of wealth. Every one is agreed that it is the first duty of a young man so to train himself as to be self-supporting. Nor is there difficulty about the next step, for the young man cannot be said to have performed the whole of his duty if he leaves out of account the contingencies of life, liability to accident, illness, and trade depressions. Wisdom calls upon him to have regard for these things; and it is a part of his duty that he begin to save a portion of his earnings and invest them, not in speculation, but in securities or in property, or in a legitimate business in such form as will, perhaps, slowly but yet surely grow into the reserve upon which he can fall back in emergencies or in old age, and live upon his own savings. I think we are all agreed as to the advisability - nay, the duty of laying up a competence, and hence to retain our self-respect.

Now, what is wealth? How is it created and distributed? There are not far from us immense beds of coal which have lain for millions of years useless, and therefore valueless. Through some experiment, or perhaps accident, it was discovered that black stone would burn and give forth heat. Men sank shafts, erected machinery, mined and brought forth coal, and sold it to the community. It displaced the use of wood as fuel, say at one-half the cost. Immediately every bed of coal became valuable because useful, or capable of being made so; and here a new article worth hundreds, yes, thousands of millions, was added to the wealth of the community.

A Scotch mechanic one day, as the story goes, gazing into the fire upon which water was boiling in a kettle, saw the steam raise the lid, as hundreds of thousands had seen before him; but none saw in that sight what he did the steam engine, which does the work of the

world at a cost so infinitely trifling compared with what the plans known before involved, that the wealth of the world has been increased one dares not estimate how much. The saving that the community makes is the root of wealth in any branch of material development. Now, a young man's labor or service to the community creates wealth just in proportion as his service is useful to the community, as it either saves or improves upon existing methods.

Commodore Vanderbilt saw, I think, thirteen different short railway lines between New York and Buffalo, involving thirteen different managements, and a disjointed and tedious service. Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Rochester, etc., were heads of some of these companies. He consolidated them all, making one direct line, over which your Empire State Express flies fifty-one miles an hour, and a hundred passengers patronize the lines where one did in olden days. He rendered the community a special service, which, being followed by others, reduces the cost of bringing food from the prairies of the West to your doors to a trifling sum per ton. He produced, and is every day producing, untold wealth to the community by so doing, and the profit he reaped for himself was but a drop in the bucket compared with that which he showered upon the State and the nation.

Now, in the olden days, before steam, electricity, or any other of the modern inventions which unitedly have changed the whole aspect of the world, everything was done upon a small scale. There was no room for great ideas to operate upon a large scale, and thus to produce great wealth to the inventor, discoverer, originator, or executive. New inventions gave this opportunity, and many large fortunes were made by individuals. But in

our day we are rapidly passing, if we have not already passed, this stage of development, and few large fortunes can now be made in any part of the world, except from one cause, the rise in the value of real estate. Manufacturing, transportation both upon the land and upon the sea, banking, insurance, have all passed into the hands of corporations composed of hundreds and in many cases thousands of shareholders. The New York Central Railroad is owned by more than ten thousand shareholders; the Pennsylvania Railroad is owned by more people than the vast army it employs, and nearly one-fourth of the number are the estates of women and children. It is so with the great manufacturing companies; so with the great steamship lines; it is so, as you know, with banks, insurance companies, and indeed with all branches of business.

It is a great mistake for young men to say to themselves, "Oh! we cannot enter into business." If any of you have saved as much as fifty or one hundred dollars I do not know any branch of business into which you cannot plunge at once. You can get your certificate of stock and attend the meeting of stockholders, make your speeches and suggestions, quarrel with the president, and instruct the management of the affairs of the company, and have all the rights and influence of an owner. You can buy shares in anything, from newspapers to tenement-houses; but capital is so poorly paid in these days that I advise you to exercise much circumspection before you invest. As I have said to workingmen and to ministers, college professors, artists, musicians, and physicians, and all the professional classes: Do not invest in any business concerns whatever; the risks of business are not for such as you. Buy a home for yourself first; and if you have any surplus, buy another lot or another house,

or take a mortgage upon one, or upon a railway, and let it be a first mortgage, and be satisfied with moderate interest. Do you know that out of every hundred that attempt business upon their own account statistics are said to show that ninety-five sooner or later fail? I know that from my own experience. I can quote the lines of Hudibras and tell you, as far as one manufacturing branch is concerned, that what he found to be true is still true to an eminent degree to-day:

"Ay me! what perils do environ

The man that meddles with cold iron!"

The shareholders of iron and steel concerns to-day can certify that this is so, whether the iron or steel be hot or cold; and such is also the case in other branches of busi

ness.

The principal complaint against our industrial conditions of to-day is that they cause great wealth to flow into the hands of the few. Well, of the very few, indeed, is this true. It was formerly so, as I have explained, immediately after the new inventions had changed the conditions of the world. To-day it is not true. Wealth is being more and more distributed among the many. The amount of the combined profits of labor and capital which goes to labor was never so great as to-day, the amount going to capital never so small.

You may be sure that the question of the distribution of wealth is settling itself rapidly under present conditions, and settling itself in the right direction. The few rich are getting poorer, and the toiling masses are getting richer. Nevertheless, a few exceptional men may still make fortunes, but these will be more moderate than in the past. This may not be quite so fortunate for the masses of the people as is now believed, because great

accumulations of wealth in the hands of one enterprising man who still toils on are sometimes most productive of all the forms of wealth.

Take the richest man the world ever saw, who died in New York some years ago. What was found in his case? That, with the exception of a small percentage used for daily expenses, his entire fortune and all its surplus earnings were invested in enterprises which developed the railway system of our country, which gives to the people the cheapest transportation known.

Whether the millionaire wishes it or not, he cannot evade the law which, under present conditions, compels him to use his millions for the good of the people. All that he gets during the few years of his life is that he may live in a finer house, surround himself with finer furniture, and works of art; which may be added: he could even have a grander library, more of the gods around him; but, as far as I have known millionaires, the library is the least used part of what he would probably consider "furniture" in all his mansion. He can eat richer food and drink richer wines, which only hurt him. But truly the modern millionaire is generally a man of very simple tastes and even miserly habits. He spends little upon himself, and is the toiling bee laying up the honey in the industrial hive, which all the inmates of that hive, the community in general, will certainly enjoy.

The bees of a hive do not destroy the honey-making bees but the drones. It will be a great mistake for the community to shoot the millionaires, for they are the bees that make the most honey, and contribute most to the hive even after they have gorged themselves full. Here is a remarkable fact, that the masses of the people in any country are prosperous and comfortable just in proportion as there are millionaires. Take Russia, with its

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