“We are poor – not because of God” S. B. Fuller was one of seven children of a Negro tenant farmer in Louisiana. He started to work at the age of five. By the time he was nine, he was driving mules. There was nothing unusual in this: the children of most of the tenant farmers went to work early. These families accepted poverty as their lot and asked for no better.
Young Fuller was different from his friends in one way: he had a remarkable mother. His mother refused to accept this hand-to mouth existence for her children, though it was all she had ever known. She knew there was something wrong with the fact that her family was barely getting along in a world of joy and plenty. She used to talk to her son about her dreams.
"We shouldn't be poor, S. B.," she used to say. "And don't ever let me hear you say that it is God's Will that we are poor. We are poor — not because of God. We are poor because father has never developed a desire to become rich. No one in our family has ever developed a desire to be anything else."
No one had developed a desire to be wealthy. This idea became so deeply ingrained in Fuller's mind that it changed his whole life. He began to want to be rich. He kept his mind on the things he did want and off the things, he didn't want. Thus, he developed a burning desire to become rich. The quickest way to make money, he decided, was to sell something. He chose soap. For twelve years he sold it, door to door. Then he learned that the company which supplied him was going to be sold at auction. The firm price was $150,000. In twelve years of selling and setting aside every penny, he had saved $25,000. It was agreed that he would deposit his $25,000 and obtain the balance of $125,000 within a ten-day period. Written into the contract was the condition that if he did not raise the money, he would lose his deposit.
During his twelve years as a soap salesman, S. B. Fuller had gained the respect and admiration of many businessmen. He went to them now. He obtained money from personal friends, too, and from loan companies and investment groups. On the eve of the tenth day, he had raised $115,000 He was $10,000 short.
"I had exhausted every source of credit I knew," he recalls. "It was late at night. In the darkness of my room, I knelt down and prayed. I asked God to lead me to a
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person who would let me have the $10,000 in time. I said to myself that I would drive down 61st Street until I saw the first light in a business establishment. I asked God to make the light a sign indicating His answer."
It was eleven o'clock at night when S. B. Fuller drove down Chicago's 61st Street. At last, alter several blocks he saw a light in a contractor's office.
He walked in. There, seated at his desk, tired from working late at night, sat a man whom Fuller knew slightly. Fuller realized that he would have to be bold,
"Do you want to make $1,000?" asked Fuller straight out. The contractor was taken aback at the question. "Yes," he said. "Of course."
"Then make out a check for $10,000 and when I bring back the money, I'll bring back another $1,000 profit," Fuller recalls telling this man. He gave the contractor the names of the other people who had lent him money, and explained in detail exactly what the business venture was.
( From "SUCCESS THROUGH POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE")
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