The business career in its public relations

Despite all that can still be said against trade practices, against the business lies that are told, the false weights and measures that are used, the trade frauds to which the public is subjected, we are nearer a high commercial standard than ever before in the world's history.

Man's confidence in man is greater than ever before, the commercial loss through fraud and dishonesty is constantly diminishing and standards are slowly but surely moving upward. The honest man's chances for success in business are better than ever before, and the dishonest man's chances for lasting commercial success are less than ever before. To grow rich by failing in business is no longer regarded as an act of cleverness. The professional bankrupt finds it more and more difficult to get credit. He soon discovers that even his cash will not win for him the attention that his poorer neighbor commands simply by his character.

Education has done splendid service in raising commercial standards. As a rule, the high-toned business man is enlightened, and, as a rule, the dishonest, unscrupulous man in business is ignorant. Great aid in the direction of raising commercial standards may be rendered by the further spreading of knowledge and enlightenment. There are still many misguided men in business who imagine that there can be no success without false weights and measures, without lies and deceit. It is the duty of every man in business, who loves the work in which he is engaged, to do whatever he can to correct this mistaken notion, and to arouse the same sense of honor in the circles of commerce that, as a rule, is found in professional life.

In the decades to come men will take as much pride in being engaged in trade as men always have taken in being members of a liberal profession.

It seemed to me that a step toward hastening such a day might be taken by inviting the best thoughts of some of the country's best minds on the subject of "The Morals of Trade."

What better platform for the expression of such ideas than that furnished by the College of Commerce of the University of California? What better way to spread such thoughts than by means of their distribution in printed form? What better way to train to higher commercial standards the minds, not only of the youths who are seeking a university education and who have in view a business career, but also of the many already engaged in business who have not had the benefit of a college training?

It seemed to me that such a step might set in motion a commercially educational force which would prove far-reaching in its influence and most helpful in raising business character.

Thoughts such as these prompted the recent establishing of the lectureship on "The Morals of Trade" in connection with the College of Commerce of the University of California.

Let the hope be expressed that this is but the beginning of a movement which may be taken up by abler and wealthier men in business and broadened in many ways. A growing literature on "The Morals of Trade," representing the best thoughts of our best minds, is likely to live and to do splendid service in elevating commerce and in raising its standards.

H. WEINSTOCK.

The purpose of this discourse is to set forth some of the social and public aspects of trade and commerce in our modern life. We have heard much in these recent times concerning the State in its relation to trade, industry, and the economic concerns of individuals and groups. Rapidly changing conditions, however, make it fitting that more should be said from the opposite standpoint;--that is to say, regarding the responsibilities of the business community as such toward the State in particular and toward the whole social organism in general.

Some of the thoughts to which I should like to give expression might perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. They might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant phrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialectic or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it that what I am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it ought to serve a practical object.

In the universities the spirit of idealism dominates. The academic point of view is not merely an intellectual one, but it is also ethical and altruistic. In the business world, on the other hand, we are told that no success is possible except that which is based upon the motive of money-getting by any means, however ruthless. We are told that the standards of business life are in conflict irreconcilable with true idealistic aims. It is this situation that I wish to analyze and discuss; for it concerns the student in a very direct way.

Our moralists point out the dangerous prevalence of those low standards of personal life and conduct summed up in the term "commercialism." We are warned by some of our foremost teachers and ethical leaders against commercialism in politics and commercialism in society. So bitterly reprobated indeed is the influence of commercialism that it might be inferred that commerce itself is at best a necessary evil and a thing to be apologized for. But if we are to accept this point of view without careful discrimination, we may well be alarmed; for we live in a world given over as never before to the whirl of industry and the rush and excitement of the market-place.

This, of all ages, is the age of the business man. The heroic times when warfare was the chief concern of nations, have long since passed by. So too the ages of faith,--when theology was the mainspring of action, when whole peoples went on long crusades, and when building cathedrals and burning heretics were typical of men's efforts and convictions--have fallen far into the historic background. Further, we would seem in the main to have left behind us that period of which the French Revolution is the most conspicuous landmark, when the gaining of political liberty for the individual seemed the one supreme good, and the object for which nations and communities were ready to sacrifice all else.

Through these and other periods characterized by their own especial aims and ideals, we have come to an age when commercialism is the all-absorbing thing; and we are told by pessimists that these dominant conditions are hopelessly incompatible with academic idealism or with the maintenance of high ethical standards, whether for the guidance of the individual himself or for the acceptance and control of the community. It is precisely this state of affairs, then, that I desire briefly to consider. And I shall keep in mind those bearings of it that might seem to have some relation to the views and aims of students who are soon to go out from the sheltered life of the university,--under the necessity, whether they shrink from it or not, of becoming part and parcel of this organism of business and trade that has invaded almost every sphere of modern activity.

I have only recently heard a great and eloquent teacher of morals, himself an exponent of the highest and finest culture to which we have attained, speak in terms of the utmost doubt and anxiety regarding the drift of the times. To his mind, the evils and dangers accompanying the stupendous developments of our day are such as to set what he called commercialism in direct antagonism to all that in his mind represented the higher good, which he termed idealism. The impression that he left upon his audience was that the forces of our present-day business life are inherently opposed to the achievement of the best results in statecraft and in the general life of the community. He could propose no remedy for the evils he deplored except education, and the saving of the old ideals through the remnant of the faithful who had not bowed the knee in the temple of Mammon. But he pointed out no way by which to protect the tender blossoms of academic idealism, when they meet their inevitable exposure in due time to the blighting and withering blasts of the commercialism that to him seemed so little reconcilable with the good, the true, and the beautiful.

To all this the practical man can only reply, that if, indeed, commercialism itself cannot be made to furnish a soil and an atmosphere in which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear glorious fruit,--then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. If it be not possible to promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercial and industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the social moralist and the political purist.

It is not a defensive position that I propose to take. I should not think it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any of those timorous and painful arguments pro and con that one finds at times running through the columns of the press, particularly of the religious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whether nowadays a man can at the same time be a true Christian and a successful business man; or whether the observance of the principles of common honesty is at all compatible with a winning effort to make a decent living.

I am well aware that the thoughtful and intellectual founder of this lectureship, under which I have been invited to speak, takes no such narrow view either of morality on the one hand or of the function of business life on the other. His definition of morality in business would demand something very different from the mere avoidance of certain obvious transgressions of the accepted rules of conduct, particularly of that commandment which says: "Thou shalt not steal." Nor, on the other hand, would his definition of the functions of business life be in any manner bounded by the notion that business is a pursuit having for its sole object the getting of the largest possible amount of money.

Those people who are content to apply negative moral standards to the carrying on of business life remind one of the little boy's familiar definition of salt: "Salt," said he, "is what makes potatoes taste bad when you don't put any on." According to that sort of definition, morality in business would be defined as that quality which makes the grocer good and respectable when he resists temptation and does not put sand in the sugar. The smug maxim that honesty is the best policy, while doubtless true enough as a verdict of human experience under normal conditions, is not fitted to arouse much enthusiasm as a statement of ultimate ethical aims and ideals.

If it were admitted that the sole or guiding motive in a business career must needs be the accumulation of money, I should certainly not think it worth while, in the name of trade morals, to urge young men who are to enter business life that they play the game according to safe and well-recognized rules. I would not take the trouble to advise them to study the penal code and to familiarize themselves with the legal definitions of grand and petit larceny, of embezzlement, or fraud, or arson, in order that they might escape certain hazards that beset a too narrow kind of devotion to business success. It is true, doubtless, that a business career affords peculiar opportunities, and is therefore subject to its own characteristic temptations, as respects the purely private and personal standards of conduct.