Wallance D. Wattles

There is a sci­ence of get­ting rich, and it is an exact sci­ence, like alge­bra or arith­metic. There are cer­tain laws which gov­ern the process of acquir­ing riches, and once these laws are learned and obeyed by any­one, that per­son will get rich with math­e­mat­i­cal certainty.

The own­er­ship of money and prop­erty comes as a result of doing things in a cer­tain way, and those who do things in this cer­tain way — whether on pur­pose or acci­den­tally — get rich, while those who do not do things in this cer­tain way — no mat­ter how hard they work or how able they are — remain poor.

It is a nat­ural law that like causes always pro­duce like effects, and, there­fore, any man or woman who learns to do things in this cer­tain way will infal­li­bly get rich.

That the above state­ment is true is shown by the fol­low­ing facts:

Get­ting rich is not a mat­ter of envi­ron­ment, for if it were, all the peo­ple in cer­tain neigh­bor­hoods would become wealthy. The peo­ple of one city would all be rich, while those of other towns would all be poor, or all the inhab­i­tants of one state would roll in wealth, while those of an adjoin­ing state would be in poverty.

But every­where we see rich and poor liv­ing side by side, in the same envi­ron­ment, and often engaged in the same voca­tions. When two peo­ple are in the same local­ity and in the same busi­ness, and one gets rich while the other remains poor, it shows that get­ting rich is not pri­mar­ily a mat­ter of envi­ron­ment. Some envi­ron­ments may be more favor­able than oth­ers, but when two peo­ple in the same busi­ness are in the same neigh­bor­hood and one gets rich while the other fails, it indi­cates that get­ting rich is the result of doing things in a cer­tain way.

And fur­ther, the abil­ity to do things in this cer­tain way is not due solely to the pos­ses­sion of tal­ent, for many peo­ple who have great tal­ent remain poor, while oth­ers who have very lit­tle tal­ent get rich.

Study­ing the peo­ple who have got­ten rich, we find that they are an aver­age lot in all respects, hav­ing no greater tal­ents and abil­i­ties than other peo­ple have. It is evi­dent that they do not get rich because they pos­sess tal­ents and abil­i­ties that oth­ers do not have, but because they hap­pen to do things in a cer­tain way.

Get­ting rich is not the result of sav­ing, or thrift. Many very penu­ri­ous peo­ple are poor, while free spenders often get rich.

Nor is get­ting rich due to doing things which oth­ers fail to do, for two peo­ple in the same busi­ness often do almost exactly the same things, and one gets rich while the other remains poor or becomes bankrupt.

From all these things, we must come to the con­clu­sion that get­ting rich is the result of doing things in a cer­tain way.

If get­ting rich is the result of doing things in a cer­tain way, and if like causes always pro­duce like effects, then any man or woman who can do things in that way can become rich, and the whole mat­ter is brought within the domain of exact science.

The ques­tion arises here as to whether this cer­tain way may not be so dif­fi­cult that only a few may fol­low it. As we have seen, this can­not be true (as far as nat­ural abil­ity is con­cerned). Tal­ented peo­ple get rich, and block­heads get rich; intel­lec­tu­ally bril­liant peo­ple get rich, and very stu­pid peo­ple get rich; phys­i­cally strong peo­ple get rich, and weak and sickly peo­ple get rich.

Some degree of abil­ity to think and under­stand is, of course, essen­tial, but inso­far as nat­ural abil­ity is con­cerned, any man or woman who has sense enough to read and under­stand these words can cer­tainly get rich.

Also, we have seen that it is not a mat­ter of envi­ron­ment. Yes, loca­tion counts for some­thing. One would not go to the heart of the Sahara and expect to do suc­cess­ful business.

Get­ting rich involves the neces­sity of deal­ing with peo­ple and of being where there are peo­ple to deal with, and if these peo­ple are inclined to deal in the way you want to deal, so much the bet­ter. But that is about as far as envi­ron­ment goes. If any­body else in your town can get rich, so can you, and if any­body else in your state can get rich, so can you.

Again, it is not a mat­ter of choos­ing some par­tic­u­lar busi­ness or pro­fes­sion. Peo­ple get rich in every busi­ness and in every pro­fes­sion, while their nextdoor neigh­bors in the very same voca­tion remain in poverty.

It is true that you will do best in a busi­ness which you like and which is con­ge­nial to you. And if you have cer­tain tal­ents which are well devel­oped, you will do best in a busi­ness which calls for the exer­cise of those talents.

Also, you will do best in a busi­ness which is suited to your local­ity: An ice cream par­lor would do bet­ter in a warm cli­mate than in Green­land, and a salmon fish­ery will suc­ceed bet­ter in the north­west than in Florida, where there are no salmon.

But, aside from these gen­eral lim­i­ta­tions, get­ting rich is not depen­dent upon your engag­ing in some par­tic­u­lar busi­ness, but upon your learn­ing to do things in a cer­tain way. If you are now in busi­ness and any­body else in your local­ity is get­ting rich in the same busi­ness, while you are not get­ting rich, it is sim­ply because you are not doing things in the same way that the other per­son is doing them.

No one is pre­vented from get­ting rich by lack of cap­i­tal. True, as you get cap­i­tal the increase becomes more easy and rapid, but one who has cap­i­tal is already rich and does not need to con­sider how to become so. No mat­ter how poor you may be, if you begin to do things in the cer­tain way you will begin to get rich and you will begin to have cap­i­tal. The get­ting of cap­i­tal is a part of the process of get­ting rich and it is a part of the result which invari­ably fol­lows the doing of things in the cer­tain way.

You may be the poor­est per­son on the con­ti­nent and be deeply in debt. You may have nei­ther friends, influ­ence, nor resources, but if you begin to do things in this way, you must infal­li­bly begin to get rich, for like causes must pro­duce like effects. If you have no cap­i­tal, you can get cap­i­tal. If you are in the wrong busi­ness, you can get into the right busi­ness. If you are in the wrong loca­tion, you can go to the right location.

And you can do so by begin­ning in your present busi­ness and in your present loca­tion to do things in the cer­tain way which always causes suc­cess. You must begin to live in har­mony with the laws gov­ern­ing the uni­verse.



Science of Getting Rich Series Table of Contents