Ground Rules: Part 17 (Final)

PRESERVE YOUR INTEGRITY

It is more precious than diamonds or rubies. The old miser said to his
sons: “Get money; get it honestly if you can, but get money:” This
advice was not only atrociously wicked, but it was the very essence of
stupidity: It was as much as to say, “if you find it difficult to obtain
money honestly, you can easily get it dishonestly. Get it in that way.”
Poor fool! Not to know that the most difficult thing in life is to make
money dishonestly! Not to know that our prisons are full of men who
attempted to follow this advice; not to understand that no man can be
dishonest, without soon being found out, and that when his lack of
principle is discovered, nearly every avenue to success is closed
against him forever. The public very properly shun all whose integrity
is doubted. No matter how polite and pleasant and accommodating a man
may be, none of us dare to deal with him if we suspect “false weights
and measures.” Strict honesty, not only lies at the foundation of all
success in life (financially), but in every other respect.
Uncompromising integrity of character is invaluable. It secures to its
possessor a peace and joy which cannot be attained without it–which no
amount of money, or houses and lands can purchase. A man who is known to
be strictly honest, may be ever so poor, but he has the purses of all
the community at his disposal–for all know that if he promises to
return what he borrows, he will never disappoint them. As a mere matter
of selfishness, therefore, if a man had no higher motive for being
honest, all will find that the maxim of Dr. Franklin can never fail to
be true, that “honesty is the best policy.”

To get rich, is not always equivalent to being successful. “There are
many rich poor men,” while there are many others, honest and devout men
and women, who have never possessed so much money as some rich persons
squander in a week, but who are nevertheless really richer and happier
than any man can ever be while he is a transgressor of the higher laws
of his being.

The inordinate love of money, no doubt, may be and is “the root of all
evil,” but money itself, when properly used, is not only a “handy thing
to have in the house,” but affords the gratification of blessing our
race by enabling its possessor to enlarge the scope of human happiness
and human influence. The desire for wealth is nearly universal, and none
can say it is not laudable, provided the possessor of it accepts its
responsibilities, and uses it as a friend to humanity.

The history of money-getting, which is commerce, is a history of
civilization, and wherever trade has flourished most, there, too, have
art and science produced the noblest fruits. In fact, as a general
thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race. To them, in a
great measure, are we indebted for our institutions of learning and of
art, our academies, colleges and churches. It is no argument against the
desire for, or the possession of wealth, to say that there are sometimes
misers who hoard money only for the sake of hoarding and who have no
higher aspiration than to grasp everything which comes within their
reach. As we have sometimes hypocrites in religion, and demagogues in
politics, so there are occasionally misers among money-getters. These,
however, are only exceptions to the general rule. But when, in this
country, we find such a nuisance and stumbling block as a miser, we
remember with gratitude that in America we have no laws of
primogeniture, and that in the due course of nature the time will come
when the hoarded dust will be scattered for the benefit of mankind. To
all men and women, therefore, do I conscientiously say, make money
honestly, and not otherwise, for Shakespeare has truly said, “He that
wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.”