The man with a conscience

Contents

CHAPTER

I. The Primitive Law or Love 11. Business by the Golden Rule — The Second Law of Love ....

III. The Law of Love for the Larger

II Business By The Golden Rule — The Second Law Of Love

THE second section of the conscientious life has to do with business relations. Think now of the vast and complicated network of daily occupations — agriculture, mining, manufacture, transportation, merchandise, the care of households and of great hotels; think of the teacher, the physician, the lawyer, the journalist, the artist, the musician, the pastor, the statesman. In their daily toil each man may make his best contribution, according to his calling and ability, to the needs of mankind. Instead of each man doing practically everything for himself, as he did in the time of Moses, thousands of people serve each man and he serves thousands. To the Christian man his business or profession is his call from God, and he seeks God's guidance daily in his work and God's blessing upon it. The standard of true greatness which Christ proclaimed is practically the world's to-day, — the man who is servant of the largest munber is the greatest among men, and he who is servant of all men is the greatest of all time. That is to say, the

[14 1 man whose work or invention or helpful movement reaches the largest popular need is greatest.

The fundamental law for making business life Christian is the Golden Rule, which may be defined as strict justice and veracity in the spirit of love in all transactions between man and man.

Let us analyze the Golden Rule in the light of what is best for business protection and development. It is the law of ethical justice in business transactions. It is not good to be generous in business dealings, but to be simply and exactly just. Take the common instance of selling and buying a pound of sugar for five cents. If that is the right price, there should be no more sugar than precisely a pound and no more money than fiYt cents. More sugar for iivt cents is demoralizing to the best development of honest business, more money either exacted or voluntarily given is equally unwise.

This business transaction in sugar and all like transactions must be regarded as part of a system of human living. It is not a soHtary and unrelated act in which generosity on one side and Hberahty on the other in Christian love might have play. The system, in the words of Henry George, "is like a highly organized animal extremely sensitive in every part. Shocks and jars from which a primitive community easily recovers would, to a highly organized community, mean wreck." This system requires equal and exact justice which will develop accuracy in business; ability in management; it will stimulate

[15 1 the product to its perfecting; it will give opportunities to neighbors in the same business to prosper, and it will promote manly self-effort and good character.

Any deviation toward generosity from strict equity in business is detrimental. It pauperizes the recipient and harms the giver ^s finer character. It lowers the self-respect and self-reHance of the man who receives more than his due and may cause him to relax strenuous endeavor to succeed; thus doing him serious damage in the end. Generosity and looseness in business dealings is a kindness which kills. It is giving which is blessed neither to the giver nor to the receiver.

Justice includes honesty and veracity. Henry Clay Trumbull ^ has conclusively answered in the negative the question, "Is a lie ever justifiable? '^ There must be unswerving veracity in everything said to the man with whom we are dealing, yet we are under no moral obligation to tell men everything about any matter, nor anything at all about many matters. It would be contradictory to argue that it is our duty to tell men truths which concern only our personal rights or which concern others than the man in question. It is only when the man is so concerned that harm will come to him if he does not know the things we might tell him that it becomes our duty to inform him.

Christian veracity requires that when we do tell 1 See Trumbull's "Is a Lie Ever Justifiable?" [16]

anything, in justice to a man, it shall be the truth as in a court of justice, — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For all our life is in God's court. It is never right to lie to a sane man. A He saves from one immediate trouble, but it brings seven other troubles worse than the first. We may decline, on grounds of justice and the rights of persons involved, to say anything, but we may not as true Christians speak what is false.

The desire to do justice should become a passion. Mackenzie^ translates Matt. 5:6 thus: ^'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for justice." Even Matthew Arnold's idea of religion is ^'morahty touched with emotion." The Christian man in business will hold his honesty and veracity, not as merely negative virtues, but they will be fired with aggressiveness and courage. To be honest and to succeed often requires that one expose the dishonesty of others and heroically fight a bad system. The platform of the International Workingmen's Association which was adopted at Geneva in 1866 is a good one to stand upon — "Truth, justice, and morality as the basis of conduct toward each other and toward all men; the duty of a man to claim the rights of a man and a citizen, not only for himself, but for every man who does his duty; no rights without duties, no duties without rights." ^

The wise Creator has endowed men with aptitudes

^Mackenzie, "Ethics," p. 174.

^ It is interesting to know that Karl Marx wrote this. [17 1 for different pursuits, abilities, and tastes so varied that all the vast range of human occupations, beneficial to man, can be kept filled, and filled by men who heartily choose an occupation and are enthusiastic in its prosecution. And all callings that are honest and helpful are as truly Christian work as are prayer, praise, and offerings made as a part of worship. The rending of the veil of the temple at Jerusalem that had for ages made one little place pecuHarly holy — the Holy of hoHes — tore down forever the distinction between the secular and the sacred in work. This did not make worship secular, but it made work also sacred. The torn veil of the temple does not abolish the Holy of holies, but it extends it over the whole earth.

A business obligation, therefore, is sacred. It is the divine assignment to serve some pressing need of our fellowmen. The fabled archangel who was sent down to sweep the street crossing did it thoroughly and helped the old lady across tenderly while his fellow archangel ruled an empire. But what mattered it to them which work they did? It was all for the King of kings, to whom the least service is holy and glorious and acceptable. It was all doing God's will. Let us ask with Henry Drummond: "Are we doing God's will? Not, are we doing God's work — preaching, teaching, or collecting money — but God's will? A man may think he is doing God's work when he is not even doing God's will." Every man should be held to the doing of his full part and

[18 1 be rewarded in full. The law of strict equity is the law of Christian love in business.

Christ's statement of the second stage of Christian love is the Golden Rule. Let us get the Golden Rule exactly, for it contains more than has yet been popularly known. This is the way it is given in Matt. 7:12 (American Revision): ''All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets." Luke 6:31 has it: ''And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." This is more than "love thy neighbor as thyself," which requires that you put your neighbor into your place in your thought and regard him as carefully as you regard yourself, giving him the same rights and privileges you demand for yourself. The Golden Rule requires you to put yourself into his place and therefore study his actual condition and needs, and, knowing also your own side, do justice to his from the viewpoint of both sides. The first law of love deals out the same to him as you are taking yourself; the other attempts to deal out exactly what is just to that neighbor whose condition is probably so different from yours. The Golden Rule is love which puts yourself fully into the other man's place in addition to trying to think of him as entitled to the same that you have.

It was not a small matter that Jesus added — that the Golden Rule fulfills not only all the law, but all the prophets. The prophets of the Old Testament

[19 1 were the ethical philosophers of Judah and Israel. Their burning messages are being revived for our day and applied to twentieth century conditions with great force. There is something deeply significant in the recent widespread interest in all the Old Testament seers as ethical teachers. It is universally felt that they are no less really spokesmen for God to America and the world to-day.

In what did the prophets advance ethically beyond the law of Moses? By just so much is the Golden Rule an advance upon "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Moses had two tables of the law; the one told of duties to God, the other of duties to man. In form all but two of the ten commandments were negative. They were prohibitions, except the fourth and fifth. Early in the moral growth of the people it was found that the positive form of love was necessary; so loving God with all the mind, heart, and strength was given as the convenient summary of the commandments concerning duties to God. The commandments toward men, however, were not so summarized. It was prophetism which greatly extended the ethical field and intensified the ethical impulse. In one familiar summary ^ we have this result: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'' The American Revision makes a change of much interest, "What doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness,

LAW OP LOVE TO MEN

and to walk humbly with thy God?'' The ''mercy" is not a forgiveness of enemies, but a "kindness'' toward all men.

So, in a word, the Golden Rule makes the addition of sympathy to the justice which the law required; or, shall we say, it requires justice in the beautiful spirit of sympathy, the feeling with men which may come from putting ourselves in their place when we deal with them. This is the advance it makes over "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and this advance the prophets were to accompHsh, so that the Golden Rule now fulfills the law and also the prophets.

How, then, will the law operate in concrete cases? Let us see. The merchant sells his neighbor an article of clothing. The merchant — if he is capable — knows the quality of the goods, he knows what a fair price for it is, and he knows that his purchaser in this case — and usually — is ignorant of both quality and fair price. The Golden Rule in thought puts the merchant into the place of the customer, but with the merchant's knowledge, and says to him, "If you, the merchant, knowing what you do of this article, were now buying it, how would you want to be treated?" Could anything be conceived more exactly just, practical, and easily appHed?

An employer is fixing wages for his workman. The Golden Rule in business says to the employer, "If you were now in the workman's place and knew all you know about the profits of manufacturing and costs, what would you want the employer to pay you in wages?" In other words, looking at both sides, with the manufacturer's knowledge and the workingman's conditions, what is it right to allow?

This is more than a man dealing with another in love as he loves himself, and more even than putting himself into the other man's place. It is putting himself into both places in the transaction so as to secure a complete ethical view, then to accord exactly what is just. The good workingman on his part lives by the Golden Rule when he puts himself into the employer's place, measuring so far as he can his perplexities, losses, risk, and capital invested, and knowing how much honest work and unusually good work will help swell the profits and reHeve the burdens, and when he hears the mandate of the Golden Rule, ''If you were now the employer what would you like the workman to do? How would you like him to use material, tools, and time?" And the good workingman is shown when he lives up to the self-evident answer he would have to give. Ruskin says impatiently, ''When will all workingmen strive to do full honest work with the same zeal with which they ask fair wages?" The easy answer is, "When they live by the Golden Rule."

In professional service, take the teacher in daily work with pupils. The Golden Rule puts the teacher into the pupil's place, but with the teacher's experience and knowledge of what earnest study means and how mental acquisition and ability are attained. The teacher, therefore, doing his duty will stimulate to largest self-effort and give just such assistance and at such times as will most fully develop the pupil's own activity. The physician will treat the patient as he would have the doctor treat him when he is sick, knowing medical practice as he then would know it.

In none of these cases — in no case in business — is the simple demand of the other man the measure of Christian duty. He, not knowing what the manufacturer, merchant, or professional man knows, may ask too little in equity. It is the other man's duty to give him more than he asks, up to the measure of what is just. Or the customer, workman, or patient may demand or expect what is beyond his rights in justice. There is no Christian duty laid down in the Golden Rule of love in business requiring the Christian to grant such demands.

The author does not contend that the Golden Rule has no application except in business. It is a good rule or law for all of Hfe, but for the Hfe beyond business there is a better law of love, as will be shown in the next chapter. Here the plea is made for the Golden Rule as being exactly the law of practical justice in all business, and no conscience should become morbid or feel condemned for not granting in business more than is just. It would be a wrong in the end, as we have seen, to the man receiving more regularly, however grateful he may now be for the generosity. Of course there is a place to be generous to the needy, to give, to lend money, and to help substantially, but such actions would better be distinct always from any business transaction between the parties.

The Golden Rule is opposed to the rule of gold, greed for gold above honesty and veracity.

Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold — Will make black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young;

Coward, valiant; This yellow slave will knit and break religion, Bless the accursed.^

"Knighthood in the twelfth century was for God and the ladies, but no knighthood in labor nor toward labor." ^

The Golden Rule is equally opposed to easy-going favoritism. Take again the merchant and his customer for clothing and suppose the merchant sells the article far below cost or even at cost. He cannot do that to every purchaser and continue in business. Thus his act is a piece of favoritism which, if done to several persons, must necessarily be distributed in increased cost to the rest of his customers. He is taking from them to hand over to the insistent clamorers for special privilege, — robbing many Peters to pay a few Pauls. The employer who pays large wages to a few favorites is equally guilty, for to do this he shaves the wages of the rest. Anyone who is familiar with actual conditions in the business world grants that it is difficult to adjust

^Shakspere, "Timon of Athens."

2 Crafts, "Practical Christian Sociology," p. 370.

wages equitably, but many wrongs might be righted and should be righted at once. It is always necessary first to see what is right and then steer that way.

The perplexing question of what is a fair price or what is a just wage is not settled conscientiously when we adopt current prices or wages. Prices may be too low and wages too high, or, what is more likely, prices may be too high and wages too low; for both current prices and current wages are fixed by the thoroughly unscrupulous, and competition finds it easiest to follow such a lead. In these days of actual combinations, or at least understanding between the parties, prices are too high in most cases. In the recent times of unscrupulous competition, when prices were cut by dishonest adulterations, false labels, and short weights and measures, the Christian merchant refused to follow the lead, but frankly exposed such frauds and always gave the square deal himself. He was able to defend his higher prices as fair and just. It is an inspiring omen of better days that many such business men, sustained by an enlightened public, are succeeding. Such men are a refreshing contrast to others whose success is tainted with dishonor. There is too much truth in the words of R. F. Horton, ''What is called success in business, in literature, in society, in politics and public Hfe, and horrible as it is to say it, what is called success in the church and in religious work, is sometimes purchased by a subtle and sinister com-

[25 1 promise with evil as definite as the compact by which a medieval witch purchased the power of the moment by the sale of her immortal soul." ^

Manhood maintained and perfected in business is richer than money made, and manhood wants nothing but justice in daily business or toil. It scorns generosity. As Sismondi says, "What! is wealth then everything? Are men absolutely nothing?"

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay.*

Rather be

King by mere manhood now allowing aught Of holier unction than the sweat of toil.^

The best work of Sir Humphrey Davy, he loved to assert, was not the invention of the safety lamp for the miner, but the discovery of Michael Faraday for the world of science.

Business life in Christian ethics has two main relations between the parties concerned to which the Golden Rule applies:

I. In business a man may be the seeker of the service which another can give him, as when a purchaser seeks goods from a merchant, an employer seeks labor from a workman, a sick man healing from the physician, a student help in learning frora a teacher. The Golden Rule requires in each case that such pay should be given by the seeker as he would

1 "Success and Failure."

2 Goldsmith, "Deserted Village." ^ Lowell.

desire for himself if the positions were reversed — knowing also his own side and having love, with sympathy, for the other.

2. On the other hand a man may offer service to others — something he manufactures, sells, transports, or can give professionally. The Golden Rule now requires him to furnish such goods or service as would satisfy him if he were the recipient — knowing also what he knows as giver.

Subsidiary to these main relations, in the vast development of daily work, have sprung up other relations between men in the same business or profession in the same community, employers with other employers prosecuting the same or interrelated business, workmen with fellow workmen, employers with their workmen in the factory, as they seek to fall in line with the great profits-sharing movements.

What does Christian ethics declare about these relations?

First, concerning employer and employees in the same factory. They stand together as partners in a common service to mankind. This is ethically the best of all unions, whether it leads to profits-sharing or not. It is a '' perpendicular'' division in the labor world which promotes best service, and not the '' horizontal" division of all employers united in one body above and all workmen of different factories united in one body below. The latter promoted caste feeling and class distinctions and antagonisms, which are obnoxious in America.

[27 1

Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil,

We are told, Devil's theories are these.

Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous lusts to please.^

The employer and workmen together in one factory form a scientific solidarity in business which promotes best service, insures industrial development and peace and largest profits. So Le Claire, the French pioneer in profits-sharing, and many others have shown. There are good reasons for additional associations after this best one of all workmen in one business and all workmen in every business, and also for the union of all owners and employers. There are problems on each side, certain helpful development in efiiciency, a conservation of rights, and a general brotherliness possible in these associations. If actually these are not attained, that is reason for changing the forms and methods of the union or association, but not for abolishing them.

Actual relations at present between men leading in any business or profession are one of three kinds :

I. There is destructive or demoralizing competition between these men.

What shall be said from the Christian point of view about competition as now carried to extremes in the few businesses where competition yet has play? Such competition must be distinguished from that able and aggressive enterprise in business which

1 Lowell, "Hunger and Cold." [28]

seeks to render the ideal service at lowest prices. This enterprise is what the many competitionprotecting statutes of our states and the National Congress fully expected to result. Results were for a while beneficial; when the prices were just or reasonable and business was honorably conducted competition was laudable. To be sure those who were giving inferior service were oppressed and some of them were driven out of business. But such things will come in consequence of superior service in any Hne of human activity. The best physician will after awhile take the practice of the incompetent man, the better teacher will get more and better students, and the more enterprising merchant will have the larger trade. There is no right way to save the idle and unfit in any forward march. So long as competition is an honorable struggle for more excellent things to deal to fellowmen it is not only a mark of higher civilization, but it is just as much a mark of real Christianity. It will be best in the end even for the whole tribe of laggards themselves. The Golden Rule is fulfilled by the leader who causes these changes, for his methods have brought about for others exactly what he would desire to have done to him if he were lazy or unprogressive ; he would want the stirring of soul which real progress gives to the slower members.

But, taking the country over, competition has failed to do the good expected of it, and it will evidently soon become a thing of the past. It became a cut-throat struggle, brutally selfish, unscrupulous, and unrelenting. It was planned rather to drive neighbors to the wall than to improve the service. It was against men, not for the good of all men. Where it still persists, it is a savage warfare no less cruel than scalping or cannibaHsm. Its usual motives and methods absolutely ignore the Golden Rule.

It is unHkely that the man who starts to ruin his neighbor in business will continue honest and scrupulous in the quality of his goods and in his weights and measures. His temptations to dishonest things become fierce, and swindling methods are his effective weapons. If he has started to ruin one man, why should it be thought he will hesitate to rob others? What wonder if competitors, in many cases, resort to the same wickedness? So the general tone of business is lowered, and the consumer, who was supposed to be the favored man by the law of competition, now is most wronged.

2. The oppressive combination or trust is now the usual evolution of every business in a few years. Fierce competition is practically abandoned in many lines because shrewd experience has shown that combinations are more profitable and more comfortable. These trusts have become gigantic; they have, often, a complete monopoly of their products or'their service. They raise prices beyond all fairness and justice, so that they have rightfully been characterized by state and national laws as conspiracies against the pubUc welfare. The law of supply and

[30 1 demand is not operative to correct the oppression when the supply is all regulated by one combination and the demand represents an ever growing necessity.

Christian ethics must regard all unjust prices as so much robbery of men, all the more reprehensible because the monopoly has rendered men helpless to resist. All individuals in the trust are personally responsible to God. The serviceable decision of Sir Edward Coke ''that corporations have no souls" is vicious. The men in the corporation have souls and, what is more to the purpose of justice, they have bodies, which the law is finding and visiting with punishment for these crimes of business. ''The man is the criminal in every case " is now the decision of a righteous judge. These oppressions are monstrous when they deal with the necessities of the poorest poor. Even Robin Hood would not despoil the poor.

3. Slowly there is evolving a genuine Christian cooperation. The groups of cooperative farmers in the south of Ireland under the noble leadership of Sir Horace Plunkett, the wonderfully successful groups in Denmark, in France, and now many in America, are the true brotherhood in business. They already cover production, marketing, banking, and mercantile enterprise. About forty farmers constitute a working group. One m_an is made purchaser of supplies for all; thus the troublesome middleman is eliminated. One man manages the marketing of all products, others manage the merchandising and banking in trusteeships for the group. This permits individual initiative, the largest use of special ability, and the power of combination without injustice or oppression. Moreover, it promotes the best motives and brotherly character of all. It is true Christianity up to the modern spirit using the latest great opportunities of civilization. It is better from the standpoint of character development and individual power and satisfaction to conscience than state socialism, which in the countries named it is rapidly displacing in the popular mind. It is better than individual competition because it seeks the prosperity of all by aU, and is most successful when all are doing well. It is the most significant social movement of the times in the industries. ^ While thus far applied chiefly to farming communities it is plainly just as practicable for towns and even cities, to which it is surely working its way.

Professional life — in medicine, law, teaching, journalism, in the ministry, and in statecraft — has its well-defined ethics. The physician must not advertise nor trench upon his fellow practitioner in unguarded utterances reflecting upon him. He must treat the poorest poor with the same devotion as the millionaire patient. So the code continues. There is a peculiarly delicate relation between physician and physician which should be conscientiously preserved, but the duty to the patient and to the patient class surely is paramount. The physician lives to serve ^ John Graham Brooks, "Lectures at Chautauqua," N. Y., 1909. [32]

the patient, not to defend the bad work of a fellow practitioner, except within certain limits, as when there is possibihty of error made in good faith or because of present imperfect knowledge, for then the standing and esprit de corps of the profession are involved.

No class of professional men — not even the minister of the gospel — has such a high and self-denying spirit as the doctor of medicine. The great work physicians have done in preventive measures, in thorough sanitation, in the stamping out of epidemics and contagious diseases, and in popular teaching of more healthful living, has already seriously cut into the income of many physicians. Yet the physicians themselves are leading in all that means reduced amount of sickness, to their own pecuniary loss. The skillfully drawn portrait of Doctor MacLure in "The Bonnie Brier Bush" captured the heart of the world for physicians in general. All honor to the unworldly men, and God's blessing upon their efforts to banish all diseases and causes of disease.

But what shall be thought of a combination of physicians for absolute mutual protection against legal suits for malpractice? Doubtless the physician is'pecuHarly liable to blackmail, and attendance at court, win or lose, is extremely costly to him, as the blackmailer knows only too well. But surely, if the trust of physicians makes itself responsible for the unqualified legal defense of every kind of practitioner and renders difficult if not impossible the