The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1895-07-12
BUSINESS TROUBLES.
Or. Talmage Discourses on the
Trials of Tradesmen.
Past and Present Methods OF Transacting
Business Contrasted-Waterloos OF
the Counter and Heroes of
the Yardstiek.

thy merchants in all sorts of things. -
DIR. Talmage said:
We are at the opening door of re-
turning national prosperity. The
coming crops, the re-establishment of
blessing of God, will turn in upon all
sect as 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 we
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 great charity.
The church of God can afford to ex-
tend to them her sympathies and plead
before Heaven with all-availing prayer
The schools such men have established,
the churches they have built, the asy-
lums and beneficent institutions they
have fostered, will be their eulogy
long after their banking institutions
are forgotten. Such men can never
banks that never break. and will be
millionaires forever. But | thought it
would be appropriate to-day, and use
full, 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 a great number of our business
men feel ruinous trials and tempta-
tions coming to them from small and
limited capital in business. 1t is every
where 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 advertising, exorbitant store
rents, heavy taxation, expensive agen-
cies, 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. Some
times they have shrunk down under
the temptation. They have yielded
the battle before the first shot was
fred. At the first hard dun they sur
rendered. Their knees knocked to-
gether at the fall of the auctioneer's
hammer. They blanched at the f1nan-
cial 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 be-
cause sugars were up when they want
ed 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
Swallowed even their dry goods and gro
ceries. Dependency, coming from linn
tied capital, blasted them. Others have
said: Here I have been trudging
along. have been trying to be hon
est 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.
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: per
haps I may succeed, and if l don't |
will be no worse off than am now,
for hundred thousand dollars taken
from nothing, nothing remains"
Stocks are the dice with which he
CANDLES. He bought for few dollars
vast tracts of western land. Some
man at the east, living on fat home
stead, meets this gam bier of fortune,
and is persuaded to trade off his estate
for lots in a western city with large av-
enues, 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 paper! 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. 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: II 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 swindled |
say: Il don't know how l could have |
ever been deceived by that man." and |
the EDITORIALS, in handsome wood cuts, /
set forth the hero who in ten years
had genius enough to fail for $50, 0OOl |
And that is the process by which |
many have been tempted through linn |
itation of capital, to rush into LADY, |
rinths from which they could not be /
Iwould not want to chain /
honest enterprise, not want to block \
up any of the avenues for honest accu- /
mutation that open before young men. /
On the 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 notions of what |
are lawful spheres of enterprise, it is
the duty of the church of God and the
ministers of religion, and the friends
of all young men. to utter plain, en-
abatic upu, Ia HE T1rOteSt These
are the influences that drown men IN
destruction and perdition-
Again, great many of our business