IS THIS A DEGENERATE AGE? 489 



munity. As the whole commercial system is based upon buying and 

 selling, men have come to regard all things as fairly objects for barter 

 and to look upon honor as something transcendental. This conception, 

 the foundation for so many pessimistic forebodings, reflects no credit 

 upon the knowledge or good sense of those who accept it and it may 

 be dismissed as purely a priori. There never was a time when business 

 honor was so high as now; the whole commercial fabric is based upon 

 it. Whether the moral sense has been quickened or experience has 

 taught that honesty is the best policy, matters not — the fact remains 

 that in business a man must be honest and honorable ; dishonest dealing 

 is fatal. Dishonesty certainly exists as it always has existed and as 

 it always will exist until man^s nature changes. It is no novelty, for 

 long ago it was asserted that every man has his price. But there is 

 proportionately less now than ever before. 



If ^commercialism' be that which destroys man's better part and 

 makes him ready to subordinate everything to success in his ventures, 

 which induces a soulless indifference to the welfare and even rights of 

 neighbors, competitors and employees, surely we have here no nineteenth 

 century disease over whose discovery so great ado should be made. If 

 perverted ambition, selfishness, lack of principle and indifference to 

 the rights of others be what is meant by 'commercialism,' we have but 

 a new name for that which is as old and as widespread as the human 

 race. It is the same thing, whether in the merchant's counting room 

 or in the clergyman's study. When Napoleon asked contemptuously 

 " What are the lives of a thousand men to me ?' his spirit was the same 

 as that of an oppressive employer; the efforts made by the great 

 'trusts' of to-day to overcome competition differ in no wise from the 

 cutting of prices between cross-road stores of fifty years ago, or the 

 tricky manipulation of ecclesiastical councils in Constantine's time — 

 or even later. 



Inordinate anxiety for wealth and for the power which its possessor 

 can wield is not peculiar to the commercialism of our time. It was 

 quite as inordinate in the quiet days of one hundred years ago 

 as in the golden days of Eome. It has always led to oppression and 

 it has always contaminated society and politics. The satirists of Eome 

 inveighed against its evils as bitterly as do the moralists of our day; 

 the Israelites knew the burden long enough before Solomon's day to 

 make proverbs respecting it; it led the Assyrians along many a bloody 

 path in western Asia; the patrician of ancient Italy lusted for gold 

 as earnestly as did the merchant and in modem Italy one can find 

 no distinction in this respect between the noble and the contemned 'com- 

 merciante.' Avarice corrupted politics in the golden age of Eome and 

 in the Elizabethan age of England as thoroughly as during the Second 

 Empire of France or during the Croker Empire in commercial New 



