Is Opportunity Monopolized?
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. Today, opportunity is open 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 cloth 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 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 will act and think in a Certain Way. |