The Science Of Getting Rich
By
Wallace D. Wattles
#4 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 foodstuffs 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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1 - Preface
2 - The Right To Be Rich
3 - There Is A Science Of Getting Rich
4 - Is Opportunity Monopolized?
5 -The First Principle In The Science Of Getting
Rich
6 - Increasing Life
7 - How Riches Come To You
8 - Gratitude
9 - Thinking In The Certain Way
10 - How To Use The Will
11 - Further Use Of The Will
12 - Acting In The Certain Way
13 - Efficient Action
14 - Getting Into The Right Business
15 - The Impression Of Increase
16 - The Advancing Man
17- Some Cautions And Concluding Observations
18 - Summary Of The Science Of Getting Rich
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