Acres of Diamonds
By Russell H. Conwell

Photographs courtesy of Conwellana-Templana Collection University Archives

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again.
Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory,
departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have
delivered in the fifty-seven years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a
lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once -- never
delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it -- thrown together
perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when
the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan, is an entire failure.

The "Acres of Diamonds" which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in
this city, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can
do. I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and
over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Persepolis,
Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf. He
was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their
patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to keep your mind off the
scratching and the scraping. He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his telling them
and I refused to listen -- looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite
angry.

I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his head and swung it around in
the air. The gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look at him for fear I should
become the victim of another story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the
instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide he was off again. Said he, "I will tell you a
story now which I reserve for my particular friends!" So then, counting myself a particular
friend, I listened, and I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of
Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and
gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man -- contented because he was wealthy, and
wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient
Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed's fire and told that old farmer how this world
of ours was made.

He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said
that the Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to move his
finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger until at last he whirled that
bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and it went rolling through the universe, burning its way
through other cosmic banks of fog, until it condensed the moisture without, and fell in floods
of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal flames burst
through the cooling crust and threw up the mountains and made the hills and the valleys of this
wonderful world of ours. If this internal melted mass burst out and cooled very quickly it
became granite; that which cooled less quickly became silver; and less quickly, gold; and
after gold diamonds were made. Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of
sunlight."

This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a diamond is pure carbon, actually deposited
sunlight -- and he said another thing I would not forget: he declared that a diamond is the last
and highest of God's mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God's animal
creations. I suppose that is the reason why the two have such a liking for each other. And the
old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole
country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the
influence of their great wealth.

Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they were worth, and went to his bed that
night a poor man -- not that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented and
discontented because he thought he was poor. He said: "I want a mine of diamonds!" So he
lay awake all night, and early in the morning sought out the priest.

Now I know from experience that a priest when awakened early in the morning is cross. He
awoke that priest out of his dreams and said to him, "Will you tell me where I can find
diamonds?" The priest said, "Diamonds? What do you want with diamonds?" "I want to be
immensely rich," said Al Hafed, "but I don't know where to go." "Well," said the priest, "if
you will find a river that runs over white sand between high mountains, in those sands you will
always see diamonds." "Do you really believe that there is such a river?" "Plenty of them,
plenty of them; all you have to do is just go and find them, then you have them." Al Hafed
said, "I will go." So he sold his farm, collected his money at interest, left his family in charge
of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds.

He began very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he went
around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last, when his money was all
spent, and he was in rags, wretchedness and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay in
Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules and the
poor, afflicted, suffering man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that
incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the camel I was riding and
went back to fix the baggage on one of the other camels, and I remember thinking to myself,
"Why did he reserve that for his particular friends?" There seemed to be no beginning, middle
or end -- nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard told or read in which the hero
was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel again, he went right on
with the same story. He said that Al Hafed's successor led his camel out into the garden to
drink, and as that camel put its nose down into the clear water of the garden brook Al
Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of light from the sands of the shallow stream, and
reaching in he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that reflected all the colors of the
rainbow, and he took that curious pebble into the house and left it on the mantel, then went
on his way and forgot all about it.

A few days after that, this same old priest who told Al Hafed how diamonds were made,
came in to visit his successor, when he saw that flash of light from the mantel. He rushed up
and said, "Here is a diamond -- here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?" "No, no; Al
Hafed has not returned and that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right
out here in our garden." "But I know a diamond when I see it," said he; "that is a diamond!"

Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers and
found others more beautiful, more valuable diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to
me, were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in
all the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great Kohinoor diamond
in England's crown jewels and the largest crown diamond on earth in Russia's crown jewels,
which I had often hoped she would have to sell before they had peace with Japan, came
from that mine, and when the old guide had called my attention to that wonderful discovery
he took his Turkish cap off his head again and swung it around in the air to call my attention
to the moral.

Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though the stories are not always moral.
He said had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or in his own garden,
instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death -- a strange land, he would have had
"acres of diamonds" -- for every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm afterwards
revealed the gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs. When he had given
the moral to his story, I saw why he had reserved this story for his "particular friends." I didn't
tell him I could see it; I was not going to tell that old Arab that I could see it. For it was that
mean old Arab's way of going around such a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what
he did not dare say directly, that there was a certain young man that day traveling down the
Tigris River that might better be at home in America. I didn't tell him I could see it.

I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick. I told him about that man
out in California, who, in 1847, owned a ranch out there. He read that gold had been
discovered in Southern California, and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter and started off to
hunt for gold. Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in that farm and one day his little
girl brought some wet sand from the raceway of the mill into the house and placed it before
the fire to dry, and as that sand was falling through the little girl's fingers a visitor saw the first
shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California; and the man who wanted
the gold had sold his ranch and gone away, never to return.

I delivered this lecture two years ago in California, in the city that stands near that farm, and
they told me that the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a one- third owner of that farm has
been getting during these recent years twenty dollars of gold every fifteen minutes of his life,
sleeping or waking. Why, you and I would enjoy an income like that!

But the best illustration that I have now of this thought was found here in Pennsylvania. There
was a man living in Pennsylvania who owned a farm here and he did what I should do if I had
a farm in Pennsylvania - he sold it. But before he sold it he concluded to secure employment
collecting coal oil for his cousin in Canada. They first discovered coal oil there. So this farmer
in Pennsylvania decided that he would apply for a position with his cousin in Canada. Now,
you see, the farmer was not altogether a foolish man. He did not leave his farm until he had
something else to do.

Of all the simpletons the stars shine on there is none more foolish than a man who
leaves one job before he has obtained another. And that has especial reference to gentlemen
of my profession, and has no reference to a man seeking a divorce. So I say this old farmer
did not leave one job until he had obtained another. He wrote to Canada, but his cousin
replied that he could not engage him because he did not know anything about the oil
business. "Well, then," said he, "I will understand it." So he set himself at the study of the
whole subject. He began at the second day of the creation, he studied the subject from the
primitive vegetation to the coal oil stage, until he knew all about it. Then he wrote to his
cousin and said, "Now I understand the oil business." And his cousin replied to him, "All
right, then, come on."

That man, by the record of the country, sold his farm for eight hundred and thirty-three
dollars -- even money, "no cents." He had scarcely gone from that farm before the man who
purchased it went out to arrange for watering the cattle and he found that the previous owner
had arranged the matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the hillside there, and the
previous owner had gone out and put a plank across that stream at an angle, extending
across the brook and down edgewise a few inches under the surface of the water. The
purpose of the plank across that brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their noses to drink above the
plank, although they would drink the water on one side below it.

Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three
years a flow of coal oil which the State Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early
as 1870, was then worth to our state a hundred millions of dollars. The city of Titusville now
stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow on, and that farmer who had studied all
about the formation of oil since the second day of God's creation clear down to the present
time, sold that farm for $833, no cents -- again I say, "no sense."

But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and I am sorry I
did, because that is my old state. This young man I mention went out of the state to study --
went down to Yale College and studied mines and mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a
week during his last year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy,
out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he graduated they raised
his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars and offered him a professorship. Then he
went straight home to his mother and said, "Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a
week. What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine! Mother, let's go out
to California and stake out gold claims and be immensely rich." "Now," said his mother, "it is
just as well to be happy as it is to be rich."

But as he was the only son he had his way -- they always do; and they sold out in
Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior
Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight in the employ of that company at fifteen
dollars a week again. He was also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for
that company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine -- I do not know
anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had scarcely gone from the old
homestead before the farmer who had bought the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and
he was bringing them in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall
came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So he set the basket on
the ground and pulled, first on one side and then on the other side.

Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls, and the farmers have to be economical
with their gateways in order to have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so
tight there that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the gate a block
of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor of mines and mining and mineralogy,
who would not work for forty-five dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in
Massachusetts, sat right on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had
gone back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and it seemed to say,
"Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand dollars. Why not take me? " But he
would not take it. There was no silver in Newburyport; it was all away off -- well, I don't
know where; he didn't, but somewhere else -- and he was a professor of mineralogy.

I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole time tonight
telling of blunders like that I have heard professors make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is
doing out there in Wisconsin. I can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is
saying to his friends. "Do you know that man Conwell that lives in Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I
have heard of him." "And do you know that man Jones that lives in that city?" "Yes, I have
heard of him." And then he begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, "They have
done the same thing I did, precisely." And that spoils the whole joke, because you and I have
done it.

Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very day. I say you
ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor. To live in Philadelphia and not be rich is a
misfortune, and it is doubly a misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be
poor. Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But persons with
certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can you spend your time advising the rising
generation to give their time to getting money -- dollars and cents -- the commercial spirit?"

Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know there are some
things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah, yes! By a heart made unspeakably
sad by a grave on which the autumn leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and
grander and sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that there are
some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold. Nevertheless, the man of
common sense also knows that there is not any one of those things that is not greatly
enhanced by the use of money. Money is power.

Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money.
Money is power: money has powers; and for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say,
"I do not wish to do any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to
disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to spend your time getting
money, because of the power there is in money. And yet this religious prejudice is so great
that some people think it is a great honor to be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces
of people who think just that way.

I heard a man once say in a prayer-meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God's
poor, and then I silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in
washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I don't want to see any
more of that kind of God's poor. Now, when a man could have been rich just as well, and he
is now weak because he is poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to
himself; he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by honorable
and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that sweep us quickly toward the goal
of riches.

I remember, not many years ago, a young theological student who came into my
office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and "labor with me." I asked
him what had happened, and he said: "I feel it is my duty to come in and speak to you, sir,
and say that the Holy Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil." I asked him where
he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible. I asked him whether he had made a
new Bible, and he said, no, he had not gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. "Well,"
I said, "if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the textbook and let me see it?"

He left the room and soon came stalking in with his Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of
the narrow sectarian, who founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he
puts the Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear, "There it is. You
can read it for yourself." I said to him, "Young man, you will learn, when you get a little older,
that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for you." I said, "Now, you
belong to another denomination. Please read it to me, and remember that you are taught in a
school where emphasis is exegesis." So he took the Bible and read it: "The love of money is
the root of all evil." Then he had it right.

The Great Book has come back into the esteem and love of the people, and into the respect
of the greatest minds of earth, and now you can quote it and rest your life and your death on
it without more fear. So, when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the truth. "The
love of money is the root of all evil." Oh, that is it. It is the worship of the means instead of
the end. Though you cannot reach the end without the means. When a man makes an idol of
the money instead of the purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar
until the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if you only had the money,
what you could do for your wife, your child, and for your home and your city. Think how
soon you could endow the Temple College yonder if you only had the money and the
disposition to give it; and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time
getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich, because money has
power.

I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought,
at least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because of the lies
that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two
hundred million dollars -- so many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that
man to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell
their papers entirely on some sensation! The way they lie about the rich men is something
terrible, and I do not know that there is anything to illustrate this better than what the
newspapers now say about the city of Philadelphia.

A young man came to me the other day and said, "If Mr. Rockefeller, as you think,
is a good man, why is it that everybody says so much against him?" It is because he has
gotten ahead of us; that is the whole of it -- just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is
criticized so sharply by an envious world! Because he has gotten more than we have. If a
man knows more than I know, don't I incline to criticize somewhat his learning? Let a man
stand in a pulpit and preach to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and
they're all asleep, don't I criticize him? We always do that to the man who gets ahead of us.
Why, the man you are criticizing has one hundred millions, and you have fifty cents, and both
of you have just what you are worth.

One of the richest men in this country came into my home and sat down in my parlor and
said: "Did you see all those lies about my family in the papers?" "Certainly I did; I knew they
were lies when I saw them." "Why do they lie about me the way they do?" "Well," I said to
him, "if you will give me your check for one hundred millions, I will take all the lies along with
it." "Well," said he, "I don't see any sense in their thus talking about my family and myself.
Conwell, tell me frankly, what do you think the American people think of me?" "Well," said I,
"they think you are the blackest hearted villain that ever trod the soil!" "But what can I do
about it?" There is nothing he can do about it, and yet he is one of the sweetest Christian men
I ever knew. If you get a hundred millions you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and
you can judge your success in any line by the lies that are told about you. I say that you ought
to be rich.

But there are ever coming to me young men who say, "I would like to go into business, but I
cannot." "Why not?" "Because I have no capital to begin on." Capital, capital to begin on!
What! young man! Living in Philadelphia and looking at this wealthy generation, all of whom
began as poor boys, and you want capital to begin on? It is fortunate for you that you have
no capital. I am glad you have no money. I pity a rich man's son. A rich man's son in these
days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied. A rich man's son cannot
know the very best things in human life. He cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us
that not one out of seventeen rich men's sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they die
in poverty. Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money, even then he cannot know the
best things of life.

A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I thought was the
happiest hour in a man's history, and I studied it long and came back convinced that the
happiest hour that any man ever sees in any earthly matter is when a young man takes his
bride over the threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has earned and
built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence greater than any language of mine, he
sayeth to his wife, "My loved one, I earned this home myself; I earned it all. It is all mine, and
I divide it with thee." That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see. But a rich
man's son cannot know that. He goes into a finer mansion, it may be, but he is obliged to go
through the house and say, "Mother gave me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me
that, my mother gave me that," until his wife wishes she had married his mother.

Oh, I pity a rich man's son. I do. Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he gets his
arms up like that and can't get them down. Didn't you ever see any of them astray at Atlantic
City? I saw one of these scarecrows once and I never tire thinking about it. I was at Niagara
Falls lecturing, and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the desk there
stood there a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of
anthropologic potency. He carried a goldheaded cane under his arm -- more in its head than
he had in his. I do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try. But still I must
say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent leather shoes he could not
walk in, and pants he could not sit down in -- dressed like a grasshopper!

Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his
unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to
lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome
envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some
envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his books.

You should have seen that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes
came across the counter -- he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants. He
adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk: "Come back here, thir, come
right back here. Now, thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and thothe
envelopehs and carry them to yondah dethk." Oh, the poor, miserable, contemptible
American monkey! He couldn't carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could
not get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature. If you have no
capital, I am glad of it. You don't need capital; you need common sense, not copper cents.

A. T. Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man in America in his
time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and went into the mercantile business. But
he lost eighty-seven and a half cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some
needles and thread and buttons to sell, which people didn't want.

Are you poor? It is because you are not wanted and are left on your own hands.
There was the great lesson. Apply it whichever way you will it comes to every single person's
life, young or old. He did not know what people needed, and consequently bought something
they didn't want, and had the goods left on his hands a dead loss. A. T. Stewart learned there
the great lesson of his mercantile life and said "I will never buy anything more until I first learn
what the people want; then I'll make the purchase." He went around to the doors and asked
them what they did want, and when he found out what they wanted, he invested his sixty-two
and a half cents and began to supply a "known demand." I care not what your profession or
occupation in life may be; I care not whether you are a lawyer, a doctor, a housekeeper,
teacher or whatever else, the principle is precisely the same. We must know what the world
needs first and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost certain.

A. T. Stewart went on until he was worth forty millions. "Well," you will say, "a man can do
that in New York, but cannot do it here in Philadelphia." The statistics very carefully gathered
in New York in 1889 showed one hundred and seven millionaires in the city worth over ten
millions apiece. It was remarkable and people think they must go there to get rich. Out of that
one hundred and seven millionaires only seven of them made their money in New York, and
the others moved to New York after their fortunes were made, and sixty- seven out of the
remaining hundred made their fortunes in towns of less than six thousand people, and the
richest man in the country at that time lived in a town of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, and
always lived there and never moved away. It is not so much where you are as what you are.
But at the same time if the largeness of the city comes into the problem, then remember it is
the smaller city that furnishes the great opportunity to make the millions of money.

The best illustration that I can give is in reference to John Jacob Astor, who was a poor boy
and who made all the money of the Astor family. He made more than his successors have
ever earned, and yet he once held a mortgage on a millinery store in New York, and because
the people could not make enough money to pay the interest and the rent, he foreclosed the
mortgage and took possession of the store and went into partnership with the man who had
failed. He kept the same stock, did not give them a dollar of capital, and he left them alone
and he went out and sat down upon a bench in the park.

Out there on that bench in the park he had the most important, and, to my mind, the
pleasantest part of that partnership business. He was watching the ladies as they went by;
and where is the man that wouldn't get rich at that business? But when John Jacob Astor saw
a lady pass, with her shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole
world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was out of sight he knew
the shape of the frame and the color of the trimmings, the curl of the -- something on a
bonnet. Sometimes I try to describe a woman's bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be
out of style tomorrow night.

So John Jacob Astor went to the store and said: "Now, put in the show window just such a
bonnet as I describe to you because," said he, "I have just seen a lady who likes just such a
bonnet. Do not make up any more till I come back." And he went out again and sat on that
bench in the park, and another lady of a different form and complexion passed him with a
bonnet of different shape and color, of course. "Now," said he, "put such a bonnet as that in
the show window."

He didn't fill his show window with hats and bonnets which drive people away and then sit in
the back of the store and bawl because the people go somewhere else to trade. He didn't put
a hat or bonnet in that show window the like of which he had not seen before it was made
up.

In our city especially, there are great opportunities for manufacturing, and the time
has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the stockholders of the factory and
their employees. Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this country
and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over their
heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the aristocratic
moneyowner-himself is so far above that he will never descend to their assistance. That is the
thought that is in the minds of our people. But, friends, never in the history of our country was
there an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now and in the city of
Philadelphia. The very fact that they get discouraged is what prevents them from getting rich.
That is all there is to it. The road is open, and let us keep it open between the poor and the
rich.

I know that the labor unions have two great problems to contend with, and there is only one
way to solve them. The labor unions are doing as much to prevent its solving as are capitalists
today, and there are positively two sides to it. The labor union has two difficulties; the first
one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man
that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile
that cannot earn fifty cents a day. That is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things
for the working man. He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or higher
work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to get every laboring man free
and every American equal to every other American, let the laboring man ask what he is
worth and get it -- not let any capitalist say to him: "You shall work for me for half of what
you are worth"; nor let any labor organization say: "You shall work for the capitalist for half
your worth."

Be a man, be independent, and then shall the laboring man find the roar ever open from
poverty to wealth.

The other difficulty that the labor union has to consider, and this problem they have to solve
themselves, is the kind of orators who come and talk to them about the oppressive rich. I can
in my dreams recite the oration I have heard again and again under such circumstances. My
life has been with the laboring man. I am a laboring man myself. I have often, in their
assemblies, heard the speech of the man who has been invited to address the labor union.
The man gets up before the assembled company of honest laboring men and he begins by
saying: "Oh, ye honest, industrious laboring men, who have furnished all the capital of the
world, who have built all the palaces and constructed all the railroads and covered the ocean
with her steamships. Oh, you laboring men! You are nothing but slaves; you are ground
down in the dust by the capitalist who is gloating over you as he enjoys his beautiful estates
and as he has his banks filled with gold, and every dollar he owns is coined out of the heart's
blood of the honest laboring man." Now, that is a lie, and you know it is a lie; and yet that is
the kind of speech that they are hearing all the time, representing the capitalists as wicked and
the laboring man so enslaved.

Why, how wrong it is! Let the man who loves his flag and believes in American principles
endeavor with all his soul to bring the capitalists and the laboring man together until they stand
side by side, and arm in arm, and work for the common good of humanity.

He is an enemy to his country who sets capital against labor or labor against capital.

Suppose I were to go down through this audience and ask you to introduce me to the
great inventors who live here in Philadelphia. "The inventors of Philadelphia," you would say,
"why, we don't have any in Philadelphia. It is too slow to invent anything." But you do have
just as great inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a machine. But the
probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit the world with his discovery is some person,
perhaps some lady, who thinks she could not invent anything.

Did you ever study the history of invention and see how strange it was that the man who
made the greatest discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who
are the great inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward common sense, who
saw a need in the world and immediately applied themselves to supply that need. If you want
to invent anything, don't try to find it in the wheels in your head nor the wheels in your
machine, but first find out what the people need, and then apply yourself to that need, and
this leads to invention on the part of people you would not dream of before. The great
inventors are simply great men; the greater the man the more simple the man; and the more
simple a machine, the more valuable it is.

Did you ever know a really great man? His ways are so simple, so common, so plain, that
you think any one could do what he is doing. So it is with the great men the world over. If
you know a really great man, a neighbor of yours, you can go right up to him and say, "How
are you, Jim, good morning, Sam." Of course you can, for they are always so simple.

When I wrote the life of General Garfield, one of his neighbors took me to his back door,
and shouted, "Jim, Jim, Jim!" and very soon "Jim" came to the door and General Garfield let
me in -- one of the grandest men of our century. The great men of the world are ever so. I
was down in Virginia and went up to an educational institution and was directed to a man
who was setting out a tree. I approached him and said, "Do you think it would be possible
for me to see General Robert E. Lee, the President of the University?" He said, "Sir, I am
General Lee." Of course, when you meet such a man, so noble a man as that, you will find
him a simple, plain man. Greatness is always just so modest and great inventions are simple.

I asked a class in school once who were the great inventors, and a little girl popped up and
said, "Columbus." Well, now, she was not so far wrong. Columbus bought a farm and he
carried on that farm just as I carried on my father's farm. He took a hoe and went out and sat
down on a rock. But Columbus, as he sat upon that shore and looked out upon the ocean,
noticed that the ships, as they sailed away, sank deeper into the sea the farther they went.
And since that time some other "Spanish ships" have sunk into the sea. But as Columbus
noticed that the tops of the masts dropped down out of sight, he said: "That is the way it is
with this hoe handle; if you go around this hoe handle, the farther off you go the farther down
you go. I can sail around to the East Indies." How plain it all was. How simple the mind --
majestic like the simplicity of a mountain in its greatness. Who are the great inventors? They
are ever the simple, plain, everyday people who see the need and set about to supply it.

I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank sat directly behind a lady
who wore a very large hat. I said to that audience, "Your wealth is too near to you; you are
looking right over it." He whispered to his friend, "Well, then, my wealth is in that hat." A little
later, as he wrote me, I said, "Wherever there is a human need there is a greater fortune than
a mine can furnish." He caught my thought, and he drew up his plan for a better hat pin than
was in the hat before him and the pin is now being manufactured. He was offered fifty-two
thousand dollars for his patent. That man made his fortune before he got out of that hall. This
is the whole question: Do you see a need?"

I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for twenty years was
helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a widespreading maple tree that covered the
poor man's cottage like a benediction from on high. I remember that tree, for in the spring --
there were some roguish boys around that neighborhood when I was young -- in the spring
of the year the man would put a bucket there and the spouts to catch the maple sap, and I
remember where that bucket was; and when I was young the boys were, oh, so mean, that
they went to that tree before that man had gotten out of bed in the morning, and after he had
gone to bed at night, and drank up that sweet sap, I could swear they did it.

He didn't make a great deal of maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the sugar so
white and crystalline that the visitor did not believe it was maple sugar; thought maple sugar
must be red or black. He said to the old man: "Why don't you make it that way and sell it for
confectionery?" The old man caught his thought and invented the "rock maple crystal," and
before that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had built a beautiful palace on
the site of that tree. After forty years owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of
money indeed in it. And many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we
own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its value because we do not
see the human need, and in these discoveries and inventions that is one of the most romantic
things of life. I have received letters from all over the country and from England, where I have
lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that, and one man out in Ohio took me
through his great factories last spring, and said that they cost him $680,000, and, said he, "I
was not worth a cent in the world when I heard your lecture 'Acres of Diamonds'; but I made
up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it is." He showed me
through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a continual experience now as I travel
through the country, after these many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show
you that you can do the same if you will.

Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who used to live in East
Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was out of work and he sat around the
house until his wife told him "to go out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled
by law to do -- he obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his
back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in possession of the house!
As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into that little brook which ran through that
back yard into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding
under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful poem:

"Chatter, chatter as I flow,
To join the brimming river,
Men may come, and men
may go, But I go on forever."

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and managed to catch the
trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give a
fivedollar bill for another such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished
to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united, that five-dollar
bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They went up the stream to its source and
down to the brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so
they came home disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how trout
grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and that will give you the
information you want."

They did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six
hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in
four years a little trout will furnish four tons per annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a
pound. When they found that, they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if they
could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in that same back yard
with the coal sifter up stream and window screen down the stream, they began the culture of
trout. They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in
the United States upon the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United
States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man's wealth was out here in his
back yard for twenty years, but he didn't see it until his wife drove him out with a mop stick.

I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham, Massachusetts, who
was out of work and in poverty. His wife also drove him out of doors. He sat down on the
shore and whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the
evening, and while he was whittling a second one, a neighbor came along and said, "Why
don't you whittle toys if you can carve like that?" He said, "I don't know what to make!"

There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to him: "Why don't you ask your own children?"
Said he, "What is the use of doing that? My children are different from other people's
children." I used to see people like that when I taught school. The next morning when his boy
came down the stairway, he said, "Sam, what do you want for a toy?" "I want a
wheelbarrow." When his little girl came down, he asked her what she wanted, and she said,
"I want a little doll's wash-stand, a little doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella," and went on
with a whole lot of things that would have taken his lifetime to supply. He consulted his own
children right there in his own house and began to whittle out toys to please them.

He began with his jack-knife, and made those unpainted Hingham toys. He is the richest man
in the entire New England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his statement concerning
such things, and yet that man's fortune was made by consulting his own children in his own
house. You don't need to go out of your own house to find out what to invent or what to
make. I always talk too long on this subject. I would like to meet the great men who are here
tonight. The great men! We don't have any great men in Philadelphia. Great men! You say
that they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or anywhere else
but there -- anywhere else but Philadelphia -- and yet, in fact, there are just as great men in
Philadelphia as in any city of its size. There are great men and women in this audience.

Great men, I have said, are very simple men. Just as many great men here as are to be found
anywhere. The greatest error in judging great men is that we think that they always hold an
office. The world knows nothing of its greatest men. Who are the great men of the world?
The young man and young woman may well ask the question. It is not necessary that they
should hold an office, and yet that is the popular idea. That is the idea we teach now in our
high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world are those who hold some
high office, and unless we change that very soon and do away with that prejudice, we are
going to change to an empire. There is no question about it. We must teach that men are
great only on their intrinsic value, and not on the position they may incidentally happen to
occupy. And yet, don't blame the young men saying that they are going to be great when they
get into some official position.

I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great? Says a young man:
"I am going to be great." "When are you going to be great?" "When I am elected to some
political office." Won't you learn the lesson, young man; that it is prima facie evidence of
littleness to hold public office under our form of government? Think of it. This is a
government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and not for the
officeholder, and if the people in this country rule as they always should rule, an officeholder
is only the servant of the people, and the Bible says that "the servant cannot be greater than
his master."

The Bible says that "he that is sent cannot be greater than he who sent him." In this country
the people are the masters, and the officeholders can never be greater than the people; they
should be honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men. Young man,
remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political office in this country
unless he took that office at an expense to himself. It is a loss to every great man to take a
public office in our country. Bear this in mind, young man, that you cannot be made great by
a political election.

Another young man says, "I am going to be a great man in Philadelphia some
time." "Is that so? When are you going to be great?" "When there comes another war! When
we get into difficulty with Mexico, or England, or Russia, or Japan, or with Spain again over
Cuba, or with New Jersey, I will march up to the cannon's mouth, and amid the glistening
bayonets I will tear down their flag from its staff, and I will come home with stars on my
shoulders, and hold every office in the gift of the government, and I will be great." "No, you
won't! No, you won't; that is no evidence of true greatness, young man." But don't blame that
young man for thinking that way; that is the way he is taught in the high school. That is the
way history is taught in college. He is taught that the men who held the office did all the
fighting.

I remember we had a Peace Jubilee here in Philadelphia soon after the Spanish War.
Perhaps some of these visitors think we should not have had it until now in Philadelphia, and
as the great procession was going up Broad Street I was told that the tally-ho coach stopped
right in front of my house, and on the coach was Hobson, and all the people threw up their
hats and swung their handkerchiefs, and shouted "Hurrah for Hobson!" I would have yelled
too, because he deserves much more of his country that he has ever received. But suppose I
go into the high school tomorrow and ask, "Boys, who sunk the Merrimac?" If they answer
me "Hobson," they tell me seven-eighths of a lie -- seven- eighths of a lie, because there were
eight men who sunk the Merrimac. The other seven men, by virtue of their position, were
continually exposed to the Spanish fire while Hobson, as an officer, might reasonably be
behind the smoke-stack.

Why, my friends, in this intelligent audience gathered here tonight I do not believe I could find
a single person that can name the other seven men who were with Hobson. Why do we
teach history in that way? We ought to teach that however humble the station a man may
occupy, if he does his full duty in his place, he is just as much entitled to the American
people's honor as is a king upon a throne. We do teach it as a mother did her little boy in
New York when he said, "Mamma, what great building is that?" "That is General Grant's
tomb." "Who was General Grant?" "He was the man who put down the rebellion." Is that the
way to teach history?

Do you think we would have gained a victory if it had depended on General Grant alone. Oh,
no. Then why is there a tomb on the Hudson at all? Why, not simply because General Grant
was personally a great man himself, but that tomb is there because he was a representative
man and represented two hundred thousand men who went down to death for this nation and
many of them as great as General Grant. That is why that beautiful tomb stands on the heights
over the Hudson.

I remember an incident that will illustrate this, the only one that I can give tonight. I am
ashamed of it, but I don't dare leave it out. I close my eyes now; I look back through the
years to 1863; I can see my native town in the Berkshire Hills, I can see that cattle-show
ground filled with people; I can see the church there and the town hall crowded, and hear
bands playing, and see flags flying and handkerchiefs streaming -- well do I recall at this
moment that day.

The people had turned out to receive a company of soldiers, and that company came
marching up on the Common. They had served out one term in the Civil War and had
reenlisted, and they were being received by their native townsmen. I was but a boy, but I
was captain of that company, puffed out with pride on that day -- why, a cambric needle
would have burst me all to pieces.

As I marched on the Common at the head of my company, there was not a man more proud
than I. We marched into the town hall and then they seated my soldiers down in the center of
the house and I took my place down on the front seat, and then the town officers filed
through the great throng of people, who stood close and packed in that little hall. They came
up on the platform, formed a half circle around it, and the mayor of the town, the "chairman
of the selectmen" in New England, took his seat in the middle of that half circle.

He was an old man, his hair was gray; he never held an office before in his life. He thought
that an office was all he needed to be a truly great man, and when he came up he adjusted his
powerful spectacles and glanced calmly around the audience with amazing dignity. Suddenly
his eyes fell upon me, and then the good old man came right forward and invited me to come
up on the stand with the town officers. Invited me up on the stand! No town officer ever took
notice of me before I went to war. Now, I should not say that. One town officer was there
who advised the teachers to "whale" me, but I mean no "honorable mention."

So I was invited up on the stand with the town officers. I took my seat and let my sword fall
on the floor, and folded my arms across my breast and waited to be received. Napoleon the
Fifth! Pride goeth before destruction and a fall. When I had gotten my seat and all became
silent through the hall, the chairman of the selectmen arose and came forward with great
dignity to the table, and we all supposed he would introduce the Congregational minister,
who was the only orator in the town, and who would give the oration to the returning
soldiers.

But, friends, you should have seen the surprise that ran over that audience when they
discovered that this old farmer was going to deliver that oration himself. He had never made
a speech in his life before, but he fell into the same error that others have fallen into, he
seemed to think that the office would make him an orator. So he had written out a speech
and walked up and down the pasture until he had learned it by heart and frightened the cattle,
and he brought that manuscript with him, and, taking it from his pocket, he spread it carefully
upon the table. Then he adjusted his spectacles to be sure that he might see it, and walked far
back on the platform and then stepped forward like this. He must have studied the subject
much, for he assumed an elocutionary attitude; he rested heavily upon his left heel, slightly
advanced the right foot, threw back his shoulders, opened the organs of speech, and
advanced his right hand at an angle of forty-five.

As he stood in this elocutionary attitude this is just the way that speech went, this is it
precisely. Some of my friends have asked me if I do not exaggerate it, but I could not
exaggerate it. Impossible! This is the way it went; although I am not here for the story but the
lesson that is back of it:

"Fellow citizens." As soon as he heard his voice, his hand began to shake like that, his knees
began to tremble, and then he shook all over. He coughed and choked and finally came
around to look at his manuscript. Then he began again: "Fellow citizens: We -- are -- we are
-- we are -- we are --We are very happy -- we are very happy -- we are very happy -- to
welcome back to their native town these soldiers who have fought and bled -- and come
back again to their native town. We are especially -- we are especially -- we are especially
-- we are especially pleased to see with us today this young hero (that meant me~this young
hero who in imagination (friends, remember, he said 'imagination,' for if he had not said that, I
would not be egotistical enough to refer to it) this young hero who, in imagination, we have
seen leading his troops -- leading -- we have seen leading -- we have seen leading his troops
on to the deadly breach. We have seen his shining -- his shining -- we have seen his shining
-- we have seen his shining -- his shining sword -- flashing in the sunlight as he shouted to his
troops, 'Come on!"'

Oh dear, dear, dear, dear! How little that good, old man knew about war. If he had
known anything about war, he ought to have known what any soldier in this audience knows
is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of
his men. I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops: "Come on." I
never did it. Do you suppose I would go ahead of my men to be shot in the front by the
enemy and in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the
officer is behind the private soldier in actual fighting.

How often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line when the rebel cry and yell was coming out
of the woods, sweeping along over the fields, and shouted, "Officers to the rear! Officers to
the rear!" and then every officer goes behind the line of battle, and the higher the officer rank,
the farther behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war
require that to be done. If the general came up on the front line and were killed you would
lose your battle anyhow, because he has the plan of the battle in his brain, and must be kept
in comparative safety.

I, with my "shining sword flashing in the sunlight." Ah! There sat in the hall that day men who
had given that boy their last hardtack, who had carried him on their backs through deep
rivers. But some were not there; they had gone down to death for their country. The speaker
mentioned them, but they were but little noticed, and yet they had gone down to death for
their country, gone down for a cause they believed was right and still believe was right,
though I grant to the other side the same that I ask for myself. Yet these men who had
actually died for their country were little noticed, and the hero of the hour was this boy.

Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into the same foolishness. This boy was
an officer, and those were only private soldiers. I learned a lesson that I will never forget.
Greatness consists not in holding some office; greatness really consists in doing some great
deed with little means, in the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life,
that is true greatness.

He who can give to this people better streets, better homes, better schools, better churches,
more religion, more of happiness, more of God, he that can be a blessing to the community in
which he lives tonight will be great anywhere, but he who cannot be a blessing where he now
lives will never be great anywhere on the face of God's earth. "We live in deeds, not years, in
feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not breaths; we should count time by heart throbs,
in the cause of right." Bailey says: "He most lives who thinks most."

If you forget everything I have said to you, do not forget this, because it contains more in two
lines than all I have said. Baily says: "He most lives who thinks most, who feels the noblest,
and who acts the best."

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