Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-01-17
DUTY OF THE SELLER.
Must he Tell the Purchaser Truth
Which Would Spoil the Sale9
TWO BUSINESS MEMS OPINIONS.
The .Employe Who Is Required toDo What
He Thinks Unchristian.
LAST OF MIR. HODGES TRADE SERMONS
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArCH.l
Concluding Paper.


Concluding Paper.
One business man who saws that ''no one
will deny that there exist unprincipled men
in all occupations" but who feels SORRY
for anyone who claims it for q necessity, "
writes as follows: ''The honest merchant
marked his prices in plain figures, and all
purchasers Jared alike. This plan was SO
fast destroying the trade of the unscrupu-
lous dealers that they had to adopt it, and
to-day the majority of the retail dealers
have this system; we may say from policy
rather than from principle; but the result is
that the innocent purchaser does not pay
the price of a good article for poor one.
Ny correspondent mentions only the
retail trade. understand that it is more
and more getting to be the custom in all
trade A fixed and honest figure for every
class of goods, with exactly SO much dis
count for such-and-such an amount of pur-
chase, and such-and-such length Of time,
with possible variation according to the
rating of the customers credit at the COM
mercial agencies, the whole matter fairly
understood and lived up to, would vastly
increase the proportion OF Christian deallng
in the business world.
Tho Growth Of Public Opinion.
The passing of such law as the inter-
State commerce act, with its brand OF legal
criminality upon unchristian practices
heretofore countenanced by processing
Christians, shows the need of business
reformation, and indicates the growth of
public opinion in a Christian direction.
The formation ofunions of employees, adopt
ing such q code of ethics as the one from
which I quoted last Sunday, proves o
recognition on the part of business men OF
unchristian elements in business which
even the Interstate commerce law has not
remedied, and evinces determination with
out recourse to law, to do away with these
evils in their own transaction of their own
business.
Several things ought, think, to be re-
membered in estimating the general moral
ity of business life. One is that there are
dishonest men in business as there are in
every department of human existence. And
1t is the dishonest men who get their names
into the newspapers The man who is
struck by the cable car attracts the atten-
tion of the whole neighborhood. Thousands
of other people go by unpoticed. There is
the same proportion between the men who
deliberately lie and steal and the vast
company of honest Christians who would
sooner cut off their right hand.
Many Mistakes of Judgment
Another matter which has been brought to
nv observation is the grea: difficulty of ale
ways distinguishing the right from the wrong.
Questions Of casuistfy come up in every
business office every day. They have to be
settled Immediately. Some sort of rough
and approximate judgment must at once be
rendered Sometimes that judgment is
against equity and Christianity. But I be-
lieve that in more than nine cases out Of
ten the man who is in respectable busi-
ness acts as he honestly thinks just and
right.
Two of nv correspondents, for example,
propose almost the same case, and decide it
differently. The case is the amount of in
formation. which the seller ought to give
the buyer in a bargain One writer who is
one of the wealthiest and best-known citi-
zens of Pittsburg, mentions that eve can
withhold truth on proper occasions without
falsifying. A reasonable construction of
the principle" he SAYS, "when applied to
business transactions, requires us to regard
those with whom we deal as our equals, as
having equal ability and better opportunity
of knowing what best suits themselves. We
are not therefore bound to become their
guardians, or to advise them as to what we
consider their best interest in the transac-
tion..
The Sellers Duty to himself
sDutv to ourselves dispenses with this
where it would conflict with our own inter
ests The healthy application of the prin-
ciple requires no such transcendental
morality even where, in our own opinion,
it would be better for our customer not to
make the deal We would often be mis-
taken; he might be shrewder or know more
than we, and society prospers better to let
each attend to his own business and judge
what is to his own interests. AT the same
time" adds my correspondent. 1--WE are
not allowed to hold back the truth in a
manner calculated to mislead or deceive.
The purchaser, under such circumstances,
deals at arms length with the seller. and
cannot complain afterward that he was
cheated in case the transaction does not
turn out as he expected"
On the other hand, this is the way in
which that bargain appears from the point
of view by the man who lost in it "The
object of business, "says this correspondent,
ais to gain, and if the profit and loss show
balance on the wrong side, the business
must be abandoned as a loss or sold to some
one else Now it NAV be doubtful morality
to sell to another what you won't any
longer own, because you can't make it pay
and perhaps the buyer can. 1t is not low
ing him as yourself. But in business that
is none of your business. He looks out for
himself-the law presumes he does-and the
law provides a remedy through its courts
a lunatic or other such incapable person, or
when the transaction was effected under
clear Misrepresentation. The shrewder
man gains by his weakness. The sensation
is not pleasant when you realize this at your
own cost, and you never feel quite the same
towards that man afterwards"
The Ethics OF the Case.
Now, there are the two sides to that bar
gain. And there are the differing views of
tU honest men as to the Christianity of
that transaction. confess that my SYM
pathies in this matter are with the second
writer The first position lends an easy ops-
portunity to the heresy- of Cain. Gam
my brothers keeper?" is not question to
which, when put directly, any of us would
like to answer ..tno." doubt the Chris
tianity of treating the buyer as an equal I
cannot imagine the Lord Jesus as a carpen-
ter at Nazareth treating his customers
barely as equals, and throwing all the blame
of bad bargain on their shoulders. I am
sure that he would treat men not as equals
(that is the language of contention), but as
brothers. And 1 knowiof more instances
than like to think of where men treated as
equals bv Christian men, shrewder than
they were, have come out of their losing
bargains, having just the feeling of which
the second writer speaks, and having it not
only against the man who took their money
in that perfectly legal way, but against the
whole Christian religion which he repre-
sents Hard bargains at arms length have
kept hundreds of men out of the Church of
Christ
have snokeu of the dishonest minority