St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-03-22

Is it not lawful for me to do what / will
With mine own?-Matthew Xxx, 10.
Have 1 not right to pay a poor
fellow a days wages for an hours
work? That was the gist of this ques-
ton in Jesus parable. The rich land
lord had been found fault with for
giving some of his hands, who had
lost part of their day in waiting for
chance to work, as much as those that
had had full days work His in
dignant question asserts the right to
be generous. If Mr.. Tilden, and other
large-hearted men, who have had their
wills broken by selfish heirs interior
ing to divert public requests into pri-
vate pockets. could come back to say
anything about it, they would doubt
less speak out in the same strain.
But this assertion of the right to be
generous is nowadays turned about
into an assertion of the right to be
selfish. If l have the capital to drive
rival out of business by selling be-
low cost longer than he can stand it,
haven't I a right to do it? Or, if l
control the sale of necessary article,
haven't 1 a right to screw the price
L
unimproved lot, for which there is a
strong demand in a busy center,
haven't 1 right to fix a 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 parable
defended generosity.
FFha claim of obt IN
will with our own is being gradually
limited by law. In a great city a man
Is no longer allowed to build lust as
he pleaSeS Nor is a steamboat COM
pany allowed to carry as many passen-
gers as it will. Nor are parents al
lowed to do as they will with their
children in the matter of wage-work-
ing or Of schooling Nor may a man
sell certain kinds of goods without Ii
cense 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 you will is for pub
lie welfare.
Extreme socialists demand that the
business of the country shall be put
mostly under public management. This
wild proposition is next door to a truth.
The truth is that all private business is
a sort of public trust-that is, it is for
the public benefit, including, of course.
the benefit Of the man who carries it
on. 1t is to be worked for all it is
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 trust, his public trust 10
vi nat ha 1i1r
he gets; to make his business worth as much
for public as for private benefit Many
business men now act on this social theory
Conscience and a sense of personal honor
stimulated by the public approval of their
example, may be relied on to bring it ulti-
mately into general adoption. The public
amassed by men who have done business on
the piratfcal theory that it is cruise for
Spolls, 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 in
slst 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 1t, and have thereby come info nos
session 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 partnership that lives on
while its members are born and die. The
young man now entering active life finds
that this partnership has made for him
rich country out of wilderness, has secured
for him well guarded rights at costs 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 Woodworking pioneers
cleared the forest and defended their cabins
from the savage, he now shares the richly
varied life and opportunities of great city.
others and plucks from the top of the tree
its ripest fruit. needs to remind himself how
1t came into his hand. 1t is his own as
against the partnership, which has made the
world for him. with the opportunities it opens
20 him, 1t certainly is not all his own The