Business Life 139 



The live-and-let-live philosophy of the West is 

 slowly changing its skin. Adversity has taught 

 us to check our accounts. Not so very long ago 

 a store-keeper found, after an annual stock-taking, 

 that a saddle was missing. He instructed his 

 book-keeper to charge all the customers who were 

 cattle-men with one saddle. "Those," he argued, 

 " who have not bought a new saddle will protest." 

 The book-keeper obeyed instructions, but not a 

 single bill was protested. Such laxity is no longer 

 the rule, but the exception. 



In all big businesses, in the offices of the trans- 

 portation companies, in the saloons and restau- 

 rants, in the hotels and places of entertainment, 

 you will observe automatic tills that register the 

 sums paid, and make peculation upon the part 

 of employes almost impossible. This ingenious 

 machine has taught the employed to rely not upon 

 what they can steal, but on what they can law- 

 fully earn ; as a factor in the ethical development 

 of the working classes it is justly entitled to men- 

 tion. Before it was introduced, employers, when 

 estimating future profits, always deducted a cer- 

 tain percentage for undiscovered thefts. At one 

 time I employed a large gang of Chinamen to cut 

 wood and cord it. They were cunning fellows, and 

 their tricks were not easily detected. For instance, 

 they would pile the wood on a side-hill, or around 

 a stump, or the wood in the centre would be loosely 

 corded, so that the tale of cords, when I, in my 

 turn, SGid the wood, would be short. I measured 

 the wood myself, but, despite my intimate knowl- 

 edge of their heathen arts, I was regularly robbed. 



