Barnum’s final and most emphatic principle is that integrity surpasses diamonds and rubies as the foundation of success. The mechanism is both negative and positive: dishonesty is always eventually discovered, closing nearly every path to future success, while known honesty opens the purses of an entire community to even a poor person. This framework elevates Wealth-getting from mere acquisition to moral enterprise: the desire for wealth is laudable only when the pursuer accepts responsibility to enlarge human happiness. At the broadest scale, commerce parallels civilization itself, wherever Commerce flourishes, art and science produce their noblest fruits.