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10.20.2008

Brigham Young Journal of Discourses: The Value of Wheat

I've been thinking of BY quote comparing wheat to gold and here it is.(update, Journal of Discourses website changed. This is from Journal of Discourses 1 pg 250, June 5th 1853)
"Were I to ask the question, how much wheat or anything else a man must have to justify him in letting it go to waste, it would be hard to answer;figures are inadequate to give the amount. Never let anything go to waste.Be prudent, save everything, and what you get more than you can take care of yourselves, ask your neighbors to help you. There are scores and hundreds of men in this house, if the question were asked them if they considered their grain a burden and a drudge to them, when they had plenty last year and the year before, that would answer in the affirmative, and were ready to part with it for next to nothing. How do they feel now, when their granaries are empty? If they had a few thousand bushels to spare now, would they not consider it a blessing? They would. Why? Because it would bring the gold and silver. But pause for a moment, and suppose you had millions of bushels to sell, and could sell it for twenty dollars per bushel, or for a million dollars per bushel, no matter what amount, so that you sell all your wheat,and transport it out of the country, and you are left with nothing more than a pile of gold, what good would it do you? You could not eat it, drink it, wear it, or carry it off where you could have something to eat. The time will come that gold will hold no comparison in value to a bushel of wheat. Gold is not to be compared with it in value. Why would it be precious to you now? Simply because you could get gold for it? Gold is good for nothing,only as men value it. It is no better than a piece of iron, a piece of limestone,or a piece of sandstone, and it is not half so good as the soil from which we raise our wheat, and other necessaries of life. The children of men love it, they lust after it, are greedy for it, and are ready to destroy themselves,and those around them, over whom they have any influence, to gain it.

When this people are blessed so much that they consider their blessings a burden and a drudge to them, you may always calculate on a cricket war,a grasshopper war, a drought, too much rain, or something else to make the scales preponderate the other way. This people have been blessed too much,so that they have not known what to do with their blessings."

It's a bit different when looked at in context. He is saying that we are fools to make the pursuit of gold (not just money- but specifically gold) our safety net. I'd say that in the years to come, he will prove to be absolutely right. When our money becomes worthless we will wish we had stored some wheat, and learned how to use it!
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