We are all traders. Each of us is endowed with some faculty, ware, or
possession which he is constantly exchanging for other things. We trade
time, talent, service, goods, acres, produce, counsel, experience,
ideals. The world is in reality a Bourse of Exchange. Each of us brings
some day his special product to the common mart.
There are traders and traders--the just and the unjust--the man of honor
and the rogue. We set values on thoughts and on transactions, on
merchandise and on philanthropies, on ideas and on accounts; and there
is a constant distribution of the affairs, as well as of the worldly
goods of men.
But in a restricted sense, we think of trade as the exchange of produce
which is material and mobile,--which may be touched, handled, weighed,
transported, bought, and sold. The substance of the earth is constantly
taking new shape before our eyes, being rearranged in kaleidoscopic
combinations, and transported from port to port, from town to town, from
sea to sea. One can look nowhere without seeing this ceaseless activity
progressing. Everywhere there is a whir of wheels, a plash of waves, a
din of assembly, as the new combinations take place.
There was a day when trade was a thing of here-and-there; a thing of
sailing ships and caravans, of merchants of Bagdad, Cairo, Venice,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Damascus. Ivory, gold, gems, precious
stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood,
camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia,
cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir,
olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones
were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor;
the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied in gems.
As time went on, the processional of traders became a processional led
out, in turn, by the merchants of one city after another. It is a
picturesque study, that of the trade-routes of the Middle Ages! There
was the Mediterranean seaboard, and there were the Baltic towns and the
Hanse towns; the Portuguese mariners and traders; the Venetian merchant
princes. There was the Spanish colonial trade; the Dutch trade of the
East Indies; the trade of Amsterdam and London. There were the
Elizabethan sea-rovers. Then came the British trade in the East Indies,
and the gradual growth of the trade of France, Germany, England, and the
United States. This is a story of human wants reaching out as
civilization advanced, and of the extending of the earth-exchange.
Everywhere there has been a correspondence between national prosperity
and increasing trade.
To-day, each man demands more of the earth's products than ever before.
He reaches out a hand for comforts and luxuries, as well as for
necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his
neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents
and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the
ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil,
steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And
hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the
comfort, success, and prosperity of many others. A single commercial
transaction to-day involves the lives of hundreds of thousands, competes
for their toil and life-blood, carries the decision of their destiny.
A great merchant is the real Kris Kringle. He stands at the centre of
exchange, distributes from the tropics and the arctic zones. He deals
out fur and feathers, books, toys, clothing, engines; ribbons, laces,
silks, perfumes; bread-stuffs, sugar, cotton, iron, ice, steel; wheat,
flour, beef, stone; lumber, drugs, coal, leather. He scatters
periodically the products of mills and looms, of shoe-shops and
print-works, fields, factories, mines, and of art-workers. He thus
becomes a social force of great power, a social law-giver, in fact.
Under his iron rule, the lives of the masses are uplifted or cast down.
As large eras open, the ethical ideals become higher. We are beginning
to inquire, as never before, into the basis of trade, the place of the
trader, the right conduct of this vast problem of Distribution upon
which hinges so much of human life and fate. All things look, not only
to the integration of trade, but to its exaltation.
Trade has ceased to be a thing of individual energy, talent, and
commercial alertness. It has risen to great proportions. The large
trader is in control of national conduit, as well as of national
expense. There is a great deal more in business than the art of making
money. Business is, at the roots, a way of making nations; of developing
the resources of a country, of handling its industries, of protecting
its commerce, of enlarging its institutions, of uplifting its training,
aspirations, and ideals. Traffic is educational. Imports influence the
national life. We may import opium or Bibles, whiskey or bread-stuffs,
locomotives or dancing pigs.
The sceptre held by Tyre and Venice is passing into our own hands. But
trade, to-day, is a matter of the imagination, as well as of the
stock-book. 11 needs a great imagination to handle the present-day
problems of business and finance. The prosperity of a nation depends
largely on the intelligence, integrity, and magnanimity of its business
men. To be narrow-minded in business, is not only intellectual
astigmatism, it is poor commercial policy. To make use of present
opportunities to control present advantages needs a great education and
a large human experience. It is the man of insight, of sympathy, of
economic ideals, who will lastingly control our national prosperity and
advance our industrial wealth.
With all this demand, the business man still stands largely in a class
by himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not
yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the
world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and
trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual
conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are
inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of
man, if he draw near inquiringly or unguardedly to the sacred place,
scholar and poet, priest, saint, and proud hand-worker alike rise up and
say, Go away.
It wears upon the heart--this spiritual isolation of the business man.
Does not he often say sadly to himself, They only want my money?
Why must he go away? What has he done, that he must be waved down? If we
discover why he must go away, we shall discover the meaning of that
great caste-line which has long been drawn, and ought no longer to be
drawn, between trade and letters, trade and the Church, trade and
social prestige.
The reason he must go away is this: He has never ruled the higher
history of man; he does not yet quite belong to the ideal-makers of the
race. Understand, I am not now speaking of the new business man, the
exceptional one, upright, cultured, altruistic, whom you and I may know;
I am speaking of a broad class-line, a class distinction.
It is a strange concept that would bar the business man from the ideal;
that would limit his life to an account-book, a ledger, a roll of
stocks, rents, and possessions, instead of granting him the freedom of
the universe, the privilege of ministering to the race. Singularly
enough, the business class is the last class that Christianity has set
free. Slaves have been given liberty; women, social companionship and
intellectual equality; manual labor has been lifted to dignity and
honor. But to break the shackles of the man of trade is the work of our
era, or of an era yet to come. Thousands of young men are daily stepping
into counting-houses, or behind sales-counters, or into independent
stores, who will never lift their eyes from their goods and
account-books, nor rise above the linen, hardware, groceries, or
house-fixtures which they sell. Such a situation is suicidal of national
prosperity, and blocks the high hopes of the world.
Lack of appreciation of the life of business is sinful and unjust. A
high-principled businessman may be one of the noblest leaders of
mankind. The world needs great business men--men who will know how to
use the resources of a country, how to plan for its industry,
manufactures, and commerce: men who understand the principles of
production and exchange; ways of transportation; systems of credit and
banking: men who know the constitution of the country, and the history
of its development; its strength and weakness, its possibilities and
needs: men who will deal honorably in business contracts, both with
buyers and employees, and also with law-making bodies: men who will
steadily try to advance international prosperity, as well as
personal wealth.
But to understand business on this plane, and to conduct it in this
large way, needs a fine education, an education built, first of all, on
a practical basis, such as the education of our common schools. Then
should follow a course in the ideals of the race, the classic studies in
language, literature, history, science, and philosophy. Then should come
a technical course, graduate or undergraduate, such as the courses
offered by the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, Wisconsin, which
include, in general, lectures and special studies in Public Law and
Politics, Business Law and Practice, Political Economy, Statistics,
Banking, Finance, and Sociology. In addition to this, there should be a
thorough knowledge of the Bible and of Christian Ethics, with a deep
heart-experience of religion.
Endowed with natural business talent, the young man who goes out into
the world with such preparation as this knows a great deal more than
just how to make money; he knows how to make it honorably and how to
spend it, in his business, family, and social life, for the public good;
he has in him the making of a statesman and a philanthropist, as well as
a man of wealth.
Two things take one into the inner circle of the ideal-makers of the
race--imagination and sympathy. Ideals cannot be bought with gold. The
ideal is always founded on integrity, progress, and common-sense. It is
preëminently practical, as well: the thing that inevitably must be, now
or hereafter, however men laugh it to scorn to-day.
Imagination is the faculty of perceiving the higher and final relations
of life, the relation of one's work to the progress of the world, and of
one's conduct: to spiritual history. What the ideal-maker tries to do is
to set holy standards that shall not pass away: to do abiding work, in
thought, deed, word; work philosophically planned, and perseveringly
carried out; work which he shall do regardless of the outer
circumstances of his life--poverty or wealth, of threats,
misunderstanding, or hoots of scorn. He is unmoved, both by the rage of
the populace and by its most tumultuous applause. He lives for truth,
not for personal advance; for progress, not for wealth or honor. What
he lays down as a precept, that he tries to live up to, in the way that
shall win the approval of the eternal years.
Sordidness in commercial life is not necessary: greed is
not foreordained. Christianity establishes a new system of
trading-philosophy, and a new basis of commercial ethics. There is a
god-like way of trade--Christ might Himself have bought and sold--else
Christianity fails of its full mission, and there remains a class of the
socially lost, of the ethically unsaved. One reason why it is so hard to
get business men into the Church, or to interest them religiously in any
way, is that ministers, in general, do not understand or appreciate
business men. In one of the most stirring sermons I ever heard, occurred
this unjust sentence: "Our country has been built up by the martyr, and
not by the millionaire." No! Our country has been built up by _both_ the
martyr and the millionaire!
Christianity projects into the world new ideals of Trade, of Gain, of
Competition, Value, and Return for Toil.
What is Trade? Is it merely a way of making money? Then there is no
ethical basis for it. "The amount of money which is needed for a good
life," says Aristotle, "is not unlimited."
One concept is: Trade is something which belongs to me. It is that part
of the world's exchange which I can get under my personal control. It
is the balance between human industries and human needs which I hold
for my part of the world, and which others are continually trying to
wrest from me, and which I must keep by all means, fair or foul.
Competition is the battle of the strongest, the quickest, the meanest! I
must know tricks. I must get in with people, get hold of some sort of
pull, learn to dissemble, to flatter, manipulate, hedge, dodge. Success
is a matter of being sly. Anything is allowable which comes out ahead,
which adds to the dollar-pile, or which makes the loudest
advertising noise!
To buy at the least, and sell at the most, regardless of the conditions
under which least and most are attained--the man who enters life with
this idea of trade in his mind might just as well be born a shark and
live to prey. Every free dollar in the world will tease and fret him,
until he sees it on its way to his own pocket. If this is all there is
in trade, the noble-minded will let it alone: it gives no human outlook.
It not only undermines personal character, it is the root of national
ignominy and dishonor.
What has Christianity to do with this shark-instinct? with the rapacity
which looks on the world as a vast grabbing-ground, and upon all natural
resources as mere commercial prey? The value of Christianity lies in its
reasonable and intellectual appeal. It does not spring upon one like a
highwayman and say, Hands up! Give me your purse! It says gently, Son,
give me thy heart. It then proceeds to refashion that heart, to fill it
with new principles and with world-dreams.
Trade is a just exchange of what one man has for what another man needs.
It may take place individually between man and man, in which transaction
a horse, an ox, or a tool may change hands. Or one man may assume a
responsibility for a number of people, and say: I will give this whole
town shoes, in return for which you may give me a house, market-produce,
clothing, and an education for my children. The thing will come out
even, if you and I are honest. Or a climate, a civilization, may give to
another that which the other lacks. We send school-books and machinery
to China; she sends us tea, matting, and bamboo. The whole right theory
of trade is a give-and-take between men and nations, based on a just
price, and with a deep law of Value, not yet wholly formulated,
underlying each transaction.
Bargains should not be one-sided. Trade, in a large sense, is a way of
exchange in which each party to the trade receives an advantage. Not
only this, it is a process of distribution, by which each one receives
the greatest possible advantage. Money-making is a secondary result: in
true trade it is not the final benefit.
Take the case of a specially helpful and paying book. The author
receives a royalty, and has an income. The publisher receives his
profits, and makes a living. The public gains inspiration and ideals.
Who is loser? This is sheer business, yet it means loving service for
all concerned.
To illustrate further: A physician has a frail child, with which the
ordinary milk in the market does not agree. To build up its health, he
buys a country place and a good cow. The child thrives. In his practice,
he sees many other frail children, and it occurs to him that they, too,
can be benefited by the same kind of care and watchfulness that he is
giving his own child. He buys more cows, has them scientifically cared
for, and his agents sell the milk. He finds himself, in the course of
time, the owner of a dairy farm, and a man of increasing income. But his
trade is not trade for the sake of money! it is trade to make sick
children strong and well. He exchanges professional knowledge, executive
ability, and human sympathy, for money; in return for which, children
receive health, parents joy, and the race a more athletic set of men and
women. This is an instance of the inner spirit of the true trade: the
spirit which may rule all trade, deny it, or discount it, or scorn it,
as you will.
Price is a value set on material, on labor, on interest, on scarcity, on
excellence, on commercial risks; it is the approximate measure of the
cost of production. The ethical price of a commodity is the price which
would enable its producer to produce it under healthful and happy
conditions--which would insure his having what Dr. Patten calls his
"economic rights."
This joyous exertion is not harmful; it is tonic. Excellence is an
inspiration, an intoxication. Let excellence, not Will-it-pass? be the
standard of exchange. From the very endeavor after excellence comes a
certain exaltation of spirit, which ennobles the least fragment of daily
toil. When the producer brings forth somewhat for sale, let him say:
There! That is the best that I can do! It is not what I tried to make of
it--the thing of my dreams--but it is the very best which, under the
given conditions, I could produce. Then the shoddy side of trade will
disappear.
The Law of Equity is the final law of trade. But in whose hands is
equity? Who appraises value? Who sets price? In whose hand is the final
price of the necessaries of life--wheat, rice, sugar, soap, cotton,
wool, coal, milk, iron, lumber, ice? The man who puts a price on an
article, as buyer or seller, enters an arena which is not only
commercial--it is judicial and ethical: he declares for what amount a
man's life-blood shall be used.
No one absolutely sets price. It is determined by far-reaching
industrial conditions, and by economic law. War, weather, famine,
stocks, strikes, elections, all have a say. Yet, to a certain degree,
there are those who rule price. As a representative of the ideal, as
executors of social trust, how shall each one use his Power of Price?
The man who has control of a price--a price for a day's labor, for
wages, for a cargo, or for any kind of product--has control of the
living conditions of the one who works for him. The question is not: How
shall I grind down price to the lowest? It is: What price will be an
ethical return to this man for his social toil?--just to me for my
brains, my capital, my energy, my distributing power,--just to him for
his brains, his time, his skill, his artistic perceptions, his fidelity
and honor? Each buyer must henceforth not only resolve: I will buy only
what I can pay for, but, what I can pay for at a just rate. So far as
lies in my power, I will make an adequate return to society for this
personal benefit.
Some one says: Do you realize that you are making a moral laughing-stock
of much of our system of trade? that you are setting an axe to that
system, more cutting than the axe of any Socialist, Nihilist, or
Anarchist in the world? Oh, no. I have simply set myself to answer the
question: How can the business man stand among the ideal-makers of the
world, so that he shall no more, in spiritual assemblies, be told to
go away?
Woman is the real economic distributer. The millionaire manufacturer
imagines that he himself runs his business. Oh, no. It is run by
farmers' wives. When they do not care for yarn or calico, his looms
stand idle for a year; the vast machinery of the world turns on woman's
little word: _I want_. Hence the education of women should include this
factor: the desire to want the right things. Extravagance is not a part
of woman's make-up; it is extraneous.
_Gain is that which permanently enriches the life._ By every act of
charity, or justice, or insight, or right barter, the soul is made more
grand. True trade everywhere may be made a new method of inspiration,
growth, and power.
Money is a makeshift of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we
never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass
wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet paid for
our trade.
The higher value of money is its spiritual capacity. Not what it will
bring me is primarily important, but what I can buy with it for the
race. Sometimes the question comes over me: What am I trading for money?
My time? My energy? My ideals? Part of my soul is passing from me: do
dollars ever repay? Hence it comes about that all money transactions are
fragmentary and symbolic.
Money may lead to poverty, or to spiritual wealth. The gift of trade is
a gift of God, as much as the gift of prophecy or song. In a right way,
we should all love gain. We are not born to go out of the world as poor
as when we came into it. We should gain stature, wisdom, strength,
influence, ideals. If our latent business capacity were more fully
aroused, we should get much more out of life. We would refuse to barter
a spiritual heritage for carnal things.
We trade thoughts and feelings. But it is very hard to trade fine
impulses with those who are intrinsically vulgar. Their treasury is
empty of spiritual coin, and their storehouse contains no
world-thoughts. We can send a caravan across the desert, a ship across
the sea, but we cannot send a Thought into a flaccid or a pompous brain.
We trade position and influence. The evil of the spoils system is not
that one gets something for something,--it is that one gets something
for something less, or for nothing. Whatever we have to give may be
rightly given; the wrong comes when we give it to the idle or unworthy.
When we trade political preferment for high merit, both the
office-holders and the country are gainers by the exchange.
Marriage is the great mart of exchange. Here the possessions of one sex
are set up against those of the other. Everywhere marriage is spoken of
as a good or a bad "bargain." Each man shall say: "Sweetheart, in Myself
I offer you the treasures of manhood. I give strength, courage,
magnanimity, action, protection, and the indomitable will." Each wife
should say: "Dear, in me are all gentleness, courtesy, beauty, grace,
patience, mercy, and hope. I, too, am brave, but my courage is of the
heart. I, too, am strong-willed, but my will is deep-set in love." As
years go on, there comes a time when Love says: "Between us now there is
neither mine nor thine. The universe is ours together!"
Human love is not all. There is yet a higher impulse. The most
business-like question that ever touches the heart of man is this: For
what shall I trade my soul? We hold our souls high: we perceive that
eternity itself is not too much to ask. And hence the highest barter is
that of the earthly for the spiritual; of the temporal for the unseen
and eternal. We say, Give me God, give me heaven, give me divine and
sacrificial Love, and I will give my heart. And thus the last
transaction is between God and the soul. Godliness is great Gain, and to
exchange earth for heaven is a satisfying and unregretted Trade.