No man is kept poor because opportunity has been taken away from him;
because other people have monopolized the wealth, and have put a fence
around it. You may be shut off from engaging in business in certain
lines, but there are other channels open to you. Probably it would be
hard for you to get control of any of the great railroad systems; that
field is pretty well monopolized. But the electric railway business
is still in its infancy, and offers plenty of scope for enterprise;
and it will be but a very few years until traffic and transportation
through the air will become a great industry, and in all its branches
will give employment to hundreds of thousands, and perhaps to millions,
of people. Why not turn your attention to the development of aerial
transportation, instead of competing with J. J. Hill and others for a
chance in the steam railway world?
It is quite true that if you are a workman in the employ of the steel
trust you have very little chance of becoming the owner of the plant in
which you work; but it is also true that if you will commence to act
in a Certain Way, you can soon leave the employ of the steel trust;
you can buy a farm of from ten to forty acres, and engage in business
as a producer of foodstuffs. There is great opportunity at this time
for men who will live upon small tracts of land and cultivate the same
intensively; such men will certainly get rich. You may say that it is
impossible for you to get the land, but I am going to prove to you that
it is not impossible, and that you can certainly get a farm if you will
go to work in a Certain Way.
At different periods the tide of opportunity sets in different
directions, according to the needs of the Whole, and the particular
stage of social evolution which has been reached. At present, in
America, it is setting toward agriculture and the allied industries
and professions. To-day, opportunity is open before the farmer in his
line more than before the factory worker in his line. It is open before
the business man who supplies the farmer more than before the one who
supplies the factory worker; and before the professional man who waits
upon the farmer more than before the one who serves the working class.
There is abundance of opportunity for the man who will go with the
tide, instead of trying to swim against it.
So the factory workers, either as individuals or as a class, are not
deprived of opportunity. The workers are not being “kept down” by their
masters; they are not being “ground” by the trusts and combinations
of capital. As a class, they are where they are because they do not
do things in a Certain Way. If the workers of America chose to do so,
they could follow the example of their brothers in Belgium and other
countries, and establish great department stores and co-operative
industries; they could elect men of their own class to office, and pass
laws favoring the development of such co-operative industries; and in a
few years they could take peaceable possession of the industrial field.
The working class may become the master class whenever they will
begin to do things in a Certain Way; the law of wealth is the same
for them as it is for all others. This they must learn; and they will
remain where they are as long as they continue to do as they do. The
individual worker, however, is not held down by the ignorance or the
mental slothfulness of his class; he can follow the tide of opportunity
to riches, and this book will tell him how.
No one is kept in poverty by a shortness in the supply of riches;
there is more than enough for all. A palace as large as the capitol at
Washington might be built for every family on earth from the building
material in the United States alone; and under intensive cultivation,
this country would produce wool, cotton, linen, and silk enough to
clothe each person in the world finer than Solomon was arrayed in all
his glory; together with food enough to feed them all luxuriously. The
visible supply is practically inexhaustible; and the invisible supply
really IS inexhaustible.
_Everything you see on earth is made from one original substance, out
of which all things proceed._
New forms are constantly being made, and older ones are dissolving; but
all are shapes assumed by One Thing.
There is no limit to the supply of Formless Stuff, or Original
Substance. The universe is made out of it; but it was not all used
in making the universe. The spaces in, through, and between the forms
of the visible universe are permeated and filled with the Original
Substance; with the Formless Stuff; with the raw material of all
things. Ten thousand times as much as has been made might still
be made, and even then we should not have exhausted the supply of
universal raw material.
No man, therefore, is poor because nature is poor, or because there is
not enough to go around.
Nature is an inexhaustible storehouse of riches; the supply will never
run short. Original Substance is alive with creative energy, and is
constantly producing more forms. When the supply of building material
is exhausted, more will be produced; when the soil is exhausted so that
foodstuffs and materials for clothing will no longer grow upon it, it
will be renewed or more soil will be made. When all the gold and silver
has been dug from the earth, if man is still in such a stage of social
development that he needs gold and silver, more will be produced from
the Formless. The Formless Stuff responds to the needs of man; it will
not let him be without any good thing.
This is true of man collectively; the race as a whole is always
abundantly rich, and if individuals are poor, it is because they do not
follow the Certain Way of doing things which makes the individual man
rich.
The Formless Stuff is intelligent; it is stuff which thinks. It is
alive, and is always impelled toward more life.
It is the natural and inherent impulse of life to seek to live more; it
is the nature of intelligence to enlarge itself, and of consciousness
to seek to extend its boundaries and find fuller expression. The
universe of forms has been made by Formless Living Substance, throwing
itself into form in order to express itself more fully.
The universe is a great Living Presence, always moving inherently
toward more life and fuller functioning.
Nature is formed for the advancement of life; its impelling motive is
the increase of life. For this cause, everything which can possibly
minister to life is bountifully provided; there can be no lack unless
God is to contradict himself and nullify his own works.
You are not kept poor by lack in the supply of riches; it is a fact
which I shall demonstrate a little farther on that even the resources
of the Formless Supply are at the command of the man or woman who will
act and think in a Certain Way.