The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1893-08-03
Rev. Dr.. TaImage Refers to the
Depressed Financial Condition
of the Country.
Subject: COMFORT FOR BUSINESS MEN.

vi lIiS AO0utIys
Subject: COMFORT FOR BUSINESS MEN.
Isaiah xl.,@.
What an awful six weeks in CONNER =
cial circles! The crashing of banks from
San Frisco to New York and from ocean
to ocean. The complete uncertainty
that has halted all styles of business for
three months and the pressue of the
money market for the last year have
pat all bargain makers at their wits
end Some of the best men in the land
have faltered-men whose hearts are
enlisted in every good work and whose
hands have blessed every great chart
ty. The church of God can afford to
extend to them her sympathies and plead
before heaven with all awaiting prayer.
the churches they have built, the asy-
lums and beneficient institutions they
have fostered, will be their eulogy long
after their banking institutions are for
gotten.
Such men can never fail. They have
their treasurers in banks that never
break and will be millionaires forever.
The stringencv of the money market, l
am glad to say, begins to relax. May
the wisdom of Almighty God come down
upon our National legislature at their
convention next month in Washington
AID such results reached as shall restore
confidence and revive trade and multi
ply properties! Yet not only in the
time of financial disaster, but all through
life, our active business people have a
struggle, and think it will be appropi-
ate and useful for me to talk about their
trials and try to offer some curative pre-
scriptions.
In the first place, have to remark
that a great many of our business men
feel ruinous trials and temptations COM
ing to them from small and limited cap
ital in business. 1t is everywhere I'M
derstood that it takes now three or four
times as much to do business well as
once it did. Once few hundred dollars
were turned into goods-the merchant
would be his own store sweeper, his own
salesman, his own bookkeeper. He
would manage all the affairs himself,
and everything would be net profit.
Wonderful changes have come. Costly
apparatus extensive advertising, eXor-
bitant store rents, heavy taxation, ex>
pensive agencies, are only part OF the
demand made upon our commercial men,
and when they have found themselves
in such circumstances with small capital
they have somtimes been tempted to
run against the rocks of moral and tinan-
cial destruction.
This temptation of limited capital has
ruined men in two ways Sometimes
they have shrunk down under the temp
taticn. They have yielded the battle
before the first shot was fired. AT the
first hard gun they surrended. Their
knees knocked together at the fall of
the auctioneer's hammer. They blanch
ed at the financial peril. They did not
understand that there is such a thing as
heroism in merchandise, and that there
are Waterloos of the counter, and that
a man can fight no Drawer battle with
the sword than he can with the yard
stick.
Their souls melted in them because
sugars were up when they wanted TO buy
and down when they wanted to sell and
unstable goods were on the shelf and
no JoIt ~, loI.
of their countenances overshadowed
even their dry goods and groceries. De-
spondency, coming from limited capital
blasted them. Others have fell in diff
ferent way. They have said: Here l
| have been trudging along. | have been
trying to be honest all these years.
| find it is of no use. Now it is make or
! break.
The small craft that could have stood
the stream is put out beyond the light
house on the great sea of speculation
Stocks are the dice with which he gam
bles. He bought for few dollars vast
tracts of western land. Some man al
the east living on fat homestead
meets this gambler of fortunate and is
persuaded to trade off his estate here
for lots in western city with large av-
enues and costly palaces and lake streams
smoking at the wharves and rail trains
comming down with lightning speed
from every direction. There it is all or
paper! The city has never been bull
nor the railroads constructed, but every
thing points that way, and the thine
will be as sure as you, live. And that i
the process by which he may have beer
tempted through limitation of capital in
to labyrinths from which they coult
not be extricated.n