The Victorious Attitude

are heading toward the poorhouse. A pinched,

ds the poverty ideal, the poorhouse thought in his mi

can no more reap success, prosperity harvests, than

s a menta

lives expected to do so. They had such a horror of the poorhouse, they lived in such terror of coming to want, that they shut off the very source of their supply. They had so warped their minds that they could see nothing ahead but poverty. They

petual war suggestion, was largely responsible for the outbreak of the greatest war in history. If all the nati

t ready for it, they will have poverty. Preparedness for pov

nt, a doubt current, a discouragement current, no matter how hard you may be working in the opposite direction, you w

er their condition, and yet never expecting, or even hoping to be prosperous. The

ought to have this and that by saying, "Oh, it is all very well for you rich folks to talk this way, but these things are not for me. We have always been poor and I suppose we always shall be; we can only have th

save for spending, for enjoyment in our later years, but people who begin early to provide for the "rainy day," and who deny themselves every little p

ave, because of her poverty, and so she starves the lives of herself and her boy and girl in anticipating a day of possible want. She is a type of a multitude of men and women who settle down to their poverty, become half reconciled to its

ery occasion when they try to get some enjoyment or satisfaction out of the present. They are always postponing things till next year. But this "next year" never comes, and the children never go to the academy or college, and they themselves never take the needed vacation, the travel in

necessities of life in anticipation of the possible rainy day, for which they are always planning. They make life one lon

t of an aged woman who had died alone in the slums of the metropolis. She had been dead several days when her body was found, and so wretched were her surroundings, it wa

the necessities of life. For years she had shut herself away from the great stream of life flowing all around her, so that she might hoard, and hoard, and hoard. She would allow no one to enter her rooms, and died alon

ack to Egypt." But for the faith of their great leader, Moses, in the Power that led them, they would have gone back to Egypt, back to the slavery and poverty from which they had fled. Even after the manna had been given them fres

e are the children's clothes coming from? How are we going to get the necessaries of life? Where is our supply coming from? Why can't I get a job that will enable us to really live?" These

f not being able to maintain ourselves and to rear our children in comfort and respectability. It demagnetizes us, drives away the things we want and draws to us those we dread. Job said, "The thing I greatly feared has come upon me"-that which I was afraid

thinking about the possibility of your business declining; if you fear you are losing your grip on your trade or profession, you are aggravating your trouble and making it worse and worse. There are multitudes of people

do was to earn a bare living. Everything appeared to go against him. Fate, he complained, seemed determined to keep him down, no matter how hard he might struggle against it, and he was doomed to be poor, to be a nobody. He be

ndays and holidays," he said, "and haven't taken a vacation for years. I have been struggling and striving and pushing to make my way in the world since I was a boy, and here I am past fifty and have nev

lso had been a tremendous worker, had always tried hard to better his condition but like himself had never succeeded, and so he had come to the conclusion that

not get anything but poverty and failure. Each had desired success and prosperity but had always expected the opposite. He had slaved and toiled in an aimless sort of way, belittling himself and his t

of lack and want. We do not get things in this world which we do not believe we can get.

e more to his fear, his terror, of failure than to a lack of ability or preparation in his studies. He had formed a habit of expect

in the world, but who don't expect to get on. It is pitiful to see them toiling day after day, but always facing in the wrong direction. They are working for success in the

u keep visualizing, thinking, talking hard times, panics and financial crises, your business will shrink and shrivel accordingly. If, on the other hand, you have confidence, expectation of better things, if you are convinced that conditions are

ot the majority of youths, begin with the impression that they are not victory organized. This is because they have lived in a failure atmosphere,

ant that we should starve or be miserable. If we are unsuccessful, unhappy, it is because of our attitude toward God and life. M

y, expecting it, holding the conviction that we shall always be poor, that there is no help

ed to taking it for granted that they are going to remain poor, that they do not take the necessary steps to get away from poverty; and they do not even know that the first step must b

ally. They acquire a poverty vocabulary. Their fathers and mothers are always talking poverty, bemoaning their hard conditions, complaining that they

distressing things about the very poor. There is a tremendous difference between the prospects as well as the mental attitude and the facial expression of a poor boy on a farm who dreams of the day when he can go to college, who pictures himself there, who believes with all his heart th

they are always going to be poor, and that they never can do what others have done to get out of their rut, as it would be for the boy who longs to go to college, but who has made up his mind that it is impossible, to get a higher education. While they think that all others a

cal disability or disease. The way to have health is to think it, to expect it, to visualize it, to realize that health is a positive everlasting fact, and disease only negation, the absence of health, which is brought about largely by a wrong mental attitude, by self-thought poisoning, by disobeying the laws o

that he would have enough to provide the bare necessities for his little family. He said he never expected to have anything better. He

ssities of life, did not expect anything else, and of course he only just managed to squeeze along, making but a bare subsistence. This attitude of the poor toward poverty tends t

ken in appearance; their expression is one of utter hopelessness. They look like men who are going downhill, men who have reached the period of diminishing returns, and they feel exactly as they loo

can't get better clothes they can brush the old ones, blacken their shoes, have a bath and shave, and above all a ment

lot of good blood in him, working material, success possibilities, or nobody will want him. The man who goes to an employer in a discouraged attitude and begs for

ire to get away from it, you are cursed with self-thought poisoning. This is wha

any disease of the flesh. So is failure. Fear, worry, anxiety, these are all mental diseases, from which few human beings seem to esca

investigator of slum life in our big cities, every record of the lives of

life, rather than wait for the slow cruel process of starvation to quench it out. Every year poverty claims its tens of thousands of innocent victims among the little children who die of disease and neglect in damp, foul cellars where the sun never enters. It sweeps them into mills and factories where, robbed of the rights of childhood, they become warped and twisted men and w

e this crushing poverty disease from our midst. Instead of lauding its blessing

g on this earth could be living in comfort if they knew the powers locked up in themselves and were willing to work and make t

scovered antitoxin for some terrible disease. Physicians do not know how to apply it safely and effectively, and until practice has establi

r our sins, to chasten us. Diseases which struck terror to the hearts of human beings a hundred years ago, and from which they fled in horror, are not feared at all to-day. Intelligence and science have mastered the great plagues which in the Middle and Dark Ages carried off their terrified victims by the milli

nd scientific methods, we can conquer them all by similar means? Poverty is a plague, a mental disease which can b

sufferer can be his own physician. He can heal himself. If you are afflicted