The Art of Public Speaking
damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State
Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was
then worth to our State a hundred millions of dollars. The city of
Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow
on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since
the second day of God's creation clear down to the present time, sold
that farm for $833, no cents--again I say, "no sense."
But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and
I am sorry I did, because that is my old State. This young man I mention
went out of the State to study--went down to Yale College and studied
Mines and Mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a week during his last
year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy,
out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he
graduated they raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars
and offered him a professorship. Then he went straight home to his
mother and said, "Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week.
What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine!
Mother, let's go out to California and stake out gold claims and be
immensely rich." "Now," said his mother, "it is just as well to be happy
as it is to be rich."
But as he was the only son he had his way--they always do; and they
sold out in Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the
employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight
in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars a week again. He was
also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for that
company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine--I do
not know anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had
scarcely gone from the old homestead before the farmer who had bought
the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and as he was bringing them in
in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall
came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So
he set the basket on the ground and pulled, first on one side and then
on the other side. Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls,
and the farmers have to be economical with their gateways in order to
have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so tight there
that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the
gate a block of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor
of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for forty-five
dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat right
on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had gone
back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and
it seemed to say, "Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand
dollars. Why not take me?" But he would not take it. There was no silver
in Newburyport; it was all away off--well, I don't know where; he
didn't, but somewhere else--and he was a professor of mineralogy.
I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole
time to-night telling of blunders like that I have heard professors
make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in Wisconsin. I
can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is saying
to his friends, "Do you know that man Conwell that lives in
Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I have heard of him." "And do you know that man
Jones that lives in that city?" "Yes, I have heard of him." And then he
begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, "They have done the
same thing I did, precisely." And that spoils the whole joke, because
you and I have done it.
Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very
day. I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor. To live
in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly a
misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be poor.
Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But
persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can you spend
your time advising the rising generation to give their time to getting
money--dollars and cents--the commercial spirit?"
Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know
there are some things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah,
yes! By a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which the autumn
leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and grander and
sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that
there are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold.
Nevertheless, the man of common sense also knows that there is not any
one of those things that is not greatly enhanced by the use of money.
Money is power. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate
the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power; money has powers; and
for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish to do
any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to
disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to
spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money.
And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it
is a great honor to be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces of
people who think just that way. I heard a man once say in a prayer
meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God's poor, and then I
silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in
washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I
don't want to see any more of that land of God's poor. Now, when a man
could have been rich just as well, and he is now weak because he is
poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself;
he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by
honorable and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that
sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches.
I remember, not many years ago a young theological student who came into
my office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and
"labor with me." I asked him what had happened, and he said: "I feel it
is my duty to come in and speak to you, sir, and say that the Holy
Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil." I asked him
where he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible. I
asked him whether he had made a new Bible, and he said, no, he had not
gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. "Well," I said, "if it
is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the text-book and
let me see it?" He left the room and soon came stalking in with his
Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, who
founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he put the
Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear,
"There it is. You can read it for yourself." I said to him, "Young man,
you will learn, when you get a little older, that you cannot trust
another denomination to read the Bible for you." I said, "Now, you
belong to another denomination. Please read it to me, and remember that
you are taught in a school where emphasis is exegesis." So he took the
Bible and read it: "The _love_ of money is the root of all evil." Then
he had it right. The Great Book has come back into the esteem and love
of the people, and into the respect of the greatest minds of earth, and
now you can quote it and rest your life and your death on it without
more fear. So, when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the
truth. "The love of money is the root of all evil." Oh, that is it. It
is the worship of the means instead of the end, though you cannot reach
the end without the means. When a man makes an idol of the money instead
of the purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar
until the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if
you only had the money, what you could do for your wife, your child, and
for your home and your city. Think how soon you could endow the Temple
College yonder if you only had the money and the disposition to give it;
and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time
getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich,
because money has power. I think the best thing for me to do is to
illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least,
to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because
of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr.
Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars--so many believe
them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How
little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell
their papers entirely on some sensation! The way they lie about the rich
men is something terrible, and I do not know that there is anything to
illustrate this better than what the newspapers now say about the city
of Philadelphia. A young man came to me the other day and said, "If Mr.
Rockefeller, as you think, is a good man, why is it that everybody says
so much against him?" It is because he has gotten ahead of us; that is
the whole of it--just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is
criticised so sharply by an envious world? Because he has gotten more
than we have. If a man knows more than I know, don't I incline to
criticise somewhat his learning? Let a man stand in a pulpit and preach
to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and they're all
asleep, don't I criticise him? We always do that to the man who gets
ahead of us. Why, the man you are criticising has one hundred millions,
and you have fifty cents, and both of you have just what you are worth.
One of the richest men in this country came into my home and sat down in
my parlor and said: "Did you see all those lies about my family in the
paper?" "Certainly I did; I knew they were lies when I saw them." "Why
do they lie about me the way they do?" "Well," I said to him, "if you
will give me your check for one hundred millions, I will take all the
lies along with it." "Well," said he, "I don't see any sense in their
thus talking about my family and myself. Conwell, tell me frankly, what
do you think the American people think of me?" "Well," said I, "they
think you are the blackest-hearted villain that ever trod the soil!"
"But what can I do about it?" There is nothing he can do about it, and
yet he is one of the sweetest Christian men I ever knew. If you get a
hundred millions you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and you
can judge your success in any line by the lies that are told about you.
I say that you ought to be rich. But there are ever coming to me young
men who say, "I would like to go into business, but I cannot." "Why
not?" "Because I have no capital to begin on." Capital, capital to begin
on! What! young man! Living in Philadelphia and looking at this wealthy
generation, all of whom began as poor boys, and you want capital to
begin on? It is fortunate for you that you have no capital. I am glad
you have no money. I pity a rich man's son. A rich man's son in these
days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied.
A rich man's son cannot know the very best things in human life. He
cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us that not one out of
seventeen rich men's sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they
die in poverty. Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money even
then he cannot know the best things of life.
A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I