Nuggets of Gold

Front matter

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Shelf s.Vl4r--

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Part First. Lectures To Young Men

PAGE.

I. — Preliminary and General, - - 9 II. — The False and the True — in Work, 13 III. — The False and the True — in

Business, - - - - 18 IY. — Accumulation — General Considerations, - 23 V. — Accumulation — Specific, - 28 YI. — Do Something, ... 35

YIL — Education, 41

YIII. — To Drink or Let it Alone, - 49

IX.— Tobacco, 59

X.— Gaming, 76

XI. — On Choosing an Occupation, - 86

XII.— Help, 93

XIII.— Marrying, 101

XI Y. — After Marriage— Women's Work, 118

XY. — After Marriage — Style, - 132

XYI. — On Running Into Debt, - - 144

XVII. — Decision of Character, - - 149

XVIII. — How to Invest, - 154

XIX. — Benefactions and Charities, - 164

XX. — On Law and Lawyers, - 180

XXL— Tongue, 193

XXIL— Hospitality, - - - - 199

XXIIL— Conclusion, .... 206

PART .SECOND.

ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.

I. — Introductory, - - - - - 208

IL^-Its Tendency — Elementary Principles, 211 III. — Scientific Proofs, - - - - 217 IV. — Practical Pacts and Medical Arguments, - 235

V. — The Other Side Considered, - - 245

VI.— ^Conclusion, 263

Part Third

labor, capital, money and wealth.

II. — The Labor Problem, ... 287

III. — Money — What it is, - - - 311

IV. — Money — What it is Not, - - 321

V. — Money. — Inflation not Beneficial

to Industry, - - - 333 YI. — Government Banking vs. National

VII. — The Bonds and Bondholders, - - 355

VIII. — Wealth and its Uses, - - 367

IP-A-IEtT FIRST.

LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN.

LECTURE L

PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL.

I have seen the model young man of the period, with his pretty cane, his ten-cent cigar, his kid gloves, and all his other popinjay embellishments, all of which has seemed to ask me : What more is wanted for a perfect young man? Yes, I have seen that kind of young men all my life ; and I have seen another kind also. And I have noticed, in going along, the outcome of each in all that we call success or failure in life.

What is success in life ? Not the amassing of wealth simply. I have seen men eminently successful in that, all through life, who were only miserable failures. It is not a conscientious and religious life simply. I have seen many men of that kind who were miserable failures in comparison with what they might and ought to have been.

What I take to be success in life, for the purposes of this discussion, is to make an honest livelihood as we go along, with reasonable investments in all meritorious benefactions, with steady accumulations sufficient for reasonable independence all along life's journev, and a competence for (9)

10 LECTURES TO YOUNQ MEN.

old age, if we reach it, and a conscience void of offense toward God. The opposite of this, i. e. to drag along through life the slave of others because always behind hand and under the pressure of want, and to land in the poor house, or some other charity, at last, or to acquire money riches merely, is failure.

When I was young my grandfather gave me this history of himself. In his young days he was of a roving disposition — thoughtless of the future — spending his earnings as he went along — having a good time generally, in all the frivolities and dissipations of the time. But in his travels he had many a time met with paupers upon the public charity — sometimes farmed out to the lowest bidder, as we see them sometimes now-day s. Noticing , as we may always notice, that those people were often badly used, and had no rights that their superiors were bound to respect; looking upon those pictures of wasted life, as our } r oung men may look upon the same to-day, he discovered the road that he was traveling. "What," he said to himself, "Must I come to that some day? If I should live to be old and unable to work must I be domineered and driven about by the merest child of the household where public charity would place me ? Certainly, all this, unless I call a halt. That shall not be. These strong arms, with health and the blessing of God, can procure for me a competence for old age, and it shall be so."

PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL. 11

And so it was. He put his new philosophy into immediate execution. He settled down to work and saved his earnings. Commencing as a farm laborer at the scantiest wages, he so prospered that at the age of fifty he owned a farm that made him independent. All through life I have seen some of that kind of men in all the pursuits of life ; but I have seen more of the other kind — those who, whatever their income may be, spend it as they go along. I have seen them drag along through hard working lives, always on a strain, always " under the harrow," " clever fellows," perhaps, but always on the down hill side and more or less a burden upon their friends ; and not because they do not earn money enough, but only because they have not the self-denial to save some of it. For it is not the money that a man earns that makes him rich, but what he saves.

I have noticed that class of people, too, when they come to old age — dependent upon public charity. I have heard them assert their claims upon the public bounty. They have done so much. They have always been industrious and have been of great value to the community, and the world owes them a living ; when the fact is that the world does not owe them a cent. If they have labored hard and long they have consumed all the fruits of that labor and more. Whatever value they have been of to the world, they have received value for value as they went along.

These two classes of people that I have tried to describe comprise the bulk of mankind. Young man, if you are destined to be one of the world's producers — if your good fortune is to do something for the privilege of being in the world — and if you are doing ever so much, or ever so little, you are starting out in the road of one or the other of these classes. And as your choice of these roads is, so will be your success or failure. Extraordinaries excepted, every man with ordinary health through life can raise a family, keep himself above board all along, and accumulate a competence for old age. The lowest-priced men usually earn enough for this. And on the other hand, any man can keep himself in distress all his life with the largest income ; for it is not so much the amount of money that a man handles that makes him comfortable, as it is the fact that he has enough at all times to meet all his wants, and more.

I do not think that the accumulation of property is the chief end of man ; but I do say that any man that has not the fortitude and self-denial to save something is generally a failure. He has never much of an}^thing to contribute for the benefit of humanity — all must go to gratify his own morbid tastes. And his tastes are not half as well gratified as is his who spends not half as much, but is always saving something. Money is not to be worshiped and not to be despised. I have always noticed that those who sneer at the provident as

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. 13

money worshipers, while they themselves never keep any of it long enough to pay it the slightest devotion, are the most eager to clutch the savings of others whenever the law will let them.

We sometimes hear about bad financiering. "So and so is a bad financier and so he fails in everything." The fact is that financiering, on a small or large scale, is usually very simple and easy. It is only to not waste your money. A man makes $50 a month, for instance, and he is fool enough to pay out $25 or $30 of it for nonsense ; and you call it bad financiering. It is not financiering at all. It is dissipation. Financiering is to take that money and put it where it will earn something. There is no mystery about that — anybody can do it. The financiering of large business establishments of any kind is all about as simple as that. When the money is allowed to be stolen or wasted in any way, failure ensues ; when saved and put to good uses, the financial part is a success. That is all there is of it.

In future numbers I shall try to show, more in detail, how it is that men succeed or fail in their life work.

II. The False And The True — In Work

"Honor and Shame from no condition rise, Act well your part ; there all the honor lies."

Before entering further into the merits of this discussion, I must say to you, young man, that in starting out upon the journey of life, there are some things of infinitely more importance to you than this one matter of pecuniary success. There are a hundred ways to make money, or to get it rather, by which success in accumulation is the most miserable failure. Better, a thousand times better, to fill a pauper's grave than that of a millionaire from such pursuits. And some of them are called respectable, and bear the sanction of law. "Life is more than meat." A true life is something beyond the mere supplying of our daily wants, and any amount of accumulation. It is to do that in such a way as to do some good to somebody else ; to contribute to the common good of the community, so that the world will be the better for our having lived in it ; and not by hook or crook so that it will be really all, or some part of it, at other people's expense.

If I cultivate the earth, and add my produce to the stocks in the market, or build a house that may shelter my fellow beings for a hundred years or so, or build a ship that transports surplus productions to distant climes, for suitable compensation, I contribute my quota to the common stock of wealth. We may say, in general, that the true life is,

1st, To do something that will be of benefit to somebody.

And what is this ? Not to concoct some scheme or ingenious device by which the unwary can be

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. 15

induced to part with values for your benefit, whether lawful or not, if it does not, somehow, contribute to the sum of human comfort ; but it is something that does so contribute. For instance, to cultivate the earth — producing the material of food and raiment ; to delve in the mines — dragging out the minerals needful for our civilization ; the thousand manufacturing industries that produce the innumerable commodities for the comfort and the rational enjoyment of mankind; the merchant who brings producer and consumer together; the learned professions — the gospel ministry, with its potent influence for the good order of society, to say nothing of its spirituality : the profession of the law, as the foundation of all civilization, with the officers of government as its corner-stone ; the medical profession with its healing arts; the public educators, training up the young in the learning of the times ; all these and any other vocations that go to make up the sum of human civilization and comfort, I need not say, are of the true and not the false. But the innumerable devices by which people are induced to part with values for no value, or the production or sale of any commodities that are not only useless to the consumer, but tend to his injury and to the general injury of the community ; it is self-evident that all such employments are not of the true life, but of the false. Better that a millstone be hung about your neck and cast into the sea than engage in any of them.

And then, secondly, there is a true and a false life ill the pursuit of legitimate occupations. We must do our work faithfully, efficiently, honestly.

" Act well your part : there all honor lies," the poet says ; and there the profit lies, too, I will add. When I was a blacksmith I took a great deal of pride in having it said that my work was better done than that of my competitors. And so, I may be permitted to say, all along through life, I have tried to do faithfully and well whatever I have undertaken. If I have succeeded in this, my life work has been true and not false, in this one respect, whether otherwise successful or not ; other people are the better for their dealings with me, and I know I am the better for my efforts to excel.

Young men and boys are too apt to be heedless of these principles. They do not seem to know that honesty is the best policy in the relations of life, or else they do not know that it is dishonest to be unfaithful in whatever service they are engaged.

I see apprentices and other young men employed by others for hire. Too often it is the case that their ambition is to be as unprofitable as possible to their employers without losing place. A young man who starts out on that principle will always be a fraud and must necessarily stay at the bottom —a failure.

But take a boy of tho other make-up ; one who starts out with the ambition to excel in whatever

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. IT

he undertakes, be it ever so humble or ever so cheap, he cannot be kept down ; that kind of people are too scarce in the world, and they are wanted. The world will find them out, sooner or later, and promote them, just as surely as it finds out the other sort and leaves them where they are. Or at the very least : all promotions and all real successes are of this class. In the one case the life is true ; in the other false. All through life I have seen and watched these two phases of life in work, and always seen the fruits of each to be as above stated. Young reader, the lesson to be drawn from all this is that if you would be anybody, or attain to any success in life, you must train yourself to act well your part in whatever your work is. Make yourself so necessary to your employer that he cannot afford to dispense with you, and you will be sure to be the gainer by it in the long run ; but if you start out critical and crotchety — doing as little as possible — working for your wages merely, without an eye to your employer's interest, he will very soon find it out and will be on the lookout for a better man. Business laws are inexorable. A man who hires labor of any kind must have honest work for honest pay. If he has not the brains and the energy to get this he must sooner or later go under and be succeeded by one who has. And this is the reason why shiftless workmen cannot succeed. Sooner or later every man is sure to find his proper level. It is an economic as well as a 2 moral law that you must not cheat your employer. Honesty is always the best policy ; and every young man may as well start out with the conviction that this is the rule that God has fixed over him, and it is as irrevocable as is the law of gravitation.

Of course I am not to be understood that shiftless, lazy, time-serving, unprofitable men cannot find anything to do as hirelings ; there is generally something for everybody — good, bad, and indifferent — to do. But what I do say is this : that class of men are always at a disadvantage. They must always work at the lowest wages. They are always under suspicion. In times of depression they are the first to be out of work. And in general they never amount to anything but "hewers of wood and drawers of water." And on the whole they cheat themselves the worst, and only amount to miserable failures. This is all there is of it.

III. The False And The True — In Business

The same rules as to the false and the true life apply to business that apply to work, as I tried to illustrate them in my last number.

As the laws of nature cannot be ignored without incurring their penalties, so the laws of morals are inexorable. To say nothing of Divine retributive justice, or the Word of God, there is an economic penalty to the violation of these laws that we cannot escape.

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN BUSINESS. 19

A miller cannot afford to take too much toll ; he is sure to be found out sometime, and lose more in custom than he makes by the stealings. A merchant cannot afford to misrepresent his goods or to cheat his customers in any way ; in the long run it will injure his trade more than the amount of wrongful gains, and that diverted trade will gravitate to the honest dealer.

I once knew a sprightly young man in this county, a very competent business man, employed at a good salary in an important business establishment, entirely faithful and satisfactory in his work, and in a fair way to succeed to the position of his aged principal. He proved dishonest in money transactions, lost his place and died a miserable inebriate. Pure selfishness should have kept him honest. He could not afford to steal. The righteous law of economic retribution extinguished him as it is pretty sure to all such fools, sooner or later.

I knew a young man of fine business attainments — educated to business by his friends, and promoted from point to point, until he had attained to a position of great responsibility, honor and emolument. He could not afford to steal, but he did, and he is an outcast from all respectable associations, and degraded from all respectable business, Tweed's millions of stealings turned out to be unprofitable as a business venture ; and his confreres have all turned out in like manner.

The city of Scranton had been afflicted with a political leader who plundered her treasury at will, and for years he had been supposed to be invincible. One day I saw him start for the State Prison. His confederates came to their grief before him. And so all the big and little bank thieves and defaulters are coming to justice as we may see in the papers every daj^.

These few instances are only samples of what I have seen and treasured up in my memory all my life. In all the multifarious transactions between man and man, my testimony and my admonition are that dishonesty in any of its phases never pays. True, I have seen it prosper for a season — sometimes for a pretty long season, seemingly — but I have seen many notable cases where the penalty came at last with severity. Somehow it is so fixed in economic law, as well as in the moral law, that " honesty is always the best policy," and it is not worth while for any man, young or old, to try to get around that law. The smaller cheats and frauds do not meet so conspicuous retribution ; but it is sure to come ; commensurate to the offenses ; for " what a man soweth that shall he also reap." Nobody knows how many business bankruptcies are caused by violations of this inexorable law.

I do not say that dishonest business men always fail in business, but I do say that where one of that class keeps above board through life, his success is attained in spite of the incumbrance of his dishon-

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN BUSINESS. 21

est practices. Without them his success would have been vastly greater. I think the uniform testimony of all intelligent and impartial observers of business and business men is that all highly successful business men have been scrupulously honest in their business.

In view of all this, my young friends, and in view of the uniform denunciations of Holy Writ upon all forms and all degrees of rapacity and wrong, I do not see how such a thing as even temptation to wrong in business can ever get a lodgment in your minds, if you will only take a thought on the subject. All species of wrong being inimical to your interest, your comfort and your eternal well-being, you never can entertain a thought of any such thing if you will study out the subject for yourselves, and look about you and observe the practical proofs of these theories. When we once come to understand that wrong to others is sure to recoil, and the severest of the injury will be upon ourselves, it is impossible to entertain the idea of any dishonesty in business.

There is one other principle of business ethics that is, perhaps, worthy of consideration in this connection. When a young man starts out in business he never should undertake to build himself up by unwarrantably pulling others down. To build up your own business by your own real merit —by the excellence of your wares or of your work, whatever it may be, by their reasonable price, by your fair dealing and promptness in execution ; in short by your general skill, facilities, and faithfulness to your customers, is all legitimate, and any competitors who cannot survive such competition must and should retire from the contest. But a direct onslaught upon the business of a competitor — by detraction, slander, inuendo, or any other direct interference, is in the highest degree reprehensible, and in the long run never can be successful. It is sure to recoil sooner or later.

There is room enough in the world for everybody. If two of a trade happen to get too close together, so that there is not room for both, the weaker must retire to some more suitable locality, and there is no occasion for them to quarrel, or to try to injure each other's business. And it has always been a puzzle to me why it is that two of a trade cannot agree. Reader, never engage in that kind of competition. You cannot afford it.

I can illustrate this by an incident of my own life. I was once employed in an office, where a fellow clerk, somehow, imbibed the idea that I was in his way and he in my way. I had not thought of such a thing, for I thought there was room enough for both of us. And while I was trying to get him promoted to the place he wanted, he was scheming to get me out of my place. The result was that I was considerably injured for the time, but I came out all right finally; and in schemes to supplant his principal, the individual in question

ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 23

lost his own place, irrevocably, to his great damage for the rest of his life. And this is no uncommon case. Any elderly man who has gone through the world with his eyes open can recall numerous instances of attempted overreaching, in various phases, of larger or smaller proportions, with similar ending.

Never think of pulling somebody down for the purpose of building yourselves up, my friends. Success never comes of that sort of effort. Build up yourselves by your own brains, industry, push and honesty, and let other people alone to do the same if they will. If you have no merit of your own, the demerits of others, whatever they may be, cannot make you a success.

IV. Accumulation — General Considerations

There are but very few men who have the peculiar ability to amass large wealth, whatever their opportunities may be. Large pecuniary success requires extraordinary talent in that particular direction, as well as the industry and economy to utilize them* But for the reasonable and sufficient accumulation of property, it is not the best brains that are the most successful. It does not require much talent to do that. I have noticed all along through life that very frequently mediocre and illiterate men are more successful in money matters than others with brilliant talents and high education. Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, with all their powers for earning money, would have died entirely poor but for the large donations made them by political friends. And I have seen men, unable to read or write, and scarcely able to count their own money, and with brains not much more than sufficient to shovel dirt, accumulate respectable properties. We say of such men, usually, that they know just enough to make money; but the fact is that they know a good deal more than that — they know enough to save some of it ; and any body with better brains can learn that if they will. I am not sure that excessive accumulations are desirable. No man has need of as much as a hundred thousand dollars. And I am sure that it is not well for young people to have very rich fathers. Now and then we hear of a rich man's son who is good for something, but in a general way, to bring up a boy to understand that he is to be rich when his father dies, is to spoil him. Notoriously, rich men's sons are usually good for nothing. They go to ruin themselves, and waste their patrimony very briskly when they get control of it. And all this is easily accounted for on common principles of human nature. Work of any kind is not attractive. People do not take to it from choice. And so when a young man is trained to think that he is to have money enough to carry him through, it is contrary to nature for him to put forth much

ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 25

exertion of any kind. In his educational course he will depend on his money and his social standing chiefly, and do as little work as possible ; and in anything that he undertakes he is pretty sure to, amount to nothing. On the other hand, luxury, dissipation and licentiousness are naturally attrac tive to the young ; and so it is nothing more thanhuman nature that rich young men go to ruin.

But take a boy unencumbered by wealth — knowing that he must make his own way in the world — must do something ; if he has the elements of manhood in him, it is only human nature that he should put forth all there is in him to make his mark and be somebody. A parent can safely aid such a boy to a reasonable extent, in the way of education, or otherwise.

On the whole, therefore, the very worst thing that a man can do for his children, is to make them rich with money in their young days, or to make them think that they are to be rich.

And here, I may as well say, once for all, that whatever I shall say, in these papers, about economy and accumulation, I do not object to the use of the luxuries, the elegancies, or even the baubles of life, by those who can afford them. To cultivate the beautiful and the refined is only to copy after the work of God in nature. The landscape of green and fruitful fields, the grandeur of the forest, the rolling rivers, the gigantic waterfalls, the starry heavens, the magnificent sunset, the gorgeous rainbow, the golden corn, the blade of grass, the flowers of the field, all, all invite the development of whatever there is of beauty in the capacities of man.

But what I do insist upon is this : the necessaries of life are first ; and every man's duty, and his real comfort and peace of mind require that he shall make adequate provision for these, not only for the time being, but for all contingencies through life, before dissipating his earnings upon mere luxuries. We see men sixty, seventy, eighty years old, working for wages for their daily bread, and go to the poor house when no longer able to earn a miserable pittance by the torturing physical exertion of bone and muscle, becoming paralyzed by age and needing leisure and repose. It is pitiable. Young man, you cannot afford to come to that.

But I see young men in unknown numbers traveling in that road as fast as the wheels of time can carry them. We have had great railroad and other labor strikes ; and in looking over the accounts of them, there is one point that everywhere stands out in bold relief, that is mournfully, not to say fearfully, apropos to this phase of my subject. It is that the masses of laboring people are destitute of the common necessaries of life, whenever their work is suspended; and there is a general . clamor for public provision of food for the people out of work. No matter that they have been receiving extravagant, unprecedented wages, the moment that they are out of work, either by their