The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-08-10

| bAAC Ol d
cial prosperity. l have deep sympa-
thy for the laboring classes who toll
with hand and foot. But we must
| not forget the business men who,
without any complaint or hammered
procession through the street, are
enduring a stress of circumstances
terrific. The fortunate people of to-day
are those who are receiving daily
wages or regular salaries. And the
| men most to be pitied are those who
conduct a business while prices are
falling and yet try to pay their clerks
and employees and are in such fearful
straits that they would quit business
tomorrow if it were not for the
wreck and ruin of others. When peo-
pie tell me at what a ruinously low
price they purchased an article, it
gives me more dismay than satisfac-
ton. l know it means the bank
ruptcy and defalcation of men in
many departments. The men who
toll with the brain need full as much
sympathy as those who toll with the
hand. All business life is struck
through with suspicion, and panics
are the result of want of confidence.
The pressure to do wrong is strong
er from the fact that in our day the
large business houses are swallowing
up the smaller, the whales dining on
bluefish and minnows. The large
houses undersell the small ones, be-
cause they buy in greater quantities
and at lower figures from the pro
ducer. They can afford to make moth
ing, or actually lose, on some styles
of goods, assured they can make it
up on others. So, great dry goods
house goes outside of its regular line
and sells books at cost or less than
cost, and that swamps the book
sellers; or the dry goods house sells
bric-a-brac at lowest figures, and that
swamps the small dealer in bric-a-
brac. And the same thing goes on in
other styles of merchandise, and the
consequence is that all along the busi-
ness streets of all our cities there are
merchants of small capital who are in
terrific struggle to keep their heads
above water. The ocean liners run
down the Newfoundland fishing
smacks. This is nothing against the
man who has the big store, for every
man has as large a store and as great
a business as he can manage.
To feel right and do right under
all this pressure requires martyr
grace, requires divine support, re-
quires celestial Reinforcement. Yet
there are tens of thousands of such
men getting splendidly through. They
see others going up and themselves
going down, but they keep their pa
tience and their courage and their
Christian consistency, and after
awhile their success will come. There
is generally retribution in some form
for greediness. The owners of the
big business will die, and their boys
will get possession of the business,
and with a cigar in their mouths, and
full to the chins with the best liquor,
and behind a pair of spanking bays,
they will pass everything on the turn
pike road to temporal and eternal
perdition. Then the business will
break up and the smaller dealers will
have fair opportunity. Or the spirit
of coptentment and right feeling will
take possession of the large firm, as
recently with a famous business
house, and the firm will say: eve
have enough money for all our needs
and the needs of our children. Now
let us dissolve business and make way
for other men in the same line" In
stead of being startled at solitary
- ha
come a common thing. [ know of
scores of great business houses that
have had their opportunity of vast
accumulation and who ought to quit.
But perhaps for all the days of this
generation the struggle of small
houses to keep alive under the over
shadowing pressure of great houses
will continue; therefore, taking
things as they are, you will be wise
to preserve your faith and throw over
all the counters and shelves and casks
the measuring line of divine right.
"And the Lord said unto me: Amos,
what seest thou? And I said: A
plumb line"
In the same way we need to rectify
our theologies. All sorts of religions
are putting forth their pretensions.
Some have a spiritualistic religion,
and their chief work is with ghosts,
and others a religion of political econ
omy, proposing to put an end to hu-
man misery by a new style of taxa
ton, and there is a humanitarian re-
ligion that looks after rhe bodies of
men and let's the soul look after itself,
and there is a legislative religion that
proposes to rectifv all wrongs by en-
actment of better laws, and there is
an aesthetic religion that by rules of
exquisite taste would lift the heart
out of its deformities, and religions of
all sorts, religions by the peck, re-
ligions by the square foot and reli-
gions by the ton-all of them devices
of the devil that would take the heart
away from the only religion that will
ever effect anything for the human
race, and that is the straight up and
down religion written in the book
which begins with Genesis and ends
with Revelation, the religion of the
skies, the old religion, the God-given
religion, the everlasting religion,
which SAYS: Love God above all and
your neighbor as yourself" All re-
ligions but one begin at the wrong end
and in the wrong place. The Bible re-
ligion demands that we first get right
with God. 1t begins at the top and
measures down, while the other re-
igions begin at the bottom and try
to measure up. They stand at the
foot of the wall, up to their knees in
the mud. of human theory and specula-
ton, and have a plummet and a string
tied fast to it, and they throw the
plummet this way and break head