COMMERCIAL LYING by H. H.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1879

COMMERCIAL LYING.

By H. H.

“The label and description on every box of that soap is a lie from beginning to end, and Mr. —— (the manufacturer) knows it as well as I do, and yet he continues to make it, and to print and affix these labels and descriptions to every box of it he makes, and to send it all over the land; and he is growing rich by it, though he knows the soap itself is a fraud, and the label on it is a downright falsehood!”

Such were the words of a traveling salesman who was selling this very soap in town after town, in State after State, and who said he knew it was wrong, but he would be discharged in a moment if he told the truth about the soap he was selling. And yet the manufacturer, and employer of this and many other agents, would have said he was outrageously insulted had any one charged him with lying, or dishonesty, or want of integrity in his business.

Another traveling salesman came to his minister to ask, “What shall I do? I am sent out by my employer,” he continued, “to sell goods by the sample. If I were to tell just what I know is the truth about them, I could not sell a yard; and it is only by misrepresentation and downright lying that I am able to make good sales. And yet if I do not make sales I shall be discharged at once. I feel every day that it is wrong, and that the statements I am obliged to make are falsehoods and deceptions. And yet if I don’t make them I can’t sell goods; and if I don’t sell goods I shall lose my place, and my little family be left without bread. What shall I do?”

Another, a clerk in a large city store, whose attention had been awakened to the subject of religion, said to a friend who was urging him to a Christian life, “It’s no use, I cannot be a Christian and keep my place in the store. To sell goods, we have to put on false marks, and tell downright falsehoods; and Mr. L. (the employer) and every clerk in the store knows it; and no man can be a Bible Christian and do what we are all every day doing. Mr. L. is a member of the church, and attends all their meetings, and gives to the causes of benevolence; but he seems to have no more idea of Christian principle in selling goods than if the one had no relation whatever to the other.”

A well-known minister of the gospel went, some time ago, into the store of a leading merchant-tailor in the city of ——, and looking at some cloths, asked the cost of a suit from a piece that pleased him. When the price was stated, he replied that it seemed much too high. “It is somewhat high,” replied the tailor, “but these fine English cloths cost us high prices; but then they wear so much better and longer to make up for it, that we think them, in the end, cheaper than American goods.” “How much less,” asked the minister, “is the cost of a suit from your best American cloth?” “We do not keep American goods,” said the tailor. “Most of our customers are particular, and like the best kind of goods, and so we keep only English cloths.” And, as illustrating and impressing his remarks, he pointed the minister to the labels and wrappers, bearing the names of the English manufacturers and dealers, who were some of the first in Great Britain.

After some further talk the minister ordered a suit, which in due time was sent home. And soon after, having it on, he called in at the counting-house of Mr. B., a large manufacturer with whom he was well acquainted, and while sitting in conversation with him, Mr. B., looking at the suit he had on, remarked pleasantly, “I’m glad to see, Mr. ——, that you are patronizing our factory.” “What do you refer to?” asked the minister. “To the suit of clothes you have on,” said Mr. B., “for I see they are from the cloth we make at our mills.” “Why no!” said the minister, “I got them from Mr. C. (the tailor), and he deals only in English goods, though he charged me an extra price for his work.” “English goods!” said Mr. B., with a smile; “why, Mr. C. buys all his cloths from us. He has none other in his store. I should know them anywhere.” The minister, greatly surprised, said, “You must, I’m sure, be mistaken, for Mr. C. not only told me that he kept only English goods, but I saw the wrappers and labels, with the English marks and the manufacturers’ names on them, on every piece as I looked at them.” “Yes,” said Mr. B., “we prepare all those wrappers and labels; we have them printed by the ream; there” (pointing with his finger) “you see a pile of them; and as I said before, Mr. C. buys all his cloths of us, and he has not a yard of English goods in his store!”

Here, then, was a leading merchant-tailor, in a leading city of our land, deliberately and habitually working with a leading manufacturer to pass off American goods as English; the tailor deliberately lying to his customer,

and saying the cloths were English; the manufacturer preparing the labels to help on the lie; the tailor exhibiting these labels to make his lie pass for the truth; and both doing this as an every-day business; and yet both men would feel outraged if any one had called them to their face what they really were, cheats, and liars, and villains. And these are but a few of scores of similar cases, in which men, in the way of business, are debauching their own consciences, and teaching their clerks and dependents to be deceivers and cheats, and undermining the morals of trade, and forfeiting the confidence of truly upright men, and laying up a fearful account for themselves against the day of Judgment.

In view of such facts, we would ask one or two questions, which we commend to the thoughtful consideration of all, and especially of all business men.

1. Are there two standards of truth, of integrity, of honesty, one for the ways of business, and another for other spheres of life? And if you are not truthful and honest in the one sphere, are you likely to be in the other?

2. Is your example and teaching in the ways of business likely to do good to young men, or to corrupt their principles; to keep them out of the kingdom of Heaven, or to lead them into it; to make them high-minded, honorable, truthful men of business, or cheats, and liars, and swindlers?

3. At the bar of conscience, is not a commercial lie as bad as any other kind of lying? And at the day of Judgment, will not the business liar go down to death, under as deep a condemnation as any other? At that great day will it not be found true, that “all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”—H. H., in Christian Weekly.