18U4 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



591 



Giithor not my soul witli sinners, nor my life witli 

 bloody moil : in wlio.se liands is mischiof, iuid their 

 rig-lit iKind is full of bribL's.— Ps. 26:9, 10. 



What I shall have to say this morning refers 

 principally to tho Inst half of the closing sen- 

 tence of the text above — "Their right hand is 

 full of bribes." It would seem that receiving 

 bribes is not a new invention entirely, of mod- 

 ern days. Selfish men without princijjle have 

 abounded since the world began; and they 

 have been the trouble and the lament of all 

 good m(m during all ages. At the present time 

 I fear that many good people feel like settling 

 back with a groan of discouragement, and say- 

 ing, " Well, we just can't do any thing, any 

 way." But that is not true. It is a suggestion 

 of Satan, that we can not help the sin that con- 

 stantly abounds. We can do a very great deal, 

 and perhaps some of you know the remedy that 

 I am going to suggest; and. in fact, it is the 

 remedy the Bible suggests on almost evew 

 page — that is, make our own lives upright and 

 pure; and then if we don't do any thing more, 

 we shall at least stand a much better chance 

 with other sinners, or worse sinners, if you 

 choose. David said. "Then will I teach trans- 

 gressors thy way, and sinners shall he convert- 

 ed unto thee." The word the^i refers to the 

 time when God should have created in David 

 himself a clean heart, etc. 



Now, what shall we do with the bribes and 

 corruption of our land? Why, in the first 

 place we must take great care to mend every 

 thing that has even the appearance of evil iii 

 our own lives in this very line; for I do believe 

 a great part of us are at least indirectly en- 

 courasring this sort of thins. I wish you would 

 read the whole of this r?()th Psalm, and then 

 read the one before it. Why! it is really plain- 

 tive, the intense earnestness with which David 

 prays that he may be kept out of these things. 

 He says, " O keep my soul, and deliver me; and 

 let me not be ashamed." And he says again, 

 " I will walk in mine integrity; redeem me, and 

 be merciful unto me." 



A little time back I spoke of the gambling 

 mania. Well, the bribe mania goes hand in 

 hand with it. Perhaps, however, men accept 

 bribes in some sort of shape where they do not 

 think of doing any thins that even savors of 

 the gambling or bribe mania. Let me illus- 

 trate. Several times in my experience in hiring 

 hands 1 have been told something like this: A 

 man comes to the foreman of a certain room, 

 and says. "Mr. A., if voii will get Mr. Root to 

 keep me through the dull season, when others 

 are let go, I will give you a five-dollar bill." 

 This man does not even niead his skill or abil- 

 ity: neither does he claim that it will be for 

 Mr. Root's interest to retain him and let others 

 go. The only point before him is ?i(,.s interest — 

 his .se?/-inte,rest. Other men are poor: other 

 mpn have large families. He has no thousht 

 of this at all: he simply wants to (ret ahead 

 and crowd others bnck; and he ofl'ers the boss 

 of the room five dollars if he will manage to 

 give him a steady job. I do not know how he 

 expects him to do it. but very likely by saying 

 to his employer, "Mr. Root, when you are 

 thinking about what men vou will keep, and 

 what ones you will let eo, I think it would be 

 to your interest to keep Mr. B." I do not know 

 how far the boss of the room is expected to go. 

 Perhaps, in view of the five dollars, he is ex- 

 pected to say, "Well, I think Mr. B. would 



work for your interest, would look after your 

 property, and you would find it to your advan- 

 tage to ke((p him rather than any of the 

 others." If this latter be Irue, and there is no 

 bribe in the whole affair, the transaction would 

 be right and proper; but if, on the contrary, it 

 is Hot true, or the boss of the room is like the 

 man whom he is pleading for, working only for 

 the five dollars he has in view, or for .sc//- 

 interest, why, then It is a terrible state of af-' 

 fairs. If the proprietor is a good sharp man 

 there are two things tliat would stand in the 

 way of the success of such a scheme. The 

 foreman of a room who would lend himself to 

 such a plan, or accept a bribe, is unworthy of 

 his position and trust; and if he has secured 

 the place of foreman he will probably lose it 

 before long. You see, I know something about 

 these things. Again, the man who offers five 

 dollars or any other sum in this way is, as a 

 rule, a poor workman; and the employer, if he 

 is sharp, and looks after his business, would 

 begin to be suspicious —that is, he would be 

 suspicious to see a man recommended who, he 

 was sure, was not deserving. I am sorry to 

 say that this has been tried several times in 

 our establishment. But no man ever got a' 

 l)lace, that I know of, by any such trickery. 

 He lowered himself, and lowered his money 

 value, by making such an offer. In some gov- 

 ernment offices he might succeed; or where the 

 proprietor was so well ofl:' that he did not need 

 to look after his business. Should this meet 

 the eye of the men who tried this sort of way 

 to get employment. I hope they will believe 

 me when I assure them that such a course not 

 only destroys a man's self-respect, but it sinks 

 him in the estimation of all good men. He can 

 never prosper by such a course. 



Again, a runner for a manufacturer of print- 

 ins-inks offered the foreman of our prinling- 

 olfice some five or ten dollars if he would use 

 his Infiuence to have us buy all our inks of his 

 house. I do not think he said anything about 

 the quality — in fact, that was a secondary 

 matter. He would, if he could, get our trusty 

 foreman to induce us to use a poor quality of 

 ink at a high price, providing he was paid for 

 so doing, just think of it, friends — you hire a 

 man to look after a certain department of your 

 business — to use judgment, discretion, and wis- 

 dom in purchasing supplies. You pay him 

 extra — that is, more than your other hands — 

 fordoing this. Suppose he should violate this 

 trust reposed in him, and, instead of working 

 for us, he should work against us. provided he 

 could put money into his ouni pocket. I am 

 glad to tell you that the boss in our pi'inting- 

 ofhce promptly informed us of the questionable 

 way in which this ink-house did business, or 

 tried to do it. But it is not confined to manu- 

 facturers alone, this businc^ss of bribes. Sup- 

 pose one neighbor says to another, " John, if 

 you will use your infiuence to get Mr. B. to buy 

 this horse I am trying to sell him, I will give 

 you five dollars after the sale is made." Why, 

 this thing is so common that some of you may 

 smile at my simplicity. But, my good friends, 

 whenever you do a thing of this kind, you are 

 accepting a bribe. It is the same thing on a 

 small scale that is being done by the govern- 

 ment officers and by the police of our large 

 cities, that is making such terrible havoc just 

 now in business circles. If you profess to be 

 an honest, square man, you lower your standard 

 every time you become a party to any such 

 transaction. How can a professing Christian 

 listen to any such proposal ? Perhaps you say, 

 "Why, that is all right. You simply /(ire out 

 to the man who has the horse to sell." You 

 try to persuade your conscience that you 

 are helping him along, just as you would help 



