The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-06-27

VhOAO 10 oIiOHS ueLudDu IN a DuSy
center, haven't right to fix fancy
price on it and wait till the pressure
for it obliges buyer to come to my
terms?
Such are samples of a score of cases
in which men defend their selfishness
by the question which in Jesus par
able defended generosity.
The claim of right to do what we
will with our own is being gradually
limited by law. In a great city a
man is no longer allowed to build
just as he pleases. Nor is a steamboat
company allowed to carry as many
passengers as it will. Nor are pa
rents allowed to do as they will with
their children in the matter of wage
working or of schooling. Nor may a
man sell certain kinds of goods with
out license, and some he may not sell
at all. In such cases the law says in
effect; "You may do what you will
with your own, provided what your
will is for public welfare"
Extreme Socialists demand that
the business of the country shall be
put mostly under public manage
ment. This wild proposition is next
door to truth. The truth is that all
private business is sort of public
trust-ttat is, it is for the public
benefit, including, of course, the ben
efit of the man who carries it on. 1t
is to be worked for all tits worth, not
to him alone, but also to those whose
wants he supplies. By supplying
their wants he makes his living. The
more and the better he does it the
more he makes by it. But is he to
think only of what he thus gets and
not equally of what he thus gives?
This, then, is his public trust, to
care as much for what he gives as for
what he gets; to make his business
worth as much for public as for
private benefit. Many businessmen
now act on this social theory. Con-
science and sense of personal hon
or, stimulated by the public approval
of their example, may be relied on to
bring it ultimately into general adop-
ton. The public odium attached to
some great fortunes, amassed by
men who have done Business on the
piratical theory that it is a cruise for
spoils, bears witness to the truth they
defy-that all legitimate business
exists for public service, and should
be regarded by conscience as kind
of public trust.
In claiming the right to do what
we will with our own no moral man
means to insist on anything more
than the moral right. A question
now rises about the limit of our moral
right in some things that are legally
ours. We have made use of the
world as we found it, and have there
by come into possession of more or
less. But the world as we found it
was made for us by the society or
partnership of people, to which we
belong-say, one nation, partner
ship that lives on while it's members
are born and die. The young man
now entering active life finds that
this partnership has made for him a
rich country out of wilderness, has
secured for him we'll guarded rights
at cost of much blood and treasure;
has accumulated for him through the
labor of centuries stores of profitable
knowledge; has trained steam and
electricity to serve him; has given
him an education costing more than
his parents paid for it. Where the
hard working pioneers cleared the
forest and defended their cabins from
the savage he now shares the richly
varied lie and opportunities of a
great city.
Que who stands thus on the shout
ders Of others and plucks fro the
top Of the tree its ripest fruit needs
to remind himself how it came into
his hand. 1t is his own, as against
any individual claimant. But as
against the partnership which has
made the world for him, with the OPP
portunities it opens to him. it certain
ly is not all his own. The science and
art, the law and gov rnment, the tools
and machinery, of civilization which
he had no hand in pro iucing, have
all contributed to it. So far az any
thing not his own has gone into it,
something should come out of it. On
so much of what we call our own
there is just lien. This lien is not
discharged by current taxes. These
merely keep things going as they now