The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-07-24
RICHES HAVE WINGS.
Dr.. TaImage on the Current ii.
nancial Disturbance.

Right ana Wrong Uses Oh IAoHoy-Ao"
Men Often Make shipwreck of Character
In Making Haste to Be Rich-Consola-
! ton to the Unfortunate.
7 BROOKLYN, July 16.-Rev. DIR. Tai
mage has selected as his subject for to-
day topic of the greatest interest and
timeliness-viz, Comfort For Business
Men," the text being Isaiah x, 2, 'Speak
We comfortably to Jerusalem"
What an awful six weeks in CONNER
cial circlesi The crashing of banks from
San Francisco to New York and from
ocean to ocean. The complete uncer-
tainty that has halted all styles of bust
ness for three months and the pressure
Of the money market for the last year
have put 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
charity. The church of God can afford
to extend to them her sympathies and
plead before heaven with all availing
prayer. The schools such men have es-
tabhshed, Che churches they have built,
the asylums and benefcent institutions
they have fostered, will be their eulogy
long after their banking institutions are
forgotten.
Such men can never fail. They have
their treasures in banks thatnever break
and will be millionaires forever. The
stringency of the money market, | am
glad to say, bs,cins to relax. May the
wisdom of Almighty God come down
upon our national legislature at their
converting next month in Washington
and such results be reached as shall re-
store confidence and revive trade and
multiply properties! Yet not only
now in the time of financial disaster,
but all through life, our active business
people have struggle, and | think it
will be appropriate and useful for me to
talk abou5 their trials and try to offer
some curative prescriptions.
ovERBURDENED BUSINESS MEN.
In the first place. have to remark that
a great many of our business men feel
ruinous trials and temptations coming to
them from small and limited capital in
business. It is everywhere understood
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, exorbitant store rents, heavy
taxtatien, expensive agencies, are only
parts of the demand made upon our COM
merciaI men, and when they have found
themselves in such circumstances with
small capital they have sometimes been
tempted to run against therocks of NOR
al and financial destruction.
This temptation of limited capital has
ruined men IN two ways. Sometimes
they have shrunk down under the temp
tation. They have yielded the battle
before the first shot was fired. At the
first hard gun they surrendered. Their
knees Knocked together at the fall of the
auctioneer's hammer. They blanched at
the financial peril. They did not under
stand that there is such thing as hero
ism in merchandise, and that there are.
Waterloos of the counter, and that
man can fight no Drawer battle with the
sword than he can with the yardstick.
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 bad debts in their ledger. The
gloom Of their countenances overshad
owed even their dry goods and groceries.
Dependency, coming from limited CAPT
tai, blasted them. Others have felt it in
a different way. They have said: .'Here
! have been trudging along. 1 have been
trying to be honest all these years. I 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 at
the ease living on fat homestead meets
this gambler Of fortune and is persuaded
to trade off his estate here for lots in
western city with large avenues and
costly palaces and lake steamers smok-
ing at the wharves and rail trains COM
ing down with lightning speed from
every direction. There it is all on pa
perl The city has never been built nor
the railroads constructed, but everything
points that way, and the thing will be
done as sure as you live. And that is
the process by which many have been
tempted through limitation of capital
into labyrinths from which they could
not be extricated.
| would not want to chain honest en-
terprise. 1 would not want to block up
any of the avenues for honest accumula-
ton that open before young men. On
che contrary, would like to cheer them
on and rejoice when they reach the goal,
but when there are such multitudes of
men going to ruin for this life and the
life that is to come through wrong no
tions Of what are lawful spheres of en-
terprise 1t is the duty of ministers OF re-
ligion and the friends of ali young men
IA ,1+tay a r1ain amuhatic unlniStakable