The Globe-republican. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1889-1910, 1893-07-21
TO BUSINESS MEN.
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on sFinan-
cial Troubles.
Honesty the Best POlicy-Folly Of Over
anxiety and Care-The Soul Moro VAL
uable Than All the Money In
the World.

In a recent sermon at Brooklyn Rev.
I. Dewitt Talmage discoursed on the
timely subject of Comfort for Business
Men," the text being Isaiah Il. 2:
speak We comfortably to Jerusalem"
The preacher said:
What an awful six weeks in CONNER
cial circles. The crashing of banks
from San Francisco to New York, and
from ocean to ocean. The complete
uncertainty that has halted all
styles of business for three months and
the pressure of the money market for
tie 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 established. the churches
they have built, the asylums and beicfi-
cent 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 that never
break, and viii be millionaires forever.
The stringency 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 converting next month in Wash
ington, and such results be reached as
shall restore 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 about their trials and try
to offer some curative prescriptions.
In the first place l have to remark
that Il great many of our business men
feel ruinous trials and temptations
coming to them from small and limited
capital in business. 1t is everywhere
understood that it takes now three or
four times as much to do business well
as it once did. Once a 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 adver-
Using. eXOrbitant store rents, heavy
taxation. expensive agencies, are only
parts of the demand made upon our
Il
have found themselves in such
circumstances with small capt.
tai, they have sometimes been
tempted to run against the rocks OF
moral and financial destruction. This
temptation of limited capital has ruined
men in two ways. Sometimes they
have shrunk down under the tempta-
ton. They have yielded the battle be-
fore 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 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 bat
tie 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 coun-
tenances overshadowed even their dry
goods and groceries. Dependency,
coming from limited capital, blasted
them Others have felt it in a different
way. They have said: Here / have
been trudging along. l have been try
ing 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 lighthouse, on the great sea OF
speculation. Stocks are the dice with
which he CANDLES He bought for a
few dollars vast tracts of western land.
Some man at the east, living on fat
homestead, meets this gambler of for
tune and is persuaded to trade off his
estate here for lots in a western city
with large avenues and costly palaces.
and lake steamers smoking at the
wharves. and rail trains coming down
with lightning speed from every
direction There it is all on pa
per. The city has never been
built, nor the railroads con-
structed, 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 CAPT
tai, into labyrinths from which they
could not be extricated. would not
want to chain honest enterprise l
would not want to block up any of the
avenues for honest emulation that
open before young men. On the con-
trary. l 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, it is the duty of the ministers
of religion. and the friends of all young
men. to utter a plain, emphatic. un
mistakable protest. These are the in