THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CXLIX.

MARCH, 1879.

ARTICLE I-BUSINESS ETHICS, PAST AND PRESENT.

A POOR man, who is well versed in Political Economy, lately told me that the reading of Ricardo had convinced him that there is no hope for the laboring class under the existing system of industry. Competition, as he was compelled to think, must sooner or later reduce working men to the starvation limit, and keep them there. In times of exceptional distress it must drive them below that limit, and only restore them to it through the lessening of their number by actual death. His hopes for the future of laborers were founded on a change of the industrial system, which should substitute coöperation for competition.

This man is representative; his premises are those of Ricardo and his school, and his conclusions are those to which many readers are forced. The future of the laboring class is not attractive, as these writers picture it; and this fact shows the reason why some intelligent men, besides many ignorant ones, take refuge in socialism. I have endeavored, in a former Article, to show the power of moral influences to revolutionize systems of industry, and propose now to indicate their power, without overthrowing an established industrial system, to re

move much of the evil that exists within it. The future of the laboring class, even under the present system, is not so dark as it must appear when these forces are not recognized.

The reasoning of Ricardo is based on the existence of unrestricted competition. Such competition is impossible in any collection of men that can be termed a society; it has never existed, in fact, since the time of Adam. Competition, pure and simple, implies the exclusive action of selfish motives, and would be a savage and ignoble strife, in which every man's hand would be for himself and against his neighbor. Fowls in a barnyard running together for a handful of corn, apes in a cage greedily snatching pieces of bread from each other, present but an imperfect picture of what would result from the exclusive action of selfish motives among men. Competition unrestricted is a monster as completely antiquated as the saurians, of which the geologists tell us.

To find anything approaching unrestricted competition in actual life we must go farther back than history reaches, beyond the lake dwellers of Switzerland, and the cliff villagers of neolithic times, quite to the isolated troglodyte, the companion of the cave bear. Even here the illustration will be incomplete; for the troglodyte had a family, and within the sacred precinct of the home higher motives predominated. The intercourse of this rudest of men with others of his kind may however be conceded, safely enough, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to have been dictated by the lowest of motives, and to have tolerably well illustrated the operation of pure competition. The supposition may be a slander on the troglodyte; but, as he is now past hearing of it, and is not present with his club to avenge it, we may admit the supposition that the intercourse of the isolated cave-dwellers with each other presented an illustration of competition unqualified by moral forces. Two wild huntsmen, pursuing the same animal, or clubbing and tearing each other for the possession of its body, when slain, present a sufficiently accurate picture of the nature of the process. Though such were, in fact, the conduct of cavedwellers toward each other, outside of the family circle, it is certain that, within that circle, the wild passions elsewhere predominant were restrained by sentiments of personal affection;

and in this we have the germ of a series of phenomena of the highest importance.

In this case love toward relatives and enmity toward neighbors are the ruling motives. The differing motives dictate opposite lines of conduct. Reflection serves to define and formulate the two opposite modes of action; that which is customary in the treatment of relatives, and that which is characteristic in the treatment of enemies, come to be understood and recognized, and a rude code of rules is formed for the guidance of members of the favored circle in their treatment of each other. Gradually, from the depths of a nascent faculty of reason, a deeper intuition than any yet experienced comes to lay its sanction on the code which family affection and custom have established. In the vivid picture-language of Genesis, the fruit of "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" is plucked. A rude perception of right and wrong is attained; the glimmering light of a moral principle that is to direct the development of the race makes itself for the first time perceptible, and the troglodyte is no longer as an animal, innocent because ignorant, but "as a god, knowing good and evil." Such is the teaching of Genesis and of science concerning the origin of moral influences in human society.

The code of right and wrong is at first confined to the family; but in time sufficiently close intercourse is established between neighboring families to develop common ideas of right and wrong in matters pertaining to a larger circle, and the moral code extends itself to the neighborhood. Neighbor. hoods unite into tribes, and the process repeats itself. In time the final step is taken; the moral code receives the sanction of a legal enactment, with penalties for violation, and is thus enabled to exert its greatest influence. Competition has now received definite limitations within the circle where the ethical influences are exerted.

The growth of these influences, both extensively and intensively, is a matter of history. They have grown extensively as tribes have united into nations, and as nations, by the development of international law, have taken on the rudimentary form of what promises to be a world state, an organic unity bounded by no narrower limits than those of the globe we

inhabit. There is no quarter of the world, at present, un. reached by ethical influences, and none, consequently, where competition is not subject to some limitations.

Intensively, these moral forces have grown with general civilization, acquiring, within a given local circle, a constantly increasing power, and limiting competition more and more. The method of competition which spared neither life nor limb gave place to a method which respected the lives of the contestants; murder was prohibited while robbery was still tolerated. Human bodies were first excluded from the list of articles to be competed for. It was a sort of legal exemption, the first and most beneficent of homestead laws. The dwelling which the soul of man inhabits might not be seized by his creditors, and the occupant ejected. A farther development of moral force suppressed open robbery; and it now remains for a still higher development of the same influence to suppress certain forms of robbery which are, as yet, unreached by law.

Sir Henry Maine has shown that the family system, which excluded competition entirely, extended itself to the village community, which was the germ of the modern state. Within the village all relations were fraternal, and property was held largely in common; while on the mark, or boundary, the germ of the modern market, the relations were somewhat hostile. It was on the mark that members of different communities met to buy and sell. Here they were free from the moral influences which existed among members of the same community, and competition was, therefore, relatively unrestrained. The highly developed family code acquired its greatest extent in the medieval village, and has diminished since that time. The modern market is a fusion of village and mark; the circle within which competition is excluded has been reduced to a zero; but, in compensation, much of the humanity which characterized the dealings of villagers with each other has extended itself to the entire operations of trade. Though the village community is extinct in western countries, its influence survives in the mitigating influences which make themselves felt in the formerly harsh and hostile dealings of the market; and though the mark, as such, is extinct, its influence also survives in the latent brutality that characterizes much of customary business intercourse.

It is a common remark that business practices are not what they ought to be, and that consciences otherwise sensitive are apt to become callous when pecuniary interests are concerned. The forms of business depravity which attract our attention are too apt to be deprecated in a helpless manner; we regret them, but do not attack them with much confidence. Religion has held itself quite too much aloof from this particular contest; and so effectual has been, at times, the separation of religious life from business life, that seeming piety and business meanness have not been mutually exclusive characteristics, but have, in too many cases, been markedly and offensively existent in the same persons. Instances enough of this kind will occur to every one. It is not realized that moral influences have for their particular and legitimate function to suppress this remnant of natural ferocity, which continues to do by legal methods what used to be done by processes more open and violent; neither is it realized how radical would be the effect of a comparatively slight reformation in this direction. Very much of the evil that oppresses the laboring class is due to a current violation of right in one specific direction.

The theory of the modern bargain appears to be that of the mediæval judicial combat; let each do his worst, and God will protect the right. As in medieval times, it has too frequently happened that providence has protected the wrong. There is a standard that determines the justice or injustice of bargains, and the so-called "higgling of the market" is utterly inadequate to secure conformity to that standard. How soon will the moral forces of society take in hand the higgling process? Precedents teach that they will do it at some time, but it would be better not to have to wait a geological era for the effect to be realized. May we not reasonably ask the preachers and teachers of society to add this question at once to the list of those used for the examination of candidates for their professions: "Do you believe, and will you teach, with all the power that God shall give you, that bargains must be mutually advantageous to be morally justifiable?"

Wealth is legitimately acquired by the process of production, not by the process of exchange; and one of the imperative duties of the new Political Economy is to draw the line