphia a greater city in its
greater wealth? Why does New York excel
Philadelphia? People say, ``Because of her harbor.''
Why do many other cities of the United States
get ahead of Philadelphia now? There is only
one answer, and that is because our own people
talk down their own city. If there ever was a
community on earth that has to be forced ahead,
it is the city of Philadelphia. If we are to have a
boulevard, talk it down; if we are going to have
better schools, talk them down; if you wish to
have wise legislation, talk it down; talk all the
proposed improvements down. That is the only
great wrong that I can lay at the feet of the
magnificent Philadelphia that has been so universally
kind to me. I say it is time we turn around in our
city and begin to talk up the things that are in
our city, and begin to set them before the world
as the people of Chicago, New York, St. Louis,
and San Francisco do. Oh, if we only could get
that spirit out among our people, that we can do
things in Philadelphia and do them well!
Arise, ye millions of Philadelphians, trust in
God and man, and believe in the great opportunities
that are right here not over in New York
or Boston, but here--for business, for everything
that is worth living for on earth. There was
never an opportunity greater. Let us talk up
our own city.
But there are two other young men here to-
night, and that is all I will venture to say, because
it is too late. One over there gets up and says,
``There is going to be a great man in Philadelphia,
but never was one.'' ``Oh, is that so? When are
you going to be great?'' ``When I am elected to
some political office.'' Young man, won't you
learn a lesson in the primer of politics that it is
a _prima facie_ evidence of littleness to hold office
under our form of government? Great men get
into office sometimes, but what this country needs
is men that will do what we tell them to do.
This nation--where the people rule--is governed
by the people, for the people, and so long as it is,
then the office-holder is but the servant of the
people, and the Bible says the servant cannot be
greater than the master. The Bible says, ``He
that is sent cannot be greater than Him who sent
Him.'' The people rule, or should rule, and if
they do, we do not need the greater men in office.
If the great men in America took our offices, we
would change to an empire in the next ten years.
I know of a great many young women, now
that woman's suffrage is coming, who say, ``I
am going to be President of the United States
some day.'' I believe in woman's suffrage, and
there is no doubt but what it is coming, and I
am getting out of the way, anyhow. I may want
an office by and by myself; but if the ambition
for an office influences the women in their desire
to vote, I want to say right here what I say to the
young men, that if you only get the privilege of
casting one vote, you don't get anything that is
worth while. Unless you can control more than
one vote, you will be unknown, and your influence
so dissipated as practically not to be felt. This
country is not run by votes. Do you think it is?
It is governed by influence. It is governed by
the ambitions and the enterprises which control
votes. The young woman that thinks she is going
to vote for the sake of holding an office is making
an awful blunder.
That other young man gets up and says, ``There
are going to be great men in this country and in
Philadelphia.'' ``Is that so? When?'' ``When
there comes a great war, when we get into difficulty
through watchful waiting in Mexico; when we
get into war with England over some frivolous
deed, or with Japan or China or New Jersey or
some distant country. Then I will march up to
the cannon's mouth; I will sweep up among the
glistening bayonets; I will leap into the arena and
tear down the flag and bear it away in triumph.
I will come home with stars on my shoulder, and
hold every office in the gift of the nation, and I
will be great.'' No, you won't. You think you
are going to be made great by an office, but
remember that if you are not great before you
get the office, you won't be great when you secure
it. It will only be a burlesque in that shape.
We had a Peace Jubilee here after the Spanish
War. Out West they don't believe this, because
they said, ``Philadelphia would not have heard
of any Spanish War until fifty years hence.''
Some of you saw the procession go up Broad
Street. I was away, but the family wrote to me
that the tally-ho coach with Lieutenant Hobson
upon it stopped right at the front door and the
people shouted, ``Hurrah for Hobson!'' and if I
had been there I would have yelled too, because
he deserves much more of his country than he
has ever received. But suppose I go into school
and say, ``Who sunk the _Merrimac_ at Santiago?''
and if the boys answer me, ``Hobson,'' they will
tell me seven-eighths of a lie. There were seven
other heroes on that steamer, and they, by virtue
of their position, were continually exposed to the
Spanish fire, while Hobson, as an officer, might
reasonably be behind the smoke-stack. You have
gathered in this house your most intelligent people,
and yet, perhaps, not one here can name the other
seven men.
We ought not to so teach history. We ought to
teach that, however humble a man's station may
be, if he does his full duty in that place he is
just as much entitled to the American people's
honor as is the king upon his throne. But we do
not so teach. We are now teaching everywhere
that the generals do all the fighting.
I remember that, after the war, I went down
to see General Robert E. Lee, that magnificent
Christian gentleman of whom both North and
South are now proud as one of our great Americans.
The general told me about his servant, ``Rastus,''
who was an enlisted colored soldier. He called
him in one day to make fun of him, and said,
``Rastus, I hear that all the rest of your company
are killed, and why are you not killed?'' Rastus
winked at him and said, `` 'Cause when there is
any fightin' goin' on I stay back with the generals.''
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