LABOR AND WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 15

LABOR AND WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES.

One of greatest causes of thanksgiving is that labor whistles and sings in our territories. Elsewhere it is mourning its own death. The prodigious facilities for acquiring wealth in America are just beginning to be perceived. The wealth is here, easy to be. developed, concentrated and administered. The being “ worth a million” won’t make a man eligible to the class of rich men much longer. Some think wealth dangerous. Wealth is power, and that is always dangerous, but no nation ever rose from a barbarous state without it. Missionary preaching is of no use unless it shows the heathen how to make money. No poor’man can be such in a poor community although among nabobs his intellect may compensate for lack of worldly goods. But riches must be somewhere. The dangers of wealth here are less than we fear. Organised wealth oppresses the community, but will yet prove itself a benefactor.. It tends to despotism because of its nascent state. It is not necessary that the wealth which owns the market should also own civility, or should control courts or legislatures.. But we must consider the hygienic qualities ;of wealth. It is the almoner of employment, of comfort, of enjoyment. Money is vivifying industry to the very bottom of the community. Riches are the poor man’s providence, and, on the whole, are in subordination to intelligence and domestic virtue. How to use money is an art. Many . can make money who have not the slightest idea of spending it correctly, while many more can spend that don’t know howrto make ; but, as a general thing, money earned wisely is expended discreetly. Men live here in better constructed houses—which require more ingenuity to keep constructed—than anywhere else. The money-producing force >of America is more than double the average money-producing force of any other nation. There are 25,000 land owners in Great Britain. Here land is >so cheap that there is scarcely an inhabitant bat owns his plot, whether little or big. I know farmers I should hate to meet in argument unless I were ;on their side while many hammer away at the anvil all day and read scientific and historical works all the evening. Men who deride money are almost invariably minus the article, and, if they will only consider, they will find that the universal . diffusion of wealth is one of America’s greatest blessing. Get rich ! Pay anything for it but yourself, your honor, love, sympathy faith in man and faith in God : wealth here is public spirit. Architecture is its adopted child. Cornell, Vassar, Cooper, and hundreds of others, are significant American names, and the time approaches when wealth shall be symbolic of every public improvement. Wealth has its evils and temptations, but to-day is something for which we, as a nation, may thank God, and pray that the time may not be far removed when the streets of gold spoken of in scripture may be here on earth.—“ Beecher’s Thanksgiving Sermon.” ■