The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1895-07-17
BUSINESS TR0U BLES.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE PREDICTS GREAT
GENERAL PROSPERITY.

He Says We are at the Opening Door of
Good Times Why SO Many Men Fall by
the Wayside--The Value of :, Human
Soul.
New YORK. July In his sermon
for today Dr. Talmage, who is still abb
sent on his western lecturlng tour,
chose subject of universal interest
viz, Business Troubles the text Sc
lected being Ezekiel xvii, "a, These
were thy merchants in all sorts Of
things"
We are at the opening door Of re-
turning national prosperity. The com
ing crops, the establishment Of pub
lie confidence and. above all, the
blessing of God will turn in upon all
sections of America the widest, great
est prosperity this country has ever
SEEN But that door Of success is not
yet fully open, and thousands of bust
ness men are yet suffering from the
distressing times through which ne
have been passing.
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 good chart
ty. The church Of God eau afford to
extend to them her sympathies and
plead before heaven with all avalling
PRAYER. The schools such men have
established, the churches they have
built, the asylums and beneficient in
stitutions they have fostered, will be
their eulogy long after their banking
institutions are for gotten. Such men
can never fail. They have their treas,
ures in banks that never break and
will be millionaires forever. But l
thought it would be appropriate today
and useful, for me to talk about the
trials and temptations Of our business
men and Try to offer some curative
prescriptions.
In the first place l have to remark
that great many of our business men
feel ruinous trials and temptations
coming to them from small and limit
ed capital in business. 1t is every
where understood that it takes now
three or four times as much to do
business well as once it did. Once a
few hundred dollars were turned into
goods-the merchant would be his
own store keeper, his own salesman,
his own bookkeeper; he would man
age all the affairs himself, and every
thing would be net profit. Wonder
full changes have come; costly appa-
ratus, extensive advertising, exorbi-
tant store rents, heavy taxation, eX-
pensive agencies are only parts Of the
demand made upon our commercial
men, and when they have found
themselves in such circumstances with
small capital, 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
temptation. They have yielded the
battle before the first shot was fired.
At the first hard dun they surrender.
Their knees knocked together at the
fall of the auctioneer's hammer. They
blanched at the financial peril. They
did not underetaud that there is such
thing as heroism in merchandise
and that there are Waterloos of the
counter and that a man can fight no
braver battle with the sword than he
can with the yardstick. Their souls
melted in them because sugars We're
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 over
Shadowed even their dry goods and
groceries. Dependency, coming from
limited capital, blasted them. Others
have felt it in different way They
have said: Here l have been trudg-
ing along. 1 have been trying to be
honest all these years. I find it IS OF
no use. Now it is max or break. :"
The small craft that could have stood
the stream is put out beyond the light
house, on the great sea of speculation.
He borrows few thousand dollars
from friends who dare not refuse him,
and he goes bartering on a large
scale.
He reasons in this way: Perhaps I
may succeed, and if I don't I will be
no worse off than I am now, for 500,
600 taken from nothing nothing re-
MAINS Stocks are the dice with
which he CANDLES. He bought for a
few dollars vast tracks of western
land. Some man at the east, living
on fat homestead, meets this gambler
of fortune and is persuaded to trade
of his estate for lots in western city
| with large avenues, and costly pala-
ces, and lake steamers smoking at the
wharves, and rail trains coming down
with lightning speed from every dl-
rection. There it is all on paper. 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. Well, the
man goes on, stopping at no fraud or
outrage. In his splendid equipage he
dashes past, while the honest laborer
looks up and wipes the sweat from his
brow and SAYS, Il wonder where that
man got all his money" After awhile
the bubble bursts. Creditors rush in.
The law clutches, but finds nothing in
its grasp. The men who were swim,
died say, L don't know how | could
have ever been deceived by that
man, and the pictorials in handsome
wood cuts set forth the hero who in
ten years had genius enough to fail
for $1,000
And that is the process by which
many have been tempted through
limitation of capital to rush into laby-
rinths from which they could not be
extricated. l would not want to chain
honest enterprise. 1 would not want
to block up any Of the avenues for
honest accumulation that open before
young men. On the contrary | would
like to cheer them on and rejoice
when they reach the goal, but when
! lo N