Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1878 — NEITHER POVERTY NOR RICHES. [ARTICLE]

NEITHER POVERTY NOR RICHES.

Give me neither poverty nor riches ♦ * • ♦ lest I be full and deny Thee, and say. Who is the Locd? or lest Ibe poor and steal, and thus profane the name of my God.— Prov. xxx:B 9. What is called a “middle class” has long existed in the world; has been so large in numbers and so great in influence; and for the most part so happy, that there must be a certain philosophy of that condition. Such a constant and immense form of human life cannot be the result of chance, but must be rather a part of the method of Him who placed man upon this planet. The prayer of Agur reveals the existence of a second estate as far back as history runs. The constant presence of this class, its quality in all times, and at last its immense numbers, make it worthy of our study. The moderate property man should a priori be the most fortunate, because all. through Nature the law of the golden medium runs. Nature dislikes excesses. It is fond of averages. A shrub below the forest gets too little light; a tree above the forest is blown down. The trees, therefore, stand shoulder to shoulder in the great woods. A soil exclusively poor grows nothing, and a soil excessively rich will grow only mushrooms, that have no leaf or flavor or fragrance. The rose and the wheat must wait for the thin soil to be made rich or for the luxuriant soil to be depleted by sand or clay. Thus the fields seem to send up the prayer for neither poverty nor riches. But there is safer ground than such analogy. It is not probable that the Creator of the world would make that the worst condition in which the larger part of His children must pass life. If we discover a condition which must absorb the millions, and if we find two other conditions! that of poverty and that of enormous wealth, yhich are being constantly emptied into the middle class of liberty and industry and education, it may be inferred that God has not made most pitiable that estate in which the most millions are to be grouped. The “ middle condition” renders industry essential. Poverty robs the heart of hope and thus destroys industry; and immense fortunes either check action or else turn it along channels of mere pleasure.. The beggars of Italy or Spain or ‘America will not work because they have not property enough to beget a wish to add anything to it. A person who has no learning at all desires none. The African Bushman has not the least desire to possess any information, for he knows nothing, and hence has no hunger for any adjoining fact. It is after the mind has mastered the first book that it longs for the books tMhare inwoven with the first volume. By this Jaw of relative suggestion, the beggar hopes for nothing, for he has not that to which a little money could attach itself and become more. This middle estate possesses just enough of life to stimulate the hand and the brain. Everything is before it The ■members of this class must rise early: their step must be quick; their mind must bo awake; their blood must not stand, but it must flow. Riches.areold, age. They are an autumn. And poverty is disease; it is a consumption or a famine; but the middle estate is youth; it is spring and the early summer. If you will look around for a moment you will perceive what immense mental results have come from the enforced industry of the middle class. You may assume that the learned professions repose largely upon the fact that their thousands of now . learned the problem? ,of pecuniary support. Thus, under all thelearned professions, lies the quality of this middle estate, the absence of money that stimulates, and not that utter absence which makes the hopeless beggar. Read over the catalogue of hll the eminent men of our day and you will mark that almost the whole army of them were thrown out upon the field by the pressure of humble means. To such an extreme degree is this true that it has been suggested that all biographies of the great might begin with the words, “ Born of poor but honest parents.” The natural philosophy of the “ middle class” must therefore lie largely in the fact that that class is the arena where Industry does ’ its perfect work in the mind, and transforms youth into manhood—the farmer boys, Clay and Webster, into eloquent statesmen. The “ middle condition ” is a pleasant subterfuge of Nature for beguiling Us into action, because out -of action owpe ci vilisatfon, and all the splendor

of letters, art and religion, .ht has always thus come to pass that the families of moderate property have been in the beginning and the end of each Nation the N atkm'e chief hope. Nations have died by raising one-naif of their number up to aristocracy, and by sinking the other half to beggary. The Nations have all died between these two ynillstones—the vanity of the highest and the broken hearts of the lowest, it thus appears that the prayer of Agur involves one of the laws of individual and National life. Not only is the humblest condition the happiest, but it stands as a fundamental law of human triumph. Are you already in the “middle class,” and bless God perhaps we are all therte, then mark well the deep meaning of that lot, anjl make no effort to , climb a height on which all have become dizzy, and from which all have at last fallen- Remember the intellectual power, the mental' harvest ot arts and science* which has always waved upon that soil; and remember the supreme happiness which the rich and lofty have found at last to bless, the plain man’s home. Are you a man of industry, of integrity, are you compelled to take up each day the honorable warfare of earth, are you compelled to labor for the supply of the best wants, and to support the beings most dear, then you the Nation loves, you civilization loves, you religion loves, and throwing their arms around you they all say, “We depend upon you; we look to those who have neither poverty nor riches.”—Pro/. David Swing.