my power, I will make an adequate return to society for this
personal benefit.

Some one says: Do you realize that you are making a moral laughing-stock
of much of our system of trade? that you are setting an axe to that
system, more cutting than the axe of any Socialist, Nihilist, or
Anarchist in the world? Oh, no. I have simply set myself to answer the
question: How can the business man stand among the ideal-makers of the
world, so that he shall no more, in spiritual assemblies, be told to
go away?

Woman is the real economic distributer. The millionaire manufacturer
imagines that he himself runs his business. Oh, no. It is run by
farmers' wives. When they do not care for yarn or calico, his looms
stand idle for a year; the vast machinery of the world turns on woman's
little word: _I want_. Hence the education of women should include this
factor: the desire to want the right things. Extravagance is not a part
of woman's make-up; it is extraneous.

_Gain is that which permanently enriches the life._ By every act of
charity, or justice, or insight, or right barter, the soul is made more
grand. True trade everywhere may be made a new method of inspiration,
growth, and power.

Money is a makeshift of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we
never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass
wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet paid for
our trade.

The higher value of money is its spiritual capacity. Not what it will
bring me is primarily important, but what I can buy with it for the
race. Sometimes the question comes over me: What am I trading for money?
My time? My energy? My ideals? Part of my soul is passing from me: do
dollars ever repay? Hence it comes about that all money transactions are
fragmentary and symbolic.

Money may lead to poverty, or to spiritual wealth. The gift of trade is
a gift of God, as much as the gift of prophecy or song. In a right way,
we should all love gain. We are not born to go out of the world as poor
as when we came into it. We should gain stature, wisdom, strength,
influence, ideals. If our latent business capacity were more fully
aroused, we should get much more out of life. We would refuse to barter
a spiritual heritage for carnal things.

We trade thoughts and feelings. But it is very hard to trade fine
impulses with those who are intrinsically vulgar. Their treasury is
empty of spiritual coin, and their storehouse contains no
w