I told you the other day what makes me rich, it is the labor of those whom I feed and clothe; still I do not feel that I have a dollar in the world that is my own, it is the Lord's and he has made me a steward over it; and if I can know where the Lord is pleased to have it appropriated, there it shall go. 3:118.
One-third or one-fourth of the time that is spent to procure a living would be sufficient, if your labor were rightly directed. People think they are going to get rich by hard work—by working sixteen hours out of the twenty-four; but it is not so. A great many of our brethren can hardly spend time to go to meeting. Six days is more time than we need to labor. 8:355.
The great majority of men and women do not know how to take care of themselves. Let me refer the whole of you to a circumstance in Winter Quarters. We left Nauvoo in February, 1846, made our own roads through Iowa, except some 40 or 50 miles, built bridges, cut down timber, turned out 500 men to go to Mexico, came this side of the Missouri river, and there wintered. How did you live there? Do you know how you got anything to eat? Brethren came to me, saying, "We must go to Missouri. Can we not take our families and go to Missouri and get work?" Do you know, to this day, how you lived? I will tell you, and then you will remember it. I had not five dollars in money to start with; but I went to work and built a mill, which we knew we should want only for a few months, that cost 3,600 dollars. I gave notice that I would employ every man and pay him for his labor. If I had a sixpence, I turned it into 25 cents; and a half-bushel of potatoes I turned into half-a-bushel of wheat. How did I do that? By faith. I went to Brother Neff, who had just come in the place, and asked him for and received 2,600 dollars, though he did not know where the money was going. He kept the mill another year, and it died on his hands. I say, God bless him forever! for it was the money he brought from Pennsylvania that preserved thousands of men, women, and children from starving. I handled and dictated it, and everything went off smoothly and prosperously. 6:173.
Shall I give you my ideas in brief with regard to business and business transactions? Here for instance, a merchant comes to our neighborhood with a stock of goods; he sells them at from two to ten hundred per cent, above what they cost. As a matter of course he soon becomes wealthy, and after a time he will be called a millionaire, when perhaps he was not worth a dollar when he commenced to trade. You will hear many say of such person, what a nice man he is, and what a great financier he is! My feeling of such a man is, he is a great cheat, a deceiver, a liar! He imposes on the people, he takes that which does not belong to him, and is a living monument of falsehood. Such a man is not a financier! The financier is he that brings the lumber from the canyons and shapes it for the use of his fellowman, employing mechanics and laborers to produce from the elements and the crude material everything necessary for the sustenance and comfort of man; one who builds tanneries to work up the hides instead of letting them rot and waste or be sent out of the country to be made into leather and then brought back in the shape of boots and shoes; and that can take the wool, the furs and straw and convert the same into cloth, into hats and bonnets, and that will plant out mulberry trees and raise the silk, and thus give employment to men, women and children, as you have commenced to do here, bringing the elements into successful use for the benefit of man, and reclaiming a barren wilderness, converting it into a fruitful field, making it to blossom as the rose; such a man I would call a financier, a benefactor of his fellow man. But the great majority of men who have amassed great wealth have done it at the expense of their fellows. 19:97.
Wealth Must Be Used—Few men know what to do with riches when they possess them. 1:250.
You know very well that it is against my doctrine and feelings for men to scrape together the wealth of the world and let it waste and do no good. 9:186.
Then do not hoard up your gold; if you do, it will canker, but put out every dollar to usury. Instead of your souls being bound up in your cattle and other property, put it all where it should be placed for the benefit of the Kingdom of God on earth and for his glory. 9:191.
A man has no right with property, which, according to the laws of the land, legally belongs to him, if he does not want to use it; he ought to possess no more than he can put to usury, and cause to do good to himself and his fellowman. When will a man accumulate money enough to justify him in salting it down, or, in other words, laying it away in the chest, to lock it up, there to lie, doing no manner of good either to himself or his neighbor. It is impossible for a man ever to do it. No man should keep money or property by him that he cannot put to usury for the advancement of that property in value or amount, and for the good of the community in which he lives; if he does, it becomes a dead weight upon him. Every man who has got cattle, money, or wealth of any description, bone and sinew, should put it out to usury. If a man has the arm, body, head, the component parts of a system to constitute him a laboring man, and has nothing in the world to depend upon but his hands, let him put them to usury. Never hide up anything in a napkin, but put it forth to bring an increase. If you have got property of any kind, that you do not know what to do with, lay it out in making a farm, or building a saw mill or a woolen factory, and go to with your mights to put all your property to usury.
If you have more oxen and other cattle than you need, put them in the hands of other men, and receive their labor in return, and put that labor where it will increase your property value. 1:252.
If a man comes in the midst of this people with money, let him use it in beautifying his inheritance in Zion, and in increasing his capital by thus putting out his money to usury. Let him go and make a great farm, and stock it well, and fortify all around with a good and efficient fence. What for? Why for the purpose of spending his money. Then let him cut it up into fields, and adorn it with trees, and build a fine house upon it. What for? Why for the purpose of spending his money. What will he do when his money is gone? The money thus spent, with a wise and prudent hand, is in a situation to accumulate and increase a hundred-fold. When he has done making his farm, and his means still increase by his diligent use of it, he can then commence and build a woolen factory for instance; he can send and buy the sheep and have them brought here, and have them herded here, and shear them here, and take care of them, then set the boys and girls to cleaning, carding, spinning, and weaving the wool into cloth, and thus employ hundreds and thousands of the brethren and sisters who have come from the manufacturing districts of the old country, and have not been accustomed to dig in the earth for their livelihood, who have not learned anything else but to work in the factory. This would feed them and clothe them, and put within their reach the comforts of life; it would also create at home a steady market for the produce of the agriculturist, and the labor of the mechanic. 1:253.