FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By Prof. George W. Rine
THE UNIVERSALITY OF GRAFT.
WHEN the 1899 edition of the Century Dictionary went to press the word "graft" was tabooed as slang and therefore unworthy of serious recognition. But the thing itself, since that date, has become so notoriously prevalent that the acceptance of the term has been forced into current literary language. Mr. W. J. Ghent defines the term as "the act of practising extortion." Congressman Robert Baker of New York gives this informal definition: "In the last analysis it is the obtaining of something for nothing—through collusion." In truth, the word expresses several of the multifarious manifestations of the greed with which present-day society has become infiltrated. It is hardly necessary to say that in every state, county, city, township, and hamlet, in the United States, graft flourishes. Mr. Ghent recently declared that an adequate history of graft in the United States would require a greater quantity of print than that contained in the latest edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica." A recognition of the universality of graft in private business, as well as in public affairs, has everywhere found its way into the public prints. A noted writer on economics declares that a few years ago it would have been regarded as both anarchy and treason to even mention the universality of graft; "but that the growing consciousness of the fact makes silence no longer possible." Graft in Private Business.
All candid, competent observers admit that the genius of graft asserts itself in nearly all branches of human activity. "Wherever something can be got for nothing, wherever a pinch or a squeeze of extra profit can be made in a transaction, wherever falsehood can be made to do duty for truth, or pretense for accomplishment or service, there is observed a metamorphosis of the protean genius of graft." We have become so accustomed to read of graft and other forms of fraud in political affairs that new revelations of such graft no longer surprise or even interest most of us. Should you therefore ask the average citizen whether private or public business is the more corrupt, he will promptly answer that public business is the worse. He would most probably point to the recent post-office and Indian management scandals. But, without a single exception, those who have made a thorough study of graft, most emphatically declare the reverse to be true. Mr. Steffens has proved conclusively that private corporate business is responsible for the corruption of politics in Pittsburg; that it has so far perpetuated political debauchery in Philadelphia; and that it financed the return of Tammany to power in New York City. In short, wherever political interests have been prostituted, we invariably find that the arch offender was some "big business." It is safe to say that approximately the entire domain of commercial production and distribution has become perforated with the dry-rot of graft. That prince of journalists, the editor of the Massachusetts Springfield Republican, after briefly depicting the low moral tone of the political world, says that similar, if not worse, conditions prevail in the realm of trade and finance. He declares in fiery terms that the morality of "business" is the morality of the flesh-eating carnivora, curbed and bitted, so far as may be, by those restraints of civilization, the criminal laws. Men call the results "the survival of the fittest," a phrase borrowed from biological laboratories, really signifying the triumph of ruthless force and the strongest intellect unswerved by the emotion of pity or the spirit of love. The question that "Business" asks is not, Is it right? but, Is it possible without getting into the clutches of the law? We may rest assured, too, that business never puts its questions to moral philosophers, but to crafty lawyers who know the hide-and-seek convolutions of the criminal code. Such is the muddy business morality that has obtained well-nigh universal vogue. Graft in Buying and Selling.
Somewhat more than a year ago the treasurer and selling agent of a great corporation declared that in the West it is notorious that the purchasing agents of great railways, as a rule, become rich in a few years on a yearly salary of $2,000. They have been known to build $25,000 houses out of the surplusage of one year's income. The selling agent of a car-manufacturing company confessed to the writer that nine-tenths of his orders were got by tactfully bribing the purchasing agent and sometimes the president or other high official of railway companies. The bribe, he said, often consisted of a sealskin sacque for the wife of the agent or other officer. In one instance it was a horse and carriage, in another a costly yacht. The treasurer of another firm, dealing in railway supplies, admitted that whenever he knew that the purchasing agent of a given railway was about to place an order for supplies, he promptly remitted his personal check to said agent. The check—ranging from $500 to $1,000—was wondrously "potent," as the agent's order was invariably "nailed down" the next day. He added, with great gusto, that one of these impressionable agents, who never fail to succumb to the argument of graft, was a fine-looking, white-haired Scotchman, elder in a Presbyterian Church, and universally respected. This same self-confessed grafter made bold to affirm that this subtile species of graft has proved so "efficacious" that the temptation to exploit it has become irresistible throughout the world of trade. These few illustrations of graft in "business" are by no means sporadic instances, but are simply typical of a condition that is now everywhere chronic. Justifying Commercial Dishonesty.
Of all the facts incident to business graft, the saddest, the most deplorable, is that men, otherwise honest and respectable, seriously attempt to justify dishonest practises in business life. They protest that they are driven to dishonest methods by virtue of the fact that their competitors do not scruple to use the tortuous methods of the serpent. The crux of their casuistical reasoning may be expressed thus: Because my competitor is tricky and dishonest I must be tricky and dishonest, or be forced out of business. In the Independent, March 19, 1903, Mr. O. K. Stuart says: "The rigid chain of competition literally binds him [the honest trader] to use all the desperate means of his business rival—the lowest obtainable scale of wages, the most improved machinery, the most nearly automatic methods, and the same refined mendacity and mountainous exaggeration. And in many lines the exaggeration and mendacity are as necessary tools of trade as the improved machinery and automatic methods." Mr. E. A. Philbin, formerly District Attorney of the city of New York, recently wrote: "Merchants of the greatest respectability will do a thing as a good, shrewd business stroke, that according to ordinary standards of morality would be positively wrong." The adopted maxim of practically the whole realm of trade is, "Necessity knows no law." In reference to conscienceless corporations, Alfred Henry Lewis writes: "If unchecked in their law-breaking, they, by the very profits of their malefactions, compel honest folk in the same commercial walk to a choice between bankruptcy and the adoption of their felon courses." In making so sweeping a statement, Mr. Lewis is most assuredly in error. For no man, not of men, or any other power, can possibly compel "honest folk" to seek business success by immoral methods. The really deplorable fact is that there are so very few "honest folk" in these days of passionate money-getting. Mr. Lewis tells the readers of The Cosmopolitan that he was once in the soft-coal region about Pittsburg in search of information touching mines. The coal-miners, he affirms, were being obviously robbed by the mine-owners, through company stores, lying scales, and crooked screens. The robbery of the miner by the coal operator was the rule. One of the mine-owners was good enough to explain to Mr. Lewis, about as follows: There are but few honest men among coal-mine operators, and yet there are fewer still who would not prefer to deal honestly with the men, if they could. This is the trouble: Assume that I am an honest operator, and do not in any fashion gouge or skin my miners. My coal, then, at the tipple, will cost me sixty cents per ton. Suppose that next to me is a rival mine-operator who is robbing his miners by company stores, company cottages, diamond screens, and fraudulent scales, and that the aggregate of his robberies reduces the expense of mine-operation, so that he gets his coal to the tipple for fifty cents per ton. You will see that such a condition gives him an advantage over me in the market of ten cents a ton. Do you realize what that advantage means? It means one of three things. I must either quit the business, drift into bankruptcy, or rob the men. That is why the mine-operators cheat the men. The thievish small per cent, among the operators go into it of their own evil will, the others are thereby driven or dragged into it to save themselves. What wretched sophistry! what sickening drivel! Of course they must "save themselves" even if in so doing they must "rob the men." What moral ninnies these "captains of industry" show themselves to be! They must quit the business, drift into bankruptcy, or rob the men. A choice of three courses, here. No deliberation; no hesitation. The decision is instantly struck off: "I'll rob9the men." "In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves." 2 Tim. 3:1. [The remainder of this article deals with the iniquitous practices of the money lenders, of "fake" corporations, the prevalence of "graft" in city taxes, and city offices, and the significance of these things to the child of God. It will be published in our next.]