ADULTERATION, BRIBERY, AND GAMBLING
After the terrible national crime of deadly employments it is almost
an anti-climax to enumerate the vast mass of dishonesty and falsehood
that pervades our commercial system in every department. Almost every
fabric, whether of cotton, linen, wool, or silk, is so widely and
ingeniously adulterated by the intermixture of cheaper materials
that the pure article as supplied to our grandparents is hardly to
be obtained. Of this one example only must serve. Calicoes have been
successively dressed with such substances as paste and tallow; then
with the still cheaper china clay and size; and in some cases from 50
to 90 per cent. of these latter materials have been sold as calico
for exportation to countries inhabited by what we term savages.
These people only found out the deception when the need for washing
or exposure to tropical rains reduced the material to a flimsy and
worthless rag, as I have myself witnessed in some parts of the Malay
Archipelago.[56:A]
[56:A] These facts are given in the Ninth Edition of the
"Encyclopædia Britannica." In recent editions the article
_Adulteration_ is limited to food and drugs. In "Chambers'
Encyclopædia," cotton, linen and woollens are included among
adulterated fabrics.
Even worse is the adulteration of almost every kind of prepared
food—including the showy sweetmeats which tempt our children—with
various chemicals, which are often injurious to health, and sometimes
fatal; while even the drugs we take in the endeavour to cure our
various ailments are frequently so treated as to be useless or even
hurtful. Along with this form of dishonesty is what may be termed
simple cheating in the description of goods sold, especially as to
quantity. Threads and fabrics are generally shorter or narrower than
stated, giving a larger profit when sold in enormous quantities in our
great retail shops.
Then, again, there is a widespread system of bribery of servants
or other employees in order to obtain more customers or to secure
contracts; and though these are all criminal offences, and a great
host of inspectors and official analysts are employed to discover and
convict the offenders, yet so few people are willing to take the
trouble and lose the time and money involved in putting the law into
motion, that a very large percentage of these offences go undiscovered
and unpunished.
Yet another and more serious form of plunder of the public is carried
on by means of Joint Stock Companies, of which there are now more
than 50,000 in England and Wales. In the year 1911 the number of new
companies was 5,959, while 4,353 ceased to exist, giving an increase
of 1,606 in the year. The Limited Liability Act was passed in 1855,
in order that the public might invest their savings in companies, and
thus share in the profits of our industry and commerce. It was supposed
to be quite proper that anyone should benefit by the enterprise and
industry of others; but to do so is essentially immoral, and has
resulted in a vast system of swindling and terrible losses to the
innocent investors. The promoters, directors, secretaries and bankers
of these companies always gain; those that take up the shares often
lose; and the amount of misery and absolute ruin of those who fondly
hoped to add to their scanty incomes, and have been deluded by the
names of well-known public men among the directors, is incalculable.
Our Stock Exchanges, too, are used largely for pure gambling which,
owing to its vast extent and being carried on under business forms, is
perhaps more ruinous than any other. But this form of gambling goes
on unchecked, and is generally accepted as quite honest business.
Yet ordinary betting on races and other forms of direct gambling are
hypocritically condemned as immoral and criminal.
The vast fabric of our Foreign Trade in food, or the raw materials of
our manufactures, is also used to support perhaps the greatest system
of gambling the world has ever seen. The fluctuating prices of corn or
cotton, of coal or mineral oil, of iron and other metals, in the great
markets of the world, are used in two ways by a large community of
gamblers, who not only do not require the goods they buy, but who never
see nor possess them. The ordinary speculator who buys when prices are
low, to sell again at a profit, without himself being able to influence
the rise or fall of price, is a pure gambler who thinks he can foresee
the changes of the market price in the immediate future. But the great
capitalists who, either singly or by means of what are called rings or
combines, purchase such vast quantities of the special product as to
create a scarcity in the market, leading to a large rise of price, are
ingenious robbers rather than gamblers, because, by clever dealings
with such a monopoly, often aided by false rumours widely circulated
in newspapers owned or bribed by them, they are able to make enormous
profits at the expense of those who are obliged to purchase for actual
business purposes or for daily use. This is one of the methods by which
the great millionaires and multi-millionaires of the world accumulate
their wealth, every penny of which is at the cost of the consuming
public.
This is certainly as immoral as any of the petty forms of swindling
with marked cards, loaded dice, or the wilful losing of a race; yet the
possessors of such wealth are usually held to be clever business men,
whose morality is not questioned.
All these inconsistencies as regards the moral status of various kinds
of gambling or dishonest speculation arise from our inveterate habit
of dealing with limited cases, each judged on its supposed merits as
to consequences, instead of looking to fundamental principles. Why is
gambling immoral? Not because it is a game of chance, entered into
for mere amusement, even when played for small money stakes which are
of no importance to any of the players. The fundamental wrong arises
whenever it is used for obtaining wealth or any part of the player's
income; and the reason is, that whatever one wins, someone else loses;
while its evil nature, socially, depends upon the fact that whoever
acquires wealth by such means contributes nothing useful to the social
organism of which he forms a part. If it were taught to every child,
and in every school and college, that it is morally wrong for anyone to
live upon the combined labour of his fellow-men without contributing
an approximately equal amount of useful labour, whether physical or
mental, in return, all kinds of gambling, as well as many other kinds
of useless occupation, would be seen to be of the same nature as direct
dishonesty or fraud, and, therefore, would soon come to be considered
disgraceful as well as immoral.
We see, then, that the whole commercial fabric of our country—our
immense mills and factories, our vast exports and imports, our home
trade, wholesale and retail, and innumerable transactions in our Stock
Exchanges—is permeated with various forms of dishonesty, gambling, and
direct robbery of individuals or of the public. No class is wholly free
from it, and it increases in volume from decade to decade, just as our
boasted commerce and accumulated wealth increases.
I have here called attention to these various forms of immoral
practices because they are so often ignored. Yet they are all
officially admitted by the enormous mass of the various Royal
Commissions, Parliamentary and other Reports, as well as by the
hundreds of "Acts" by which successive Parliaments have endeavoured to
deal with them, but which have, one and all, proved to be either wholly
or partially ineffective. The reason of this failure is that in every
case symptoms and isolated results only have been considered, while
the underlying causes of the whole vast mass of social corruption have
never been sought for, or, if known, have never influenced legislation.