Lesson 10: How to Thrive in Your Own Diamond Mine (2)

But our Pennsylvania example is far better and more telling than any of those stories. If there was one thing that made me happy to be on the stage during my speech was to have some German descendants from Pennsylvania present, so that I could fire at them. Good. I have that opportunity tonight. There was a man who lived in Pennsylvania, and he wasn't like your typical Pennsylvanian -- he owned a farm, but he didn't treat it like any of us. If only I could have a farm in Pennsylvania! But he -- he sold the farm! Before he sold the farm, however, he did leave himself an open door. He wanted to work for his cousin refining coal tar. His cousin is in the coal tar business in Canada. In this continent, coal tar was first discovered in Canada. In the early days of coal tar extraction, people tilted the oil from running water. So the Pennsylvania farmer wrote a letter to his cousin, asking for a job with him. Look, my friends, this farmer is not stupid at all! He won't leave the farm until he has something to do. I can't think of anything more stupid than quitting your current job without finding a new one. This is especially true for my profession, but it's not particularly instructive for those contemplating divorce. The man wrote to his cousin asking to work there, and the cousin wrote back and said, "I can't hire you because you don't know anything about the business." But the farmer said, "I can learn." And so with the most impressive and enchanting enthusiasm that characterises us Temple students, he began to learn the whole business, even going back to the second day of Genesis, when God covered the world with thick, dense, deep, thick plants that have since become primitive beds of coal. He studied the subject assiduously, and discovered that the coal-rich drainage layers were rich in coal tar, which was worth mining. Then he discovered how coal tar came out of living springs. He studied until he knew what coal tar looked like, what it smelled like, what it tasted like, how it was refined, and so on. Then he wrote to his cousin again: "I know how oil extraction works." The cousin wrote back, "All right, then you can come."

So he sold the farm, for $833 (a round number, not a fraction of a penny), according to county records. When he was alone on the farm, he seldom left the house; Now, the man who bought his farm likes to wander around looking for water to drink his cattle. The old owner hasn't seen you for years, and the new owner is hanging around. Then the new owner discovered that the stream behind the barn had a plank of wood on it, only a few inches above the water, leaning over it and sticking a sharp Angle in it so that the foam from the stream would fall on the other side and make the water look like terrible dregs. In this way, the cattle did not dare to stretch their heads to drink. However, if the board is set aside, the cattle can drink under it. So how would the man who went to Canada feel if he came back 23 years later and looked at his dam and saw that the dam that had held back the stream for 23 years was actually a torrent of coal tar? Pennsylvania geologists tell us that ten years later this coal tar was worth $100 million to the state; Four years ago, geologists said this discovery was worth tens of billions of dollars to our state. Now the city of Tituesville was built on this land. The man who had owned this land, who had owned this valley, who had strived for it, who had studied the geological strata and developments from the second day of Creation to the present day, until he thought he had mastered the technology of coal tar, had abandoned precisely this land. He sold it for $833; So I said, "I don't understand him."

And as I look around this audience tonight, I see the same mistakes that I've seen in my 50 years of life. I often wish I had seen more young people. I have often wondered if this chapel were full of high school and elementary school teachers tonight. I'd very much like to talk to them. Why do I like that audience so much? Because they are sensitive, fickle, affectionate, and at the same time not as stubborn and prejudiced as most adults; They don't have as many failures as we do. So my talk may benefit that audience more than it does the adult audience. But anyway, I did my best to convey the best part of my speech: I said, you have your diamond mine, right here in Philadelphia, right here in your city. "Well," you might say, "you don't know your city very well if you think there's a diamond mine here."

There was a story in the newspaper that interested me very much. It said that a young man had found diamonds in North Carolina, and that they were the purest diamonds ever found. However, near the same spot, the young man had been searched by several others before him. I consulted a famous mineralogist about where the diamonds could have come from. The professor pointed to a map of the geological structure of our continent and began to trace it. Either it was formed from geologic formations beneath Carboniferous carboniferous layers, he said, and evolved from beneath Carboniferous carboniferous layers as far west as Ohio and Mississippi, or, more likely, from Virginia to the east, or even from the Atlantic coast, and perhaps drifted down from the north during drift. In any case, the fact is that diamonds were found there, excavated, and sold. Now who but a diligent digger with a hammer and a drill can say that Philadelphia will not find a diamond lode? Oh, my friends, don't say you haven't seen the biggest diamond mine in the world, because only the richest mine on earth can produce such a largest and purest diamond.

But the point I want to make, the point I want to make, is that you don't have to have a real diamond mine to actually have the benefits of it. You know, the Queen of England now pays the greatest compliment to American women from her own clothes. She didn't wear any jewelry at a recent reception in England, so diamonds don't look very useful. What should concern you is that if you want to be humble, you might as well wear fewer diamonds and sell the rest. (No more digging around for diamond mines.)

But I repeat it now: in Philadelphia, right now; The opportunity to get rich, to become rich, is right here in Philadelphia. Wealth is within the reach of every man and woman who has heard tonight. I speak from the heart, not from the front of the stage, even if this is the occasion for reciting. I'll tell you what God sees in his eyes, what I believe to be true. If all these years of my common sense and conscience have served me any good, I am here to tell you what God must think of us. And I know I'm right: for those of you here tonight, even for those of you who barely got a ticket to hear this talk, the diamond mine is all around you, and the opportunity to get rich is plentiful and plentiful. No city in the world has ever been so dynamic and resilient to change as Philadelphia is today. No one in history -- no one without capital -- has had as many opportunities as people in our city have today, to get rich honestly and quickly. I'm telling the truth, and I want you to accept that; Because if you think I'm here just to recite something, I might as well not be here. But people would also say, "You can't do it yourself. You can't dream of starting a business without capital." Young man, let me be clear, I must do it, it is my duty to every young man, for soon we shall be committed to our own business according to the same plan. Young people, you should remember that if you know what people want, your wealth of knowledge is more important than any investment of money.

There was a poor man in Singham, Massachusetts, who had lost his job and was sitting around all day doing nothing. One day, his wife told him to get out of the house and find a job. We all know that people in Massachusetts listen to their wives. So he went out, sat down by the shore, and whittled a piece of soft wood into a wooden chain. The children were fighting about it that night. He had no choice but to cut another one, which settled the dispute. He was working on the second chain when the neighbor came in and said, "Why don't you sharpen some of this and sell it as a toy? There's money to be made!" "Oh," he said, "but I don't know what toy to peel." "Why don't you ask the children what to peel? They are at home." "What's the use of that? "My children are different from other children," said the carpenter. (That's how I saw people when I was teaching at school.) Still, he responded to his neighbor's call. The next morning, when Mary came downstairs, her father asked, "What toy do you want?" Mary said she wanted baby beds, baby basins, baby carriages, baby umbrellas, and on and on. The carpenter saw, on his own daughter's this request even if a lifetime also do not finish it! So he was in his own house, and asked the children what they wanted, and then he took the wood -- because he had no money to buy wood, and began to whitle it. The dumpy, unpainted Singham toys were whittled into toys that went on to be popular around the world for years. The man started by making toys for his children, then mass-manufactured them and sold them through the shoe shop next door. He made a little money at first, then a little more. In the end, Mr. Lawson said in his book Mad Money, the man became the richest man in Massachusetts.

I believe it's true. Today that man is worth more than $100 million. He has been working on that principle for only 34 years. His rule was: be sure to judge other people's children's preferences from your own; Also judge other people's hearts and what their wives and children think and want from their own hearts, their own wives and children. That's a great way to go in production and manufacturing. "Oh," you say, "doesn't he have any capital?" Yes, he does, but it's a pensharpener, and I don't know if he paid for it.

I once told this story in New Brittan, Connecticut, and there was a woman in the audience, sitting in the fourth row from the bottom. When she got home, she tried to take off her collar, but it caught in the buttonhole. She threw it down and said, "I'll make something better, too, that will fit the collar easily." The husband said, "Did you think it would be easy to change the collar button after Cornville's speech tonight? Well, where there is demand, there is wealth. Now get up and make another collar button, and you may be rich!" He played a joke on his wife, and in fact more or less on me, and that was the saddest thing for me, as if sometimes a thick dark cloud came over me in the middle of the night.

It made me realize that I had worked so hard and so hard for more than 50 years, and yet I had done so little. Please don't blame me, for all the politeness and praise you've been giving me tonight, but I have to say that one out of ten of you will be a millionaire. But it's not my fault. It's your fault. I say this sincerely. What's the point of what I say if people don't do what I say? Although the husband mocked his wife, she was determined to make a better collar buckle. When a person really makes up her mind to say "I'll do it" without saying anything else, she will actually do it. This is the New England woman's secret buckle, which you can see everywhere today. It was the first collar buckle with a spring cover on the outside of the buckle. Today, people wear modern raincoats that they can button and flip. That's what I call a button. That's what she invented. Later, she invented several other buttons, and many more, and eventually participated in mass production in the factory. Now, every summer, the woman goes abroad for a holiday -- yes, in her own boat, a yacht, and takes her husband with her! If her husband dies, they have enough

Enough money to buy a foreign duke, count, or similar title to get people talking about it. What lesson did I take from that? That's when I told her, even though I didn't know her then, let me tell you now: "Wealth is too close to you, and you may have just missed it." But she examined it carefully, for it was under her chin.

Who in the world is an inventor? This lesson comes to us again. The great inventor is sitting right next to you, probably yourself. "Oh," you might say, "I've never invented anything in my life." Great inventors invent nothing until they discover great secrets. Do you think that the most successful people all look like they have heads the size of bushels, three heads, six arms, and a flaming stone? Neither. True greatness is ordinary, straightforward, candid, everyday visible people with common sense. You would never have guessed that the man in front of you would be a great inventor if you hadn't seen his great inventions or contributions. His neighbors didn't think he was so great. You don't think you have anything great in your backyard, and you can say that your neighbor doesn't have anything great either. Greatness is always somewhere else. But greatness is simple, approachable, sincere and practical in a way that neighbors and friends cannot realize.

Greatness lies not in what position we take tomorrow, but in the small things we accomplish in great numbers, in the great number of meaningful activities that each man takes out of his narrow life. The way to be great is right now, right here, right here in Philadelphia. He who can give the city better streets, better sidewalks, better schools, better universities, more joy, happiness and civilization, more glory of God, he who goes everywhere is great. And everyone in this room, if you never get to hear me speak again, remember that greatness starts right here, right where you are, right here in Philadelphia, right now. Can bring happiness, in the city for their lives here and become a good citizen here, to build a better home, no matter in * shop, or clean up home, no matter what kind of work, what kind of life, as long as he brings blessings to your work, do every thing, then, he go would be a great man; But first he had to become a great man in his own Philadelphia.