Morning journal and courier., 1881-12-02
Japanese Honesty rE,.o,nn fha Ianar1 WaakIv Mail. l

You have dealt with a certain tradesman for years and found him scrupulously up- ripht. Never once has he failed to point out defects. however trivial, in the goods he sells YOU. nor ever hesitated to take back any thing that falls short of the quality described. Yet Vour friend goes, stranger, to the same merchant, and is not only grievously oyercharped, but is otherwise palpably vic timized With us such conduct could only receive one epithet. In Japan nobody would be more surprised than the offending mer- chant if you called him dishonest He refers his conduct to the simplest possible pr1nel- ples, Different merchants, he says, have different standards of profit Some are con- tent with per- cent, some consider 10 minimum and some look for 20 or 30, but none acknowledge any limit save occasion. Let only opportunity be favorable, and even your western trader will pocket his cent per cent without Ainching. Did you never, he will probably add, did you never, in the ear ly days of your intercourse with the Orient, purchase for string of cash goods that you knew to be worth as many pieces of silver! Were you then acting dishonestly? You think not, so do I for you gave the owner of the goods the full local value of his merchandise, perhaps more, and your heavy gains were the product of your own superior shrewdness or business experience, whichever men please to call it. That shrewdness is property, valuable, but not always marketable, and to invest it at the highest possible rate of in- terest is, according to my creed, legitimate business. When therefore foreigner and stranger visits my store, and shows that he understands neither the value nor the quality of the articles he sees, should be defraud- ing not only my own shrewdness but also the experience of those who are better informed, did I not sell him my goods on the most favorable terms. I respect honesty no lies than you do, but the range of my obligation is wider,. 1 owe duty to my own acqu re- ments, and owe duties, variously impera- tive, to the capacities of my customers. When you bid me treat them all alike you remove the premium that properly belongs to the higher standards of mercantile ability, whether possessed by the buyer or the seller. Thus you will fnd--to revert to our shifty tradesman-that there will be no hesitation afterward about confessing the deception practiced upon the foreign stranger. You yourself before you became an Intimate were similarly treated, but your subsequent re- monstrances elicited an apology only for the want of courtesy to you personally, not at all for the violation of an abstract principle. To practice integrity for it's own sake was a luxury confined to the gentleman of old Jap an. His position made him superior to all those calculations of pecuniary expediency that found place in the merchants moral ledger. His word was as good as his bond, and his vocabulary included no more oppro- brious epithet than t'tradesman-ike. But if this was among the distinguishing attri- butes of his station, we might reasonably conclude that his example would beget imita, tors in the social stratum next below his own. And so it was. Beyond all question there have been and are many merchants in Japan whose business conduct satisfies the strictest standard of probity ever set up by any socie- ty. The balance of experience tends, how ever, to show that these are to be regarded rather as exceptional than typical. In most cases the influences of environment, opper. tunity and expediency seem to be more pow. erful than the attractions of principle.