Connecticut western news., 1895-07-11
TRIALS OF BUSINESS,
Rsv. OR. vAeNAee DISCUSSES A TIME
 " SUBJECT.

REV OR yAlMAeE DISCUSSES A TIME
 " SUBJECT.
 Aft~~ Cloud. of pa.srees There Will Fol-
 tNw the Sunshine of National Prosperi-
 U-whas the Business Man Is Conn.,
 relled to Underso-The Souls Welfare.
 NEw YORK, July I'm his sermon for today Dr. Talmage, who is still ab- sent on his western featuring tour, chose subject of universal interest-viz, Business Troubles'-the text selected being Ezekiel xvii. 24, "These were thy merchants in all sorts of things"
 We are at the opening door of return ing national prosperity. The coming crops, the re-establishment of public confidence and, above all, the blessing of God will turn in upon all sections of America the widest, greatest prosperity this country has ever seen. But that door of successes is not yet fully open, and thousands of business 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 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 beneficent 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 will be millionaires forever. But I thought it would be appropriate today and useful for me to talk about the tri- als and temptations of our business men and try to offer some curative prescrip- tiona
 Rocks of Danger.
 In the first place, have to remark that great many of our business men feel ruinous trials and temptations com ing to them from small and limited cap ital in business. It is everywhere under stood that it takes now three or four times @' much to do business well as i. once it did. Once few hundred dollars were tN1 into goods. The merchant would " own storekeeper, his own salesman, his own bookkeeper. He would manage all the affairs himself, and ev- erything would be net profit. Wonder ful changes have come Costly apparatus, extensive advertising, exorbitant store rents, heavy taxation, expensive agencies are only parts of the demand made upon our commercial men, and when they have found themselves in such circum- stances with small capital they have sometimes been tempted to run against the rocks of moral and financial destruc- tion. 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 be- fore the first shot was fired. At the first hard dun they surrendered. Their knees knocked together at the fall of the auc- tioneer's hammer. They blanched at the financial peril They did not understand that there is such thing as heroism in merchandise and that there are Water loos of the counter and that man can fight no braver 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 overshadowed even their dry goods and groceries. Despond- ency, coming from limited capital, blasted them. Others have felt it in different way. They have said: "Here have been trudging along. I 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 lighthouse on the great sea of specula- tion. He borrows a few thousand dollars from friends who dare not refuse him, and he goes bartering on a large scale. He reasons in this way: Perhaps may succeed, and if don't will be no worse off than I am now, for $100, 900 taken from nothing, nothing remains. !"
 Stocks are the dice with which he gambles- He bought for few dollars vast tracts of western land. Some man meets this gambler of fortune and is persuaded to trade off his estate 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 1t is all on pa- per! 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. We'll, 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, 1T wonder where that man got all his money?" After awhile the bubble bursts. Creditors rush in. The law clutches, but finds nothing in it's grasp. The men who were swindled say, "I don't know how could have ever been deceived by that man" and the pictori- als, in handsome woodcuts, set forth the hero who in ten years had genius enough to fail for $150,000l
 And that is the process by which many have been tempted through limitation of capital to rush into labyrinths from which they could not be extricated would not want to chain honest enter prise. would not want to block up any of the avenues for honest accumulation that open before young men On the contrary, I would like to cheer them on and rejoice when they reach the goal, but when there are such multitudes o1 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 church oi God, and the ministers of religion, and the friends of all young men, to utter a plain, emphatic, unmistakable protest. These are the influences that drown men in destruction and perdition.
 Hazardous UudortakinR.