CHAPTER 3
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 food stuffs 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.
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