Acres of Diamonds: Get Rich Honestly

After his stories, Conwell turned to his audience in Philadelphia and told them that opportunities were all around them.As a minister, he then had to answer a question many people asked him: should a religious man really be telling people to get rich?

“I say that you ought to get rich, and that it is your duty to get rich.Some of my pious friends ask me, ‘Why do you, a minister, spend your time telling young people to make money, instead of preaching the gospel?’ And I answer, ‘Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel.’Money is power, and you ought to want it, because you can do more good with it than without it. Money prints your Bible, builds your churches and pays your preachers.

Of course, there are things in this world higher and sweeter and purer than money, and I know that well; but I am talking about money now.A young student once came into my office to tell me that the Bible says, ‘Money is the root of all evil.’ I asked him to fetch the Bible and read the verse aloud himself.He read, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ And that is true. The love of money means making an idol of it, and the miser who hides his money in the cellar and will not use it to do the world any good has in him the root of all evil.

People say that a preacher knows nothing about business, but my father kept a country store, and sometimes he left me in charge of it.A man came in and asked, ‘Do you keep jack-knives?’ ‘No, we don’t,’ I said, and went off whistling. A second man asked the same thing, and then a third. ‘No! Why is everyone asking for jack-knives?’I had not yet learned that the first rule of business and the first rule of a good life are the same: find out what people want, and supply it. I should have had a jack-knife ready for the third man.

Some people think it is wrong to make any profit at all. It is not; but you should sell each thing so that the buyer gains as much as you do. To live and let live is the gospel, and it is also everyday common sense.The man who goes home knowing he has stolen a dollar that day does not sleep well; he wakes up tired and goes to work the next day with an unclean conscience.But the man who shares fairly with others, taking his own profit and giving every other man his, lives well every day, and that is the royal road to great wealth.”