This fact the enlightened business men of today are beginning to understand and are recognizing it as their duty to improve the conditions under which men work. The relations of employer to employe are more than economic. They are personal and ethical. The business man who thinks of his men as so many tools or machines to be worked to the utmost and then scrapped, is a shameless violator of the moral law. It is the duty of the employer to see that his men shall work under the best possible conditions, that their souls shall be properly replenished by variety of employment and by recreation, and that they shall have opportunity for mental growth.
There is a sense in which it is absolutely true that an employer is the "keeper of his employes." The busi ness man who denies it is ethically unsound.
The man who does not cooperate with his competi tors in their effort to raise standards, enforce laws and prevent unfair practices, is ethically recreant. A hundred years ago such cooperation was not practical, but today the means of rapid communications and publicity make possible what may be called solidarity or unity in any line of business or trade. That ac counts for the great increase in the number of business associations during recent years, such as the National Credit Men's Association, the American Association of Public Accountants, the American Bankers' Association. One of the ob jects of these associations is the establishment and maintenance of codes of ethics or honor. A business man who neglects to support the association that has been organized for the good of his line of business neglects a real duty.
3. The law and ethics.—It would be impossible for any legislature, however wise its members, to enact statutes embodying all the prohibitions and impera tives of the moral law. Legislatures can do no more than make illegal such practices as are generally rec ognized to be unfair and harmful to the community. When they attempt to go further, as they sometimes do, and prescribe specific rules of conduct for partic ular cases, they usually do more harm than good. Sometimes by too sweeping a law they render acts illegal which are in themselves neither culpable nor injurious to society. The Shernian Anti-Trust Act of 1890, as interpreted by the courts, proved to be a law of this kind. Its purpose was the curbing of monopoly, but its terms were so sweeping that it ex posed to indictment men who combined their busi nesses with the best of motives and without any thought of monopoly.
Ethically a man cannot justify himself by the plea that he keeps within the law. An act or practice may be entirely lawful and yet be immoral and unethical. It is possible for a business man to be morally crim inal and depraved without violating a single law of the land.
4. Codes of ethics.—Because of the varying condi tions governing conduct in.the different callings and because the law cannot possibly take them all into ac count, codes of ethics or rules of conduct have come into existence. In the old professions of law and medicine these codes are clearly defined and 'are rigidly insisted upon by practitioners. To laymen some of the features of these professional codes seem un reasonable and unfair to the public. Yet so long as these codes have the approval of our best lawyers and physicians the laymen muSt be content.
As yet nobody ha,s attempted to draft a code of ethics for business in general. Probably such a code is impracticable because of the different customs and conditions that prevail in different businesses, but the necessity for codes of ethics in business is beginning to be clearly recognized and in certain fields of busi ness definite and satisfactory progress is being made. In a not far distant future it is quite possible that cer tain practices now tolerated, altho not generally ap proved, will be so definitely and publicly condemned in a written code of ethics that the business man who indulges in them will lose caste and suffer loss of repu tation and profit.
5. Caveat emptor.—The doctrine of caveat emptor, the Latin for "let the buyer beware," is losing its sig nificance in these days of publicity and of great and rapid transactions. Quality must be dependable and is so in most general lines of business. Some years ago a large tobacco company bought a famous brand of cigars and then began to cheapen its quality. The fact could not be kept secret and sales collapsed. The company restored the quality and advertised ex tensively, but could not recreate the 'demand.
Recently one of the shrewdest automobile dealers in the country bought over six million dollars' worth of cars from a manufacturer. Up to the day of buy ing them lie had never ridden in a car of that make. He knew the reputation of the car. Its merits were so well accepted and so many of the cars were in the hands of the public that they simply had to be all right. He did not expect the manufacturer to commit finan cial suicide by cheapening the standard.