148 



SELLING LUMBER 



Endurance of 

 Power in 

 Commercial 

 Greatness 



and think that we are the Benjamin of the nations of history, God's 

 national favorites ? Why do we feel that ?" When he spoke to me 

 thus, I felt there was a missing link in the chain of his logic, 

 a lost chord in the music of his thought, and I tried to think 

 of that missing link and to hear that lost chord, but I couldn't 

 do it, and I bowed my head and said nothing; for the facts as 

 he stated them were all historically correct. But I got my answer 

 from a source that I never expected to get it. I know it didn't 

 come from man or men. Whether it came from God Almighty, 

 I will let you, kind friends, decide. But four or five months after 

 I stood for the first time before Niagara, and it was a beautiful 

 moonlight night when I first saw that majestic phenomena of nature 

 tumbling there; and as I heard that voice that night, the same 

 voice that had been sounding on and on through the centuries of the 

 past and will sound on and on and on through the centuries and the 

 centuries and the lengthening centuries to come, passing, but never 

 past, going, but never gone, falling, but never fallen, oh ! what a 

 mighty, moving monument of permanency and power, sufficient 

 to move the machinery of the world by transmuted energy, and 

 do it, too, in curves of beauty and lines of grace; and as I stood 

 there, suddenly a voice seemed to drop down from the stars above, 

 and up from the long lines of illustrious statesmen and patriots 

 through the vista of the centuries, and out from the churches 

 and schools and marts and mansions and farms and factories, and 

 in that voice mingled the voice of the American past, the voice of 

 the American present and the voice of the American future. Sud- 

 denly the waters of Niagara vanished, and in its place was the 

 Niagara of industry, a government-encouraged industry, of individ- 

 ually loved * industry, the thing that was absent in the days of 

 Persia to which my friend referred, and it was the missing link 

 in the chain of his logic. For in those days, to bq a noble man, 

 or occupy a place of respect and honor in organized society, you 

 had to gain or achieve a high place in the army; the captain or 

 general was the nobleman; but the salesman, the merchant, the 

 tradesman, the business man, as we understand him today, and 

 as you and I are, they were pariahs in the days of Persia. They 

 were itinerant salesmen, going around with packs on their backs, 

 and compelled to pay taxes to a government that in their heart 

 of hearts they hated. And yet it is just that man, the business man, 

 that is in the saddle of civilization today with the reins in his hand. 

 Why do I say that? Because Congress devotes more attention 



